Semi-permeable parties

“It takes a membrane to make sense out of disorder in biology.”

– Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell

Leah and I have a vision for our backyard to be a relaxed semi-outdoor hosting space. We’re still a few years away from building it, but it’s already got me thinking about what makes some spaces naturally welcoming, and others … not.

My bookshelf tends to help me think in analogies, and seeing Lewis Thomas’s book about the cell took me back to biology class. Specifically, my mind went to cells and their semi-permeable membranes. Cells offer a useful analogy for good social environments. Hear me out… They both need differences in concentration, encourage flow, and enough structure to hold it all together.

Good parties mimic the semi-permeable membranes and flow of cells, and generalizing scientific ideas is a lot of fun.

Mix it up

Think about your favorite social spaces (seriously, I’d love to hear back about yours). I bet they end up a thoughtful mix of openness and structure. When people can choose a space that fits their energy level they’ll land in more nourishing and natural interactions. The practical advice here is to create both quiet corners and lively open areas.

Let’s consider the Irish pub as a study. For a summer in college, I worked for Kieran Folliard, an amazing entrepreneur based in the Twin Cities who immigrated from Ireland and started several successful pubs^[1]. When you walked into one of his pubs, you felt welcomed and accepted as you were. Part of that feeling is the design of the space. In a good Irish pub, you will notice there is a mix of bar seating, standing room, tables or booths, and, my favorite, a “snug” or two. Snugs are the parts of the bar that feel semi-private and may be hidden by a wooden partition to create a distinct, tight space for a group. The best conversations happen in snugs and the loudest laughs are out in the tables. You want both.

Now let’s consider an example of a social space with no such variety: a high school cafeteria. You probably shudder a bit even reading those words. There is a uniformity of energy forced upon a group of people with very different preferences. And unfortunately, the rise of the open floor plan^[2] over the last 20 years has made it so social spaces in our homes can often look a lot more like the cafeteria than the pub.

So, our first lesson is to create space to both mimic the “snug” and more open and lively areas. For our backyard, ideally this means well have a tucked away fire pit area, a kitchenette space where bottles of wine can flow, and lawn space where kids can let off steam.

Let people wander

Ok so people have options available to them. Now they need freedom to move. Nobody likes to feel stuck in a conversation.^[3] Architect Christopher Alexander wrote that a good building “always opens up new possibilities”^[4] and the same is true for parties.

All I have to offer here is the drink or food refresh or bathroom strategy. It helps if the food, drinks, or bathrooms are slightly away from the main area, giving people an easy excuse to shift gears. If anybody has tips on how to make this sort of thing easy, I am eager to hear it!^[5]

(The exception of course is a wedding party, where you want to smush everybody you love together without the ability to escape. This is the exception that proves the rule, because usually a party isn’t all about you.)

Structure holds it together

Clear expectations are comfort not rules. Whether it’s who’s invited, dress code, if kids are welcome, food expectations, or when things wind down. We’ve learned this over the last few months. Since Teddy came along we’ve hosted a few things and started setting end times. It started as a joke and turned out to be genuinely appreciated. People feel more relaxed than obligated when they know what to expect. There’s no need to be overly rigid, you just send signals across the membrane. I have found Partiful to be a great tool to make it insanely easy to share what to expect in a fun way. Gen Z is getting some things right.

Where do we go from here

The goal is to have people feel nourished not drained.

The dream is to have a backyard space where neighbors, parents, and kids can all hangout naturally, trickling in and out in a way that makes everybody’s life richer. In the nearer term, we want to have more dinner parties. Two of our favorite nights of the last year were having people over for semi-structured events. Thanks to inspiration from cells, pubs, good buildings, Gen Z, and even the high school cafeteria for its lessons, we’ll hopefully be better armed to create inviting spaces. The right kinds of boundaries create life.

Questions:

• What are the spaces you feel most comfortable in?
• Tips for gracefully exiting conversations?
• What would you want to see in our backyard?

H/t John Garry for the inspiritation and feedback on this topic