Designing for Smallness
Going down (conversation pits) as intimacy rises
Conversation pits are having a moment. The sunken living room setup from the 1970s is showing up in new homes and renovations, and its appeal goes beyond nostalgia. These spaces are designed to make you sit close, stay longer, and talk more. They create intimacy by limiting scale. In a world where traditional anchors have dissolved into a global monoculture, physical spaces that force genuine connection feel like they’re doing something new.
The same pattern is showing up elsewhere. Micro-events are replacing traditional conferences, with gatherings of 15–30 people instead of ballrooms packed with hundreds. The draw is depth over reach. Online, new research on internet communities shows people gravitating toward smaller, more intentional spaces where connection feels genuine rather than performed.
After two decades of optimizing for scale, designing for smallness signals something about how people are rebuilding what dissolved. Conversation pits, micro-gatherings, curated communities. These are places where identity can form again, small enough to matter, intentional enough to belong to.
