Oh, so that’s where it came from.
From the book Ranch House Style (okay, I laughed too, but there are people out there who think that ranch houses are the ultimate lifestyle), proof that none of the people who designed the modern ranch-house ever had children: the liberation that comes with open-plan living, the casual feel of easy kitchen access, then comfort of ... children near at hand.
The Big Yellow House is a craftsman style house, so many of the features that ripened to their full rotting glory in ranch houses are there. "Open-plan living" and "easy kitchen access", with children around, translates to "toys everywhere"; even with dedicated play areas, the bears can take advantage of our open-plan downstairs to evenly cover 900 square feet with toy parts in what seems like a matter of seconds. And our house at least takes a bow towards the traditional house design by having standard bungalow-style half walls separating the dining room from the living room from the entryway (the kitchen is separated by a hall and a doorway, but that's not enough.)
And children near at hand ? Is there a good trick to accomplish this, aside from puberty? Even with 4 stories and 3600 square feet (too damn many square feet if you ask me), it's sometimes a good trick if we can get the bears to get more than 10 feet away from us.
At least I now realize where some of the more tacky misfeatures of modern building design come from? Cathedral ceilings, in their full tacky glory? Well, they may have started with the humble log cabin and claim shanty, but they managed to attach themselves limpetlike to the American sense of style with ranch houses. Big empty rooms with high ceilings, where your belongings just slosh back and forth like a slow-moving tide? Ranch houses. Wall-to-wall shag carpeting, which will soak up 50 years of spills before they're removed by your retching heirs? Ranch houses.
.... okay, maybe I was joking about the last. But the evolution of modern design was pretty severely side-tracked when the traditional Indian bungalow was redesigned by people who had fallen in love with spanish/mexican ranches, but didn't quite get what they were.
It certainly explains why I'm so insistant on a house having multiple floors, because if it's got multiple floors, it's not a ranch house.