Lobby (room)

"Foyer" redirects here. For the method of transitional housing, see Foyer (housing model). For other uses, see Foyer (disambiguation).
Lobby of a contemporary apartment building in Washington, D.C.

A lobby is a room in a building used for entry from the outside.[1] Sometimes referred to as a foyer, reception area or entrance hall,[2] it is often a large room or complex of rooms (in a theatre, opera house, concert hall, showroom, cinema, etc.) adjacent to the auditorium. It may be a repose area for spectators, especially used before performance and during intermissions, but also as a place of celebrations or festivities after performance. In other buildings, such as office buildings or condominiums, lobbies can function as gathering spaces between the entrance and elevators to other floors.

Since the mid-1980s, there has been a growing trend to think of lobbies as more than just ways to get from the door to the elevator but instead as social spaces and places of commerce.[3][4] Some research has even been done to develop scales to measure lobby atmosphere to improve hotel lobby design.[5] Many office buildings, condominiums, hotels and skyscrapers go to great lengths to decorate their lobbies to create the right impression and convey an image.[6][7][8]

  1. ^ Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Lobby" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 16 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 836.
  2. ^ Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus. Oxford University Press. 2012. p. 358. ISBN 978-0-19-982992-7.
  3. ^ Goldberger, Paul (13 May 1984). "LOBBIES COMING BACK INTO THEIR OWN". The New York Times – via NYTimes.com.
  4. ^ "Office lobbies become new battleground in landlords' fight to boost | Long Island Business News | Find Articles at BNET.com".
  5. ^ Countryman, Cary Carl (1 January 2001). "An atmospheric scale for the evaluation of hotel lobbies". Theses and Dissertations Available from ProQuest: 1–118.
  6. ^ "USATODAY.com - Hotels hope visitors check out livelier, upgraded lobby". usatoday30.usatoday.com.
  7. ^ "Lobbying for space: renovated and revived office building lobbies seek to make the segue from garages and the street inviting to office workers and pedestrians alike - Style - Brief Article | Los Angeles Business Journal | Find Articles at BNET.com".
  8. ^ A Building Lobby, "Way of Design, Book One" Archived 2007-01-05 at the Wayback Machine