Reasons medieval people slept in cupboards (opens in new tab)

I was thinking about this exactly when reading that piece.

Several people sharing a closed space for sleeping seems to be the perfect way to spread diseases as well as parasites.

When I was a kid, I made pillow forts from the furniture in the living room. Fun times.

When I visited my brother this Christmas, he pointed out that this is an almost universal behaviour in young kids, which suggests that at some point in our evolutionary history we faced predators that specifically targeted small children.

Bed-tents are a thing

We called that, among other things, "making a fort." Do today's helicopter kids not do that?

It is a decent low tech idea. It would be pretty awesome to have a sleeping nook. Even if you bring some small amount of electric heat or ventilation into the system, like repurposing an old bathroom vent fan, you could perfectly air condition just that one 8x6x5 box and let the rest of the house drop into the low 50s at night and be both comfortable and save money, then use the warmth of the day to warm the house back up for use.

Might be a fun project.

"A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction" is such a calming book. Makes me feel good reading it, though I realize it's overly utopian and we'll only get bits of it done in the real world.

Many of Alexander's "design patterns" were terrible for actual living on a reasonable budget. Like what are you supposed to do with that space when the children get older? I read the book and was not impressed.

I'm away from my copy but I'm pretty sure beds in alcoves is explicitly called out, not just for children.

That is not completely true. The problem is that stone is what survived the centuries while the wood that was used to make the rooms more comely did not hence our modern picture of cold and windy castles.

They were not as luxurious as our modern living but people still did their best to make their living spaces comfortable. They didn't just sit in windy castles freezing their butts off every day. Most of the huge stone rooms we see now were actually separated into smaller wooden chambers that were much easier to heat.

You sound like someone dying to live on a sailboat for a few months of the year. There’s something quite cozy and gentle about those berths when done well.

I think noone does that because 2 meter long shelf to put over the bed wouldn't be sturdy enough with modern furniture materials. So any cupboard that's 2m wide and at least 1m deep would need to be custom made. High up, 1 meter deep shelves are not that much more useful than empty space above the bed.

Some issue with bringing this design into today:

- air quality (especially if closed off), less air volume means the air gets bad faster

- air humidity, raises faster through sweat in a cupboard setup, for the same reason the inner tent of good tents tends to be made of a fabric which allows air humidity to go out of the inner tent (I think, haven't bought a tent forever)

- fungus mainly due to the higher humidity/reduced ventilation the chance to have a fungus infection in your box (and also/especially the bottom of you mattress)

All of this where issues back then too, just so much smaller then the risk of freezing.

A risk we currently tent to not have in apartments due to better heating, insulation (even on non insulated housed due to better closing windows and better thermal isolating glass). Not being in a short little ice age also helps.

Capsule hotels are somewhat of an modern version of this. They tend to have some form of AC in every capsule to fix the air quality issue and hugely reduce the humidity and in turn fungus issue

If you are stuck in a situation where idk. heating is broken and its dam cold creating a similar setup by e.g. butting a tend on your bed can still be a grate idea.

In the current culture bedrooms are more than simply a place to sleep. In multi-member households, a bedroom is typically a person's only personal space.

I can recommend sleeping in a Tesla’s trunk. Very cosy. Mobile. And air conditioned.

Check out Hong Kong cage homes. Tiny shared spaces would require a lot of discipline to successfully pull off.

Are you trying to stop sound getting in or getting out? In the first case some decent earplugs should be sufficient.

Maybe thermal isolation from the cold floor.

Same reason most beds are, pests.

yes, through it's mostly unrelated to the "cupboard bed" design. Today you "just" would make them a bit bigger, as they in the end replace your bed they don't consume much more space then your bad.

If they're about warmth, then maybe keeping the air volume to a minimum is part of the function, so maybe curling up was a part of it. The other part was probably that people were statistically shorter in the middle ages.

The one pencil sketch gives you some idea. I think they just have a smallish opening — it looks like there is room to the left and to the right (inside) of the shuttered area.

People were smaller on average. But also, I've read it wasn't uncommon to sleep with legs/knees pulled up somewhat (maybe using pillows?). And that the changed bloodflow due to non-horizontal sleeping position (legs above head) contributed to higher prevalence of brain strokes.

Don't know if the latter is true. But doesn't seem too implausible - life back then was generally less healthy & more dangerous.

People were also smaller.

> It's bad because you are isolated. You need to get grounded in order to sleep properly:

> https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15650465/

This was published by the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, which has also published articles on how homeopathy is effective. I don't know that I would consider it a high quality source.

is it just me or does that second link resemble pseudoscience?