Open-Plan Kitchen and Living Space: When the Wall Can Come Down

When an open-plan kitchen suits your daily life

Before we talk about structure, we talk about life in the kitchen. The question is not whether open kitchens are modern. The question is how you want to cook, eat and be together.

An open-plan kitchen suits you well if:

• cooking is a shared moment, with others sitting by, helping or simply talking.
• you want to keep the children in view while standing at the hob.
• guests come often and the host does not want to disappear into the kitchen.
• the kitchen gets little daylight and would benefit from the light of the living space.

It suits you less well if:

• cooking is intensive and strongly scented, with daily frying, searing and spicy dishes.
• quiet in the living space matters, for instance because someone reads or works there while someone else cooks.
• tidiness in the kitchen is not always a given and the sight bothers you.
• the living space is already small and would lose its character to the kitchen.

For our couple in Döbling, nearly every point speaks for opening up. Only one does not: the husband works in the living room twice a week, and on those days his wife cooks lunch for the children. We take this tension into the planning. But first, one question decides everything else: what is holding the house up?

What the closed hob takes from you. Every evening at a closed hob is time spent apart from the people you cook for. Open the wall without checking structure, air and sound, though, and you may get a beautiful room that echoes and smells of last night's dinner. Look closely before you decide.

Load-bearing or not: what the structure says

The first technical question is always the same: is the wall load-bearing? A load-bearing wall takes loads from above, from ceilings, walls or the roof, and carries them downwards. Anyone who removes it has to pick up those loads in another way.

A few signs that may point to a load-bearing wall:

• The wall is noticeably thicker than other partition walls.
• It runs parallel to the outer walls in the middle of the building.
• Above it, on the upper floors, there is a wall in the same place again.
• Ceiling beams rest on it, which can sometimes be seen in the ceiling.

These signs are no substitute for an inspection. Whether a wall is load-bearing, how it can be removed and which beam is needed is decided by a structural engineer. In the Viennese Altbau with its timber-beam ceilings, and in the municipal housing blocks (Gemeindebau) of the interwar period, the situation is often different from that in a modern new-build.

Even a load-bearing wall can often be opened. A steel beam or lintel takes the load, and posts carry it down. That means more effort, more planning and usually a permit. What this means in concrete terms, who decides and what to expect is described in detail in our article Removing a load-bearing wall in Vienna.

The question is rarely whether a wall can come down. The question is what it takes for it to be allowed to.

Even when the structure says yes, others have a say too. Who?

Permits and consents in Vienna

Anyone who removes a wall in Vienna needs different consents depending on the intervention. For non-load-bearing walls the effort is usually manageable; for load-bearing walls it generally means a building permit with structural proof. Whether a building notification is enough or a permit is required, we check case by case with the structural engineer and, where necessary, with the building authority (Baupolizei).

Then there are the consents within the building:

1. In an owner-occupied apartment, interventions in common parts, which include load-bearing walls, generally require the consent of the other owners under the Austrian Condominium Act (Wohnungseigentumsgesetz).
2. In a rented apartment, the landlord must agree, often in writing and with conditions.
3. The property management (Hausverwaltung) should be informed early, also with regard to noise hours and the stairwell.

An overview of the permit situation is given in our article on conversions in the Viennese Altbau. For the planning, this means: clarification takes time, often several weeks to months. It belongs at the start, not in the building phase. And then there is the part you will notice every single day: the air.

Smells, steam and ventilation

An open-plan kitchen shares its air with the living space. What stayed in the closed kitchen now drifts across the sofa and into the curtains. That makes ventilation the second big question.

There are basically two systems:

In the Viennese Altbau, an extraction route through the façade is not always possible or permitted. Whether a suitable route exists, we clarify with the property management and the chimney sweep (Rauchfangkehrer). It is also important that if the apartment has a gas boiler or a stove that draws air from the room, an extraction system must be combined with a safety device. The chimney sweep checks this.

A hob with integrated extraction draws steam and smells downwards right at the cooking point. This is especially pleasant in open-plan kitchens because no hood blocks the view. For whom such a system is worthwhile, we explain in our article on hobs with integrated extraction. Smells are only half of what travels, though. What about sound?

Acoustics: when the kitchen joins the conversation

A closed kitchen dampens sound. An open one does not. Dishwasher, extractor, coffee machine, the clatter of pans: everything can now be heard in the living space.

For our couple this becomes the central question, because of the home office in the living room. We therefore plan several measures together:

• Quiet appliances. A dishwasher with a low noise level and an extraction solution that is barely audible on a normal setting.
• Sound-absorbing surfaces. An acoustic ceiling above the dining area, a large rug, curtains in heavy fabric.
• A bookcase wall along the long side, which also breaks up sound.
• A way of separating the spaces, for the days when quiet is needed.

Large, hard rooms echo. Anyone who removes a wall often doubles the room volume and with it the problem. What really helps is described in our article on acoustics in open-plan living spaces.

Imagine a Saturday morning in the finished room. The dishwasher is a whisper, the children draw at the dining table, and the one who reads on the sofa hears only a soft murmur from the island.

And if the whole room is open, what happens to order?

Order and sightlines

In an open-plan kitchen you see everything: the dishes after the meal, the coffee machine, the shopping bags. Some people do not mind at all, and others mind a great deal.

Good planning directs the eye. The sink area is positioned so that it cannot be seen directly from the sofa, for example on the wall run rather than on the island. Tall cupboards with pocket doors hide the coffee machine and small appliances. A slightly higher back panel on the island screens the work surface without cutting off eye contact.

Anyone planning a cooking island should know the clearances exactly. Too little space makes the room feel cramped; too much makes the routes long. The most important dimensions can be found in our article on planning a cooking island. Not every wall has to fall completely, though.

Semi-open as an alternative

Not every wall has to disappear completely. A partial opening is often the cleverer solution: it creates connection without giving up the advantages of a closed room.

Possible forms:

• A wide opening instead of a door, say two metres instead of eighty centimetres.
• An opening at worktop height, a modern serving hatch with a counter.
• A glass sliding door, which almost disappears when open and holds back smells and noise when closed.
• A partial wall with a glazed transom, which lets light through but screens the kitchen visually.

In our example, a combination does the job: the wall is opened over a width of three metres, and a sliding glass element can close it on home-office days. The children stay in view, the cooking smells stay in the kitchen, and the space still feels open. You can read more about this kind of planning in the article Semi-open instead of open.

Once the wall is open, the real design task begins.

Designing the transition

Two rooms have to become one without losing their individual character. This is achieved on three levels:

1. The floor. A continuous covering joins the areas. Where there used to be a threshold, there must no longer be an edge. How this is done is described in our article on continuous flooring.
2. The ceiling. Where the beam of a formerly load-bearing wall remains visible, it becomes a design element. Alternatively it disappears into a suspended ceiling, which also takes on lighting and acoustics.
3. The light. Different lighting zones structure the open space without dividing it. More on this in our article on light as a transition.

An open space is not simply a large space. It is a space with clear zones that you feel without seeing them.

How cooking, dining and living work as zones of their own in a single room is shown in our article Zones instead of rooms. And on the fitted kitchens page you can see how we plan open kitchens as furniture in the room. Tischlerkultur, our own joinery workshop with Viennese tradition since 1935, builds such kitchens as furniture that belongs in the room, and one person at Richard Atelier stays on your project throughout.