How did we ever let this go?

Everyone talking about the pit and I'm just here thinking "housing?"

You'd need that space to go somewhere, so the rest of the floor would either need to be a meter thick, you'd need a big protrusion into the lower floor, or you'd have to have it on the ground level with nothing underneath.

You'd also be pretty locked into the floor plan layout, and there would be no place to put a TV screen that's visible from the whole seating.

Pretty cool looking, but also pretty impractical with modern buildings.

Readers added context they thought people might want to know:

Either these couches are really tiny, or room in this image is really big. It looks like the room is like six times the size of my college dorm. If the rest of the house is similarly sized, it’s probably also insanely fucking expensive. middle school gymnasium ass room

If you stare hard enough, you can almost hear the keys dropping into the bowl.

the money and cocaine ran out

If I recall correctly, I think building codes surrounding tripping/fall hazards and railings may have had something to do with it unfortunately. I may be mistaken though

I built a conversation pit in Minecraft because I wanted one so bad

Today that place in the middle would be blocked off by drywall and rented out for $1500/month.

not gonna lie, I always wanted a home with a sunken living room table/couch like this.

Even today I think its bad ass and interesting... probably a pain in the ass to clean, though.

My spouse: I was promised flying cars, and I don't even get a conversation pit!

It's because folks kept falling into them at night and breaking their necks.

When I was an installer for a WISP, I was installing to a lot of big fancy farm owner homes; and one of them had this. That house was swanky as fuck. It was practically custom built for partying. Place had 3 kitchens (2 indoors, and 1 outdoor), bars in nearly every room, etc. I wish I lived there... 😞

So I have some family that lived in a gated community that used to be a resort for Golden Age Hollywood types. Their clubhouse/community building hadn't been updated much since then, and it had one of these.

100% certain that a) group sex happened here, and b) at least one person broke their ankle in this thing. 90% sure there was at least one time both happened at once.

Don Draper’s NY apartment

They took your own generations ability to have silly architectural trends - by the banks and Realestate agencies pricing most out of the market, and by refusing to mass build new towns for cheap.

Sex pit or big TV. It's a tough call.

IRL they mostly used these for group sex. It would be super weird to have everyone just sitting around talking all at the same time. Cult shit.

I can only imagine what a pain this would be to vacuum.

Just use couches facing each other if you want to dedicate space to talking to each other. But I don't think most people have this much room available anyway.

Needs more wood paneling, like this one:

https://www.uklocations.co.uk/locations/film-photography-location-nottingham-2376/

Who are they and why is this not achievable today?

Because you're posting this to the generation who will forever rent. The landlords probably wouldn't be happy.

Fire hazard!

Dirty

There's a quite famous sunken bed in the Beatles' movie HELP! It was in John's area: https://filmandfurniture.com/2016/09/beatles-help/

What?

You people have horrible taste in interior design. That looks so bad.