Have you ever wondered what the apartments and homes featured on your favorite TV shows were really like?
Artist Iñaki Aliste Lizarralde has. She has drawn the floor plans for the homes featured in many different TV shows and movies. She has an Etsy site that is a veritable treasure trove of pop culture floor plans. The architecture and design site architizer.com, recently featured a selection of Ms. Lizarralde’s New York Apartment floor plans.
Can we learn anything from reviewing these plans? Other than the fact that I’ve spent way more time watching TV than I probably should have, I think there are a couple of things we can learn from these TV plans.
First, in most TV situation comedies, we the viewers usually occupy the space where the TV is in the show’s plan. The exception to this rule is on Friends. It is as if we are in the TV spying on the people in the show.
Second, living rooms on TV often feature defined spaces for specific tasks, like desks, library spaces, often in interesting nooks and changes in level. I think we can apply this idea to our own homes to make our homes respond more directly to our needs and enrich the spatial experience.
Third, angles are not a bad thing. Sometimes angled spaces look tortured and strange when drawn out, but in real life flow nicely and feel quite natural.
Fourth, having sight lines from one space into another will make a small apartment feel bigger, as will having a large space sub-divided into smaller functional areas.
See, watching all those episodes of Sex In The City pays off!
by 
