ABSTRACT
For the Interior Designer the plan conveys not just the disposition of walls and openings but also of the furnishings within those walls and, by implication, even the character of ornament and accessories; it is the overview of the entire result. "The plan is the generator," Le Corbusier wrote in Towards a New Architecture. "Without plan there can be neither grandeur of aim and expression, nor rhythm, nor mass, nor coherence. A plan calls for the most active imagination. It calls for the most severe discipline also. The plan is what determines everything; it is the decisive moment." The circulation in Alvar Aalto's Baker House dormitory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is quite clearly directed by the plan, however sinuous the overall form. All three plan types and their myriad combinations and variations have recurred throughout history, but the last type, under the name open planning, has been particularly identified with their own time.
