Seeking social spaces in a tech-heavy world
.... shallow divot in the floor of a residential home, usually square or circular, filled with plush cushions and shag rugs. The conversation pit trend had already become infamous by 1963, when Time magazine published a short piece called “Fall of the Pit,” contending that its heyday was already over. The piece described the conversation pit’s numerous faults and awkward perils:
At cocktail parties, late-staying guests tended to fall in. Those in the pit found themselves bombarded with bits of hors d'oeuvres from up above, looked out on a field of trouser cuffs, ankles and shoes. Ladies shied away from the edges, fearing up-skirt exposure. Bars or fencing of sorts had to be constructed to keep dogs and children from daily concussions.
Time suggested that those unfortunate owners of conversation pits should simply fill them with concrete and lay floorboards on top—“No one will ever know what once lay beneath.”
But today conversation pits are objects of fascination, relics of a time when living space was oriented not around a wall-sized flat screen and portable computers, but around looking at and socializing with other human beings in real life. If we want to get back to some actual face-to-face time, what better way to do it than in a cushioned burrow designed to host an intimate gathering?
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The conversation pit served a social purpose, providing shelter for more private conclaves with guests during the Millers’ epic parties. It also played an aesthetic role by receding from view. “It maintains such clean lines in that room,” Force says. “You can look across the top of the pit out of the windows and across the meadow. If there were normal pieces of furniture poking up there, it wouldn’t be quite the same.”
When Force designed his own home 25 years ago, in a modernist style with floor-to-ceiling glass windows facing the backyard, the Miller House might have been a subconscious inspiration, he says. The living room is sunk down a few steps (he compares it to a hot tub) and there’s a long couch with leather cushions and Alexander Girard pillows along the perimeter. Coffee tables and Eames chairs inhabit the center. “It’s a good place to read. There’s no television in there,” Force says. “If you have a group of people over, it’s a nice place to sit and have a conversation—or a couple of conversations, with a larger group.”
Conversation pits are like any victim of taste: The kitschy, cliché object of one era will get adopted once more by a new generation that never had a chance to get tired of it in the first place. Circular couches are even popping up in startup offices like BuzzFeed and BKM as replacements for boardroom tables, transforming the earlier design vocabulary of leisure into one of labor. Work, after all, is another context in which we still have to be face-to-face. It’s fitting decor for companies that extend day jobs into 24/7 lifestyles.
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