Extreme Enfilade

What’s “enfilade”?

When you arrange rooms without a common hallway, you have to go through each room to get to the next. Architects call that “enfilade” [on-fee-lodd] circulation. The rooms are the hallway.

French palaces have rooms that all line up. 

A railroad apartment has no hallway.

And some modern museums take enfilade to an extreme, creating one core exhibition that’s one linear story, continuous, in essentially one long room.

Let’s call this “extreme enfilade”. You might know a few museums done this way.

Why do it? It’s epic, uses less space for hallways, and offers a wow factor.

But it’s not all upside. Extreme enfilade can cause acoustic challenges, climate control issues, and security problems (fewer doors).

Worse, there is a bigger problem you won’t realize for years: you can’t easily close off just one part of it to renovate.

That means you have to raise enough funds to renovate the whole thing at once. Even if you can do that, you have to close your entire core while you upgrade.

Here’s the thing:
Enfilade has pros and cons. But extreme enfilade comes with an extreme downside. 

Proceed with extreme caution.

Warmly,
Jonathan