‘The history of the corridor as a device for removing traffic from rooms has yet to be written. From the little evidence I have so far managed to glean it makes its first recorded appearance in England to Beaufort House, Chelsea, designed around 1597…. the introduction of the through-passage into a domestic architecture fast inscribed a deeper division between the upper and lower ranks of society… purposeful or necessary communication was facilitated while incidental contact was reduced’
‘[The corridor is] appropriate to a society that finds carnality distasteful, which sees the body as a vessel of mind and spirit, and in which privacy is habitual… [a society devoted to] reducing noise-transmission, differentiating movement patterns suppressing smells, stemming vandalism, cutting down the accumulation of dirt, impeding the spread of disease, veiling embarrassment, closeting indecency and abolishing the unnecessary’
Robin Evans, ‘Figures, Doors and Passages’ (1978)
