Could you make a video about the backrooms ? Especially the Level 0 or lobby the yellowish beige or flower wallpaper the suburbs and the pool rooms which are either a Part of the backrooms or exist independent from them
Plenum is not the name of the space above the ceiling unless it's being used as an HVAC return. If the return is ducted all the way to the drop ceiling the space cannot be called a plenum.
My worst experience of this type of drop ceiling was when I spent 2 weeks in hospital, looking up into a bright light and a white ceiling, I had to get friends to bring me sunglasses.
I spent nearly 3 months in traction, 40 years ago. For a little while it was a game to count the holes in the trimmed tiles at the perimeter. But it really went off the rails when I factored all the whole tiles and added up the ones I'd counted! I forget the number today, but the nurses weren't impressed that I'd figured it out in my head. 😂
@@godknows4454What do you think is wrong with hospitals and how do you want them to look? I'm not saying hospitals look perfect but I like that they look clean.
I work in a building where there is no drop ceiling, because it's the faculty of engineering, they decided to show off all the HVAC and piping and whatnot. It makes you acutely aware of all the rather heavy looking stuff bolted to the ceiling above your head with rather thin threaded rods.
This is the same way our engineering firm does it. Equally important is the sound abortion panels they added. we are lucky to have an acoustic engineer who dialed it in.
I think drop ceilings might also get a bad rep due to their association with terrible lighting. Old flickering tube lighting with its weird colour profile and strange hum, were mostly seen in a drop ceiling, miles away from natural light.
I mean, yes and no. Fluorescent was the first "energy efficient" lights to come out, and was considered progressive during their era; You used fluorescent because it was the 'new technology that didn't heat up the room'. Drop ceilings naturally were a candidate for one because drop ceilings were used vastly across the states in multiple ways -- from homes (so many homes had drop ceilings, especially for the working class) and even more so for office spaces that were renovated. The benefits of drop ceiling was the accessibility to new technology, like romex electrical, cable for phone, and especially for basic tasks, like changing a florescent tube or cleaning. To be entirely fair with this, the reason why "drop ceilings get a bad name" is because they were used for poor people. And instead of acknowledging "hey, this was a vital important history to remember", it's like whitewashing it (literally) because they forgot that gypsum was incredibly costs, expensive, and required plaster on ceilings, which wasn't just expensive but difficult. This only changed post 1970's to 1980's, where lighter-weight building material started hitting shelves and technology changed over time. Meanwhile, for the corporate and companies who used dropceilings, the use-case for them increased, rather than decreased. From the creation of Central Air (hvac) and various technologies, such as later rj11 internet, to rj45 90's-00's ethernet, all the way to what you would consider as a modern company today all use drop ceilings just because accessibility between ceilings is incredibly important for new data runs, new electrical runs, access to cleanout and supply/feed for hvac, and various other reasons. In closing, the "why it gets a bad wrap" isn't lighting. It's typically the association with a persons experience, which gravitates back to "if they had a drop ceiling, it's possible they couldn't afford anything more and thus the experience was probably bad". In modern days, drop ceilings are associated with, truthfully, any non-warehouse enterprise, as they're super convenient for a multitude of reasons, and most finished basements that "have a ceiling" utilize drop ceilings just because they can still access vital, important parts of their house -- such as water supply lines, gas lines, the panel box & romex, data lines, low voltage lines, etc. I'd have to argue that the only "bad wrap" that exists, is the experience intertwined with why people dislike it. "bad hospital visit" and they only look at the ceiling, while they think "where are the normal ceilings". Meanwhile, I not only grew up in houses with only drop ceilings, I replaced them in my own house, and worked with them at work running data lines in the past. truth be told, lighting and, especially fluorescent lighting, wasn't a bad association with them. I'd argue a lot of the negative association of them is due to bad experiences by people and them associating their time with something. Give it 20 more years and it'll be "why does red oak furniture give a feeling of existential dread".
I hated drop ceilings for all of the cultural associations you mentioned, so when I rented my new studio that came with drop ceilings I had planned to take them all out. But then I started looking into it a bit more and they're insanely useful. I was able to buy really nice LED panels that just dropped into place, I upgraded the other panels to extra sound absorbing panels, and I was able to route all my network and power cables through it. I recently found some clamps that can mount lighting rigs directly to a drop ceiling so that I don't need to use light stands that get in the way and can be knocked over. The standardisation of the drop ceiling is just too useful, and there are thousands of products built for it. I'm now a drop ceiling convert. 😉
Yes, it's great if you considered about functionality and price. Now I got flat ceiling. Great to look at. But if I got a new house, I would put drop ceiling up for the whole house. For now with flat ceiling, as my dad was a technician and can fix everything imaginable in the house, and I'm EE grad. It's real hard when I need to run more ethernet cable/electrical wire somewhere. Or when I need to cut out a hole to touch up the roof countless of time. And when I want to redesign the ceiling lighting, I just can't without leaving some hole in the ceiling. When there's pipe leak, that patch of swamp just stays there forever, because, yes, I just can't without tearing down the whole room. And when the wiring looks bad, you just don't see it. Live your life happily. Bare ceiling with all those cool black metal pipe is very nice to look at. But in my country, it cost a lot. And everything needs to mount on the solid concrete. Which I hated, for maintenance. If I got drop ceiling, everything would be so easy and so cheap to replace and maintain.
Thats probabky why they're frowned upon. Its a bit brutalist, and practical above all else. Usually its the building itself you tie into it all. It's crazy to see everything drop ceilings hide, like the ductwork, pipes, and electrical.
In elementary school there was one teacher I had that made a project out of taking the invidual squares down from the ceiling and having kids in class paint them. After that teacher left the ceiling went back to being white.
Probably got taken down because letting kids paint them makes them go from "fire resistant" to "fire yes please" and/or because they bounce off less light and the space gets darker, not an entirely good idea despite how much more child friendly the space might have looked.
@@freedomfighter22222 Better not paint those 1 Hour and 2 Hour fire walls then. While acoustical ceiling tiles do have a light reflectance value, most building codes for commercial buildings in America requires a minimum luminance. Whether the sun is shining to bounce off those tiles or not. They provide this luminance with lights. Really helps out when it gets dark.
@@SoberAddiction The paint your painter uses from a hardware store that follows regulatory codes and the paint your school gets for children to play with have very different fire classifications. For the latter it is a lot more important that children doesn't get cancer from breathing in the fumes than it is that their drawings can't catch fire easily. "most building codes for commercial buildings in America requires a minimum luminance" Which is achieved by calculations based on reflective surfaces expected in the rooms, the amount light fixtures installed is adjusted according to the ceiling, walls, floor and other surfaces reflective values. When the electrical engineer says you need x amount of lamps he says so based on the ceiling tiles being the reflective surface it says it will be in the building plans, not based on what color som teacher might allow to be painted on it in 20 years.
On a purely functional criteria, the drop ceiling is a marvel of modern architecture that solves dozens of problems all at once. What the drop ceiling needs, is a revolution of Form. Every office opts for the cheapest white plastic frame with cheapest white porous panelling: both of which yellow with time, and become dust magnets. We need more colours, more materials, more patterns, etc. Additionally, the smallness of the grid could potentially be changed too - larger panels would feel less constricting - even if it was just one meter panels (about 50% bigger). The grid size can feel like it determines your personal space - if it's 2x2ft, you can feel like a sardine in a can. The infinity of the ceiling that spans the entire level gives it an authority over the space. So even if your cubicle is larger, the space is defined by its unit: the drop ceiling size. Bigger grid, better materials, colour - entirely different world. Note: "World" here means Accounting Level 7, I'm not saying it'll fix the middle east.
You could make the grid much smaller if the panels clipped in. There wouldn't be any metal showing, just a thin line. Or you could make panels longer and offset them like subway tiles.
everything you mentioned is available now, businesses go for low cost solutions. every color, every size, with grid showing, without grid showing, curved, vaulted, wood, metal or cloth. they even has cloud systems that just hide certain equipment.
They tried 5x5 in the 70s with (optional) matching wall panels that locked into the grid (for easy office reconfigurations) and the lights came in several styles too including a "coffered" variant where a 2x2 light troffer was raised into an angled coffer and it looked pretty darn cool. Fell out of style by the early 80s. They were popular in the "open plan" concept schools in the 70s that had very large rooms, the larger size helped the scale.
I co-own a pet grooming shop, and one of the key things we did outfitting the space for our use was to swap the standard ceiling tiles out for *slightly* more expensive plastic ones because moisture. It looks about 1000% better with that one change.
I’ve installed drop ceilings, and the installation process is about as fun as you would imagine. The system is made entirely of fiberglass, styrofoam and cheap sheet metal. If you don’t cover yourself head to toe or wear a mask while you work, you’ll end up inhaling the dust and get cuts from the metal and hives form all the glass that is now embedded in your skin. I had to throw away all the work clothes I used while installing these things since the glass would not come out. The worst part was that client installed the drop tiles because the original and beautiful hardwood vault ceiling was “dated.”
I binge watch home reno shows sometimes, especially those of historical or just even 'boring' old buildings. I live for the moments when an ugly floor is stripped to reveal original hard wood or tile, or when a drop ceiling is removed to reveal architectural elements designed for beauty or at least natural elements like wood beams. I can't imagine anyone choosing to add drop ceilings now! It even drives me crazy when people paint over natural wood....
Im an electrician and i install all the lights and equipment above these ceilings, i love putting a nice lighting system in but these are really dreadful that lights they use are cheap and they are frustrating to install
As an electrician apprentice, I've never thought about it like that. They are easy to work with and to make changes to. But its absurd how gross it gets above them
I think there was a video somewhere about a pharmaceutical manufacturing plant that blew up due to dust collecting in the drop ceiling. They did the rest of the cleaning perfectly, but in the ceiling and inaccessible it's not brought to mind.
@@Nuka_Gaming, oh. Do you wear an N95 mask when you are working up there. There are nasty viral diseases that you can get from inhaling the dust from dried mouse urine.
To this day, whenever I'm in a space with dim blue-green lighting reminiscent of the color grading of the interior shots in 'Aliens,' it makes part of my brain uneasy.
To nerd out for a moment about the use of the “up” shot (one showing a drop ceiling with fluorescent lights) in movies and TV shows, those shots were essentially impossible to get on SD video cameras, the sensors didn’t have sufficient dynamic range to show both the ceiling and the lighting at the same time, either the ceiling tiles would be ridiculously dark, or the lights would be completely blown out. Only film allowed for sufficient dynamic range, and even there the shots were tricky to get technically correct. So you won’t see “up” shots in TV shows that were recorded directly to video, only those shot on film, and even then, only rarely. After the advent of HD video, with its much higher dynamic range, were directors free to casually point their cameras up at the ceiling and get a useable shot.
When I was in grad school, one of my professors was the architect Jan Hird Pokorny. He and his firm specialized in the adaptative reuse of older buildings, but he was also very much a Modernist at heart. His method of incorporating HVAC requirements into older interiors in a way that respected the architectural character of the old spaces while providing for contemporary needs was innovative at the time and is still controversial among preservationists. Basically, he exposed everything; he didn't hide anything behind a dropped ceiling. He made sure the utilitarian elements were nicely arranged and finished so that they were not unpleasant to look at. In a few cases he suspended a grid like a dropped ceiling, but only filled in the elements that were needed closer to the floor, like lighting, leaving all the other panels empty so you could see the "real" ceiling above it. He installed acoustical baffles on the walls and on the real ceiling when needed to control sound, but they were there, frankly expressed without any disguise or attempt to hide them. I prefer that approach to the ubiquitous dropped ceilings we all know too well. I would add that he was a European gentleman of the old school and a wonderful man. He was born in what is now the Czech Republic just as World War I was getting underway, and emigrated to the US in 1939 to escape the Nazi occupation of Prague. He died in 2008.
Thank you for your comment. I had to have a look. There's the close attention to the human element. Architecture really can solve a lot of problems if only more people could appreciate and read these fine stone books. Far better than feeling like a consumable in a plastic cookie box.
@@PowerControl I think Jan's feeling was that the dust would collect on the pipes and ducts just as much in a plenum as out in the open and would have to be cleaned in any case.
When I was in high school, I did a bunch of cable running and A/V installing for the schools I.T. department (very large well funded school) and that was my first encounter with drop ceilings. I hate them, and I hate how nobody understands why I hate them. Looking at one from below sucks, but being up inside one is a dusty lifeless nightmare where even eye protection wont stop you from poking your eye out. The best part is always getting hit in the face by crumbling ceiling panel as you try to get the last one to slide back into place
I hate them too, putting the tiles back is a pain in the rear, then the dust that comes out when you take a tile down is horrible since that tile most likely didn't move in like 20 years.
Yeah, if you're actually an IT guy then it will be basically impossible to convince people that you actually hate drop ceilings. Objectively speaking, you appreciate it as an IT tech, and it's effectively impossible for you to disagree on that, so I'm assuming your distaste for them stems from a phobia? Your IT job is made SOOOOO much easier by drop ceilings. I have one in my basement and it's the reason I was able to wire a surround sound system for free in one day. I was able to do an ethernet run across the entire house without hiring an electrician or breaking anything. Just try and explain how that's so horrible.
Most buildings with drop ceilings wouldn't be helped by their removal or replacement with something more interesting. The buildings are uninteresting, cheap, boring and ugly, and the drop ceiling is just a part of that. It's a bit like complaining about doorway trim, when the real problem is the building the doorway trim is in is the true culprit.
I agree that removing the drop ceiling would not fix the building. A large floor office is just dehumanizing, no matter whether in cubicles or the modern open spaces. People are not made for this environment and there is only one way to fix it: make smaller floor plans and smaller offices for 1-4 persons with real walls.
The ceilings themselves are too low, in most cases. They'd feel like white cages without these, except with a jumble of wires, pipes, and HVAC in sight
This is a good point but I disagree that it does not make much of a difference. The color temperature of lighting has a subconscious mental impact. Doing something as simple as changing the lighting in a home can completely transform the space.
@@Secretlyanothername They'd be low anyhow. Because they want to fit as many floors in as possible, so they can fit in as many people as possible. And for cred, people think it's a lot more impressive to have 50 floors than 40, even if they are buildings of the same overall height, and even if each floor of the 50 floor building is qualitatively worse than the ones in the 40 story building. [Edit: I just reread your comment and this is what you said already lol. Sorry for repeating you!] That said, I have noticed some new office building construction where I live that actually have some decent height between the floors.
i worked in offices with typical drop ceiling for a long time and now work in a faux-industrial office were you can see the pipes and ducts and all. frankly, it makes no diference. if there's one interior design element that actually has an effect in making you feel bad, it's the tall cubicles. low cubicles or half cubicles are already a huge improvement. windows can be even more important, even if they don't open. seeing the day outside, sun, rain, snow, sunset makes all the diference. completely enclosed spaces are the worst!
I spent 9 months working night shift alone at a hospital, installing some HVAC automation. I didn’t get a sense of dread I just learned that a lot of incompetent installation can be hiding behind those tiles.
As an acoustical ceiling installer, I have very different views about ACT tile and grid. I have installed some unique ceilings in some fairly interesting places, and I love doing cloud ceilings with a custom design. They take work, but the finished product is so satisfying to me.
As an IT guy, I prefer cloud ceilings, so much easier to access and I can throw a bunch of equipment up on top of it that I'm sure it's not rated for :D
@@JohnVance in the book "How Buildings Learn" Stewart Brand says lowered ceilings are junk compared to raised floors. That book was published thirty years ago and these days most data centers have raised floors so the book was prophetic about this. The problem is that raised floors are ugly and expensive, but functionally they are superior.
@@error-xn7hn Oh yeah, raised floors are the bees knees, it would be interesting to see them deployed with more attention to aesthetics outside of the data center.
@@error-xn7hn raised floors are a nightmare in real life. anything spilled on the floor will just leak down and never be cleaned, mold will grow quickly in these unventilated areas. any new installs or maintenance will require moving alot of furniture. it also requires barricades around any opening for fall hazards while work is being done
I agree. They are frequently featured as the "money shot" in architectural publication photos when featuring a building, they can be made very interesting, all depends on the designer/architect.
Drop ceilings are functionally OK and can even look good. They do have a big problem in an area of typical application, offices, where the cheapest type of tile is used, which is made of mineral fiber. It absorbs sound, which in addition to being cheap makes it attractive, the problem is that due to action of curculating air (or if it's touched), it emits a shower of dust and particles, that are constantly circulating in the air that the occupants are breathing.
Dropped ceilings are average. But have you ever witnessed a dropped floor? Or more accurately a *raised* floor. When I started working in Datacenters, I was blown away to know the floor I was walking on was false. Just like a dropped ceiling. It raised the servers off of the actual, real concrete floor. It was a few feet off of the ground. In the under-floor, you didn't need to crawl. But you couldn't quite fully stand either. I think it was 4 feet. Enough to you could shuffle around on your knees. The false floor was a very tight mesh. But it meant the air circulation system could go both under and over the servers. Cabling into the room and between the severs was below. Only cables that went out were above. It prevented flooding from immediately affecting the servers. It was crazy to walk in one day and just see someone about waist high, standing IN the floor 😂. Clever use of space. I've only seen under-floors used like that in one other place: Japanese traditional houses. Where a fire can be made below the threshold of the normal floor. Or even seating that let's you sit on the floor, but dangle your legs into the under-floor. Hah, might be an interesting companion video to this one on dropped ceilings.
Have you ever been in a casino. Most casinos are raised floors. I always assumed they used them. My local casino added on. When you walked from the old to new you went down a ramp about 18” then across a floor were restaurants were and back up a ramp. I later saw them working and an employee confirmed. The old space was 18” and the new 12”. Now it made sense why Atlantic City casinos had a couple steps before you entered the game room.
There’s a lot of “fake” floors at my work. I work in broadcast tv so the studio buildings have a lot of cables and equipment under the flooring. They’re just big tiles that can be picked up easily so repairs can be done. They’re super loud to walk on too because they shift with every step.
I noticed them in Server and Electrical rooms on oil rigs. Makes sense since it's a lot tidier and easier to get to and install cables below all the devices.
I once knew a dude who pranked his co-worker by putting a syringe with water in it with no plunger pushed into the drop ceiling tiles over his desk. Every few hours, a single drop of water would drip on his desk, and drive him nuts.
I worked somewhere that required two-factor authentication to get into the computers (card and password.) If you forgot to take your card out of the computer, sometimes people would hide it somewhere - including tucked into the edge of a ceiling panel.
@@Eloraurora I worked as a computer operator decades ago. The locking system failed, and I HAD to get inside the computer room. I stacked furniture outside, removed a ceiling tile in the hallway, pulled up a tile in the computer room, and climbed over. So much for secure rooms.
@@BlankBrain That's hilarious. Ours was just pranking people when they got slack about data security measures, but you got your own little Mission Impossible!
@@Eloraurora I once worked for an insurance company that took security very seriously. They had a manned security station at the entrance to IT and the computer room. All of their fiber optic cables to the main building and other buildings went up one wall in the computer room in an area about three feet wide. Behind the bare cables was drywall. On the other side of the drywall was drywall in a low-use public public area with a tunnel to a public parking garage. Fifteen seconds with a chainsaw would have been disastrous.
I had a buddy at work that bought one of those "annoy-a-tron" devices that emits a piezo beep at random intervals. I didn't really understand at first why "random intervals" -- it seemed like a beep every seven minutes (or whatever) would do just fine. And then we pranked a coworker with it. We placed it in a modular desk lighting fixture, near his computer. One day, we stopped by his desk to invite him to lunch, and in a moment of conversational lull ... " beep. " He didn't react _at all._ Not even a blink. So we asked, "...what was that?" "The beep?" "Yeah." "Oh. I dunno. It does that every few minutes." "Huh. That's annoying." "Yeah. I haven't been able to figure out what it is yet. I thought it was the computer, but I unplugged it for 15 minutes and it still beeped. And it's not a consistent interval..." He then pulled out a legal pad with a detailed log of timestamps.... "So it was five minutes, then three minutes, then six minutes..." That's when we totally lost it... The payoff couldn't have been any better. It went from mildly annoying, to all-consuming experiments, to an obsessive exercise in detailed note-taking... and then it broke him, to where he just accepted his fate. Ah. * chef's kiss *
I like it when you have an office that has the drop ceiling only partially filled in, so in places you can see the concrete above but in places where you have a lot of pipes wires and ducts you have a patch of ceiling tiles. It breaks it up and keeps it from feeling too monotonous but also less harsh and cluttered than with no tiles at all.
Our office is like that. Also part of the floor is polished concrete. It’s pretty and has a hipster industrial vibe to it, but is also quite noisy. Some managers complain that people are being too noisy because, heaven forbid, they should laugh in the echo chamber.
My high school has actually become a refuge for students who are hard of hearing because the dropped ceiling and the solid reinforced concrete construction blocks noise really well and makes it easier to focus on the teacher's voice.
Personally, I like seeing the infrastructure that the drop ceiling hides. I work in huge old-time industrial building in Chicago, I think we have a 20 foot ceiling, no drop ceiling.
No one "hates drop ceilings" because no one "cares" enough to have hate for them. But they still a thing that is bound to the dule repetitive opressive system. You even see them in Portal, as the parth towards a humanless world controlled by AI
hate would be a strong word for me, but i really appreciate any place where i can see the technic above/behind/under me, especially if it's build with aesthetics in mind
I work overnight security in an office building, but I rarely think about the ceilings (unless there's a water leak) and I think that's the point. Functional, cheap, clean; it may not be *your* aesthetic, but it's still its own aesthetic. Having seen many offices remodeled through the years, the practicality really stands out.
The flat plane of the drop ceiling, without exposed beams, is very important for the performance of the air diffusers in the space too. The air outlets are designed to shoot the cool air along the ceiling which then mixes with the air in the room. Buildings without smooth ceilings actually make air distribution much more complicated. This is another part of the reason cubical walls don't go all the way up, they'd get in the way of the air movement.
Restaurants in the past, and in many other countries, have booths, partitions, carpets, and/or separate rooms, to control sound. I too really dislike the currently popular bus station design of restaurants (even very expensive ones), with rows of tables in a big room (like an old schoolroom), with the sound reflecting off the floor, walls, and ceiling, it's hard to even hear people at your table speaking.
I live in a relatively small and rural town and my favorite local restaurant added like 2 grand worth of sound foam on the ceiling this year. I was impressed and I told them to their faces that I was.
I literally clicked on this video to defend drop ceilings for their actually pleasant effects on sound. These new naked ceilings are the absolute worst for sound abatement and turn a normal restaurant into hell for anybody with the slightest auditory processing disorder because you’re no longer just hearing a dull roar and your buddy in front of you- you’re hearing the fryer, refrigerator, soda machine, and fifteen different conversations all at the same time at ear piercing levels.
When I worked in constuction, we installed many ceiling tiles. We called it "dropping" the tile into place. We always installed the ceiling tiles around the perimeter (border) of the room first, since those required cutting and took more time. There was also special metal grid for hanging drywall on, which was silver and without a finished coat of paint. There were 2 foot and 4 foot pieces called "tees" and longer 12 foot pieces called "mains". When we hung drywall as part of a drop ceiling, we called it hanging the "lid"!
The existential dread of false shutters. The existential dread of false eyelashes. The existential dread of fake plants. The existential dread of laminate wood flooring.
For me, the dropped ceiling perfectly represents the oppressive, soul-crushing monotony of office-life: the desperately uninspiring regularity, stretching endlessly into a tedious, unseen, inevitable fate while looming over a sea of drones. Practical, efficient & economic they may be, but they're also (and I stress again. for me) a cipher for a life I wouldn't wish on anyone with a soul.
Worked for a company that assembled cubicles. Acres and acres of cubicles! OMG, it was soul crushing after a while (but the pay was good if you did piecework)
When installing lights in drop ceilings as an electrician, I would switch them to a warm color because it just feels cozier and less sterile, but eventually someone would switch them back to the bright white, making sure things look sterile. It’s apparently to keep people more awake.
While it is probably out of the scope of the video, enhancements to HVAC designs (fan based VAV boxes vs constant volume) have allowed for more variety of office ceiling design. Additionally material science improvements to sound deadening materials have helped with noise design when you have opened ceilings, and you can combine the use of white noise generators to fight perceived noise. While I still think suspended ceilings are more economical and provide a better environment for the occupants it's nice that there are more options.
From my experience looking into, of all things, migraines, I discovered that humans on a physiological level find grids extremely uncomfortable, and this is exacerbated through perspective (lower ceilings distort the grid more). Our visual pathways evolved around the idea of one horizontal horizon and many vertical markers like trees. We aren’t really designed to process such an abstract and perfect grid; it can even trigger seizures in certain people. I only discovered this research because of my completely incidental question about migraines and seizures, but I hope that it becomes more popularised in design in the future. I think that making livable and productive spaces should be more considerate these factors. I also think that the lack of quality materials in most offices is emblematic of a lack of respect for employees and providing them high-quality space. I noticed that a lot of the original lights are really well diffused and subtle; a lot of modern lights, particularly the ones installed before LEDs became popular, now bare fluorescent bulbs. In ways like this, I think we have regressed. Having said that, the Bloomberg building in London is a fantastic example of a 21st century drop ceiling, with non-square tiles, liquid passive cooling and careful design for acoustics; it’s a shame it didn’t make it into the video.
I remember when I was a kid, my parents got me an HO-scale train set and a book on model train construction. One of the lessons of the book was how to use drop ceiling tiles, earth tone paints, and a wire brush to make cliffs and similar rocky features.
Great topic, Stewart! While I prefer “hard” ceilings or thoughtfully designed exposed structure/mechanicals, suspended ceilings do have their place in this world. Being able to access the wiring, plumbing and HVAC in my finished basement is a huge convenience. As is being able to easily replace a damaged or water-stained tile. As others have commented, it’s mostly the cheap, cold, optically poor lighting that typically accompanies a drop ceiling that makes some of them feel inhuman. The average spec office building or home contains terrible, cheap lighting. So do the national home improvement stores. Visit a good, dedicated electrical supply store or someone experienced in lighting design and you can drastically improve the character of these spaces. Be well!
I love a high, high ceiling with exposed ductwork, etc., but I also don't at all ascribe to the idea that a drop ceiling is oppressive or sad. In fact, I really appreciate it's utility, cleverness, and flexibility. The idea that it's a marker of lazy design or conceals some unsaid horror is entirely due to its association with boring office spaces and the public's general un-curiousness about how and why buildings work. It's the same reason people covered their gorgeous hardwood floors in the early 20th century, why many people think Brutalism is somehow fascist (when it's extremely socialist), and why people think you're allowed to park in a bike lane if you turn your hazard lights on.
I kind of also expected you to talk about the end of the drop ceiling. Many buildings built in the last 10 years just don’t have them anymore. They either have a smooth false ceiling, or more commonly, no false ceiling with all of the cables and ducts visible. Sometimes they are painted black, and/or there are random plates hanging from the ceiling to make some sort of vibe
Hung ceilings are function over form. The function is undeniable. So what are the alternatives? I do see buildings with the hung grid and the space above painted black. All the equipment etc is visible, if you look up. This has even more function value because any maintenance is easier. In addition some/all of the equipment/utilities in the plenum can be sprayed black to void them out along with the structural ceiling and plenum walls. For me that’s ok as the lighted plane is below the plenum. Occupants of the space really never really look up and the perception is that the hung grid only and lighting make the space a closed feel below the plenum. What say ye?
It certainly looks more interesting. But you are now heating and cooling the entire volume of the space up to the deck. An acoustical ceiling doesn't provide much R value but it does provide a thermal break. And of course painting everything above the line of the ceiling is more expense than a drop ceiling - and if you leave it completely open then you have to choose alternative light fixtures which are always more expensive than lay-in fixtures, you have to use duct that's attractive to look at, and paint that etc etc The cost advantage of a drop ceiling assures that will be using them for a loooong time
As someone whose job it is to run wires in commercial buildings, I absolutely love these ceilings. From my perspective, they’re prolly the single biggest redeeming quality of working on commercial spaces
6:09 hey, so i paused the video once the author started comparing the ceilings of ancient and renaissance mega-projects to modern office ceilings. it just felt like a silly and sensational comparison. those were massively funded public works projects, not really a fair comparison. it's a common public misconception that older building were built better. what really is the case is that the most well built and beautiful old buildings are the only ones that survived till today. since, those are the only buildings we see, we somewhat glorify past architecture
A local diner near me is located in the same location where there was previously an electronics goods store which had the typical drop ceiling. The diner, however, upon moving in and remodelling , eschewed the drop ceiling. Instead is an exposed, higher ceiling. Suspended lights hanging, exposed air-con ducting and all. The whole upper space including the ducting is painted black. I love the vibe, it's spacious and cosy at the same time, like a converted warehouse to apartment type of refurb.
A local diner near me is located in the same location where there was previously an electronics goods store which had the typical drop ceiling. The diner, however, upon moving in and remodelling , eschewed the drop ceiling. Instead is an exposed, higher ceiling. Suspended lights hanging, exposed air-con ducting and all. The whole upper space including the ducting is painted black. I love the vibe, it's spacious and cosy at the same time, like a converted warehouse to apartment type of refurb.
A thought this would be interesting but I was wrong, this is amazing! As a scifi rpg referee this tells me the history of architectural change but as a computer game developer it teaches new things; no you don’t have to adopt that old cliche of Bruce Willis crawling through (ridiculously large) vents when the player can crawl in the entire crawl space above the drop ceiling, just make sure you crawl only on the edges of the grid! Great stuff!
It’s not just “business” but “Medicine” too where the drop ceiling is ubiquitous. Think cold sterile exam rooms, waiting rooms, and hospital corridors. Drop ceilings are SO common that when you walk into a business without them it feels odd. Like the business isn’t talking itself seriously.
This video does a good job of explaining why I get a little bit excited every time a drop ceiling has some missing tiles and I can see what's above it.
Back in the 90s I worked at a Walmart. Non super center. It had the infamous drop ceiling. It went on forever. One day a coworker was on a lift hanging something and knocked a couple panels loose. I jumped back and expected a loud bang. No it floated down like a feather and landed on something. It was fiberglass like Owens Corning one side had a white textured plastic backing (exposed side) and the other just fluffy. I’m used to the hard type. Not heavy but hard.
1:09 "Nothing hangs below it, it's dead flat..." That's what I like about them. My first house was an older one with nine-foot ceilings. The walls and ceilings were plaster/lath. The ceilings had noticeable ridges, and were covered with some kind of crappy paper. When I remodeled, installed a drop ceiling grid (8" drop) with dimensional acoustic tile which protruded below the grid slightly. The tiles were expensive, but the difference was amazing! It actually made the room seem larger, improved the acoustics, and looked fantastic. Down the road, if you want a new look, just drop in new tiles. What's not to like?
Dare not forget how these false ceilings age and wear. When the neat white grid over the years becomes a bunch of splotches of off-white yellows and browns it feels more like being surrounded by unbrushed teeth. And I generally don't think people like the sense of something precarious and fairly heavy hanging above their heads. They do not inspire confidence.
Not as big a problem once people stopped smoking inside. Used to be we'd build a corporate office in 1984 and by 1990 the ceiling grid was orange from all the cigarette smoke. All the smoke alarms too, especially the ones under skylights because I guess all the smoke went up into there.
@@viktorakhmedov3442 I was about to leave the same comment. When replacing ceiling tiles, the tiles above a smoker's desk would be covered with that brown sticky tar.
Grew up having a drop ceiling in our basement. Tiles are nearly identical. Replacing them is trivial because they haven't discolored one bit, and it was a very easy way for my (at the time) broke-ass parents to have a finished basement. Also, I can't honestly think of the last time I thought the drop ceiling would fall on me. Probably never, tbh. The ENTIRE ceiling may be heavy, but the metal trim is quite thin and those panels don't weigh much. I suppose if you had a full 2x2 panel that was just a light (common in offices, not homes) that might get a bit heavy, but again drop ceilings are relatively stable regardless.
@@EnderSpy007 Virtually zero danger of anything falling, the grid parts themselves are light aluminum, and they’re held up by thick steel struts that are pinned to the concrete slab above. Light units are made of aluminum and are pretty light too, and are doubly secured by additional struts to the slab. In an earthquake some ceiling tiles might fall, but they are very light weight. When remodeling an old space, sometimes the grid is repainted, which is quick and easy to do. Tiles of course are quick and easy to replace. I’m a fan of drop ceilings. Had one in our kitchen, and installed one in the bathroom as well, with translucent white panels for tiles, and LED lighting above, so the light is diffused through the ceiling and sort of coming from everywhere. And it’s super easy to lift the tiles to work on anything above, or to wash the tiles themselves like once a year. Much quicker and easier than a drywall ceiling.
As always, great video! I think part of this idea of this opressive monotony is because regulations in the US seem to not be very strict on sufficient daylight and windows per surface area. You can end up working in a space with no view of the outside world, making the office seem endless.
My house came with a finished basement. The ceiling tiles are made of pressed fiberboard that are interlocked and stapled. It’s difficult to impossible to run wires and pipes. A drop ceiling gives you way more flexibility to do repairs and improvements.
I wish my basement was finish with a drop ceilling. I looked in a crack from the mahine room and saw that sone of the ducks aren't connected. Now, I have to tears down the ceilling to have a good heating in the house.
I have been a commercial/industrial electrician for about 35 years and have spent so many hours, days, weeks, months, years working up in drop ceilings, old and new. It's a pain in the ass. You did a pretty good job explaining what drop ceilings are and how they work.
This was recommended to me RIGHT AFTER I watched the latest Kane video where a portion of the backrooms ceiling was inspected. The algorithm has done well today
I suppose the dread of drop ceilings is the reason that so many restaurants now have open ceilings which expose all the utilities. Open ceilings make the space much louder, and diners have to speak over the noise of the clatter of forks and kitchen prep, and of dozens of people talking all at once. But it doesn't look like the office.
One of the oldest, grandest buildings at my undergrad university had a 1960s-renovated interior that looked like an office built last year. But a glance into the air return vents revealed the 1902 pressed tin ceilings, illuminated by the topsides of the drop-in fluorescent light fixtures. I'm far from the only student who has noticed. The university has talked about restoring at least the lobby area, but they can't even afford to tackle some of the absolute worst deferred maintenance on campus, so they're stuck with it. The building is by a fairly notable architect as well - Harrison Albright, who is best known for the West Baden Springs Hotel in Indiana.
probably depends on the design and what things are in the space. the main public library in calgary is mostly conrete with high ceilings but it doesn't echo, which i think is due to "fins" that are installed along the ceiling, it seems to reduce noise bouncing around.
depends on the amplitude of a person talking, well yes it would be echoey but it wouldnt be decaying enough to be disruptive. Optimal is to have a big enough room so the voices will decay before bouncing back or use sound absorbers or materials that absorbs sounds. In human speech mosten times these tiles will absorb the sound good enough to give a dry room
I work in an office that was originally built in the early 70s and of course it featured drop ceilings. The building was remodeled in the late 2010s and the drop ceilings were moved. It’s very obvious they once were there and now the celling just looks unfinished. My coworkers and I often comment how cool and loud the space is and now I know it’s like that.
One of the first things that these drop ceilings make me think of is how often there would be missing or broken tiles in my school ceilings, in Jr High and High school. Especially when sat underneath a broken tile, it would make me anxious that it would suddenly fall out of the frame and on my head. Plus, it was just a good example of the general neglected maintenance of those school buildings.
I'm a sparky thats done a shit ton of offices and other commercial installations. The worst looking installs generally occurred in areas without drop ceilings. We have them for a reason.
I love it when a youtuber can take something as goofy and simple as a drop down ceiling and make it feel like its the most interesting and complex subject ever xD
Amazing video! RUclips recommended this to me because I've been researching a lot about custom printed acoustic tensioned ceilings. I really don't like these typical office ceilings, so I was looking for an alternative for my home that could isolate sound and also hide LED lights, allowing the whole ceiling to illuminate when I turn on the light. I also love that you can choose a design with a pattern, so it's not just plain. This seems like a perfect solution!
I feel like comparing ancient Italian church ceilings and office building drop ceilings is a massive miscomparison. Churches are supposed to give you the feeling of awe. That's the point of a church and religion as a whole. Office spaces are utility spaces. So maybe if you are dead set on making that comparison, instead compare it to a roman administrative building. I'm sure the majority of them are still ornate, but it's at least a comparable structure.
Yes a church and an office isn't all that comparable, but those were the only kinds of spaces with false ceilings in the early days. Admin buildings wouldn't have had them.
@@stewarthicks ooooh I see now. As I wrote that comment, I was thinking about how those churches did have false ceilings themselves, and maybe that was your intended point. Though, I did just rewatch that section of the video, and I'm not so sure that it conveys this point. Anyway I love your videos please don't think I'm a hater lol
The idea that offices are utility spaces is what makes them so dehumanizing. The generic ceiling tiles are the architectural representation of that mindset.
The ANZ Gothic Bank in Melbourne was a working space, but also magnificent. The degradation of work into something uninspiring and monotonous is a bad development for society. We want people to feel that their job is important, and that they are valued by society for what they do. Giving them mediocre and oppressive spaces to work in can erode their motivation.
Stewart Hicks. Excellent video! Never knew I wanted to know this! 😂 I always had existential dread of "drop ceilings" (never knew that name, thanks). You "pulled back the curtain", showed us the monsters hidden beneath. Now they seem less scary or uncomfortable. They serve a purpose. We are better off with them then seeing the mess underneath.
There's a research about the height of ceiling regarding college student's grade. Students in high-ceiling classes tends perform worse in academic than those in low-ceiling rooms. The main reason is high-ceiling classes reduced students attention to the lecture, because it's higher it means there are many objects to see (like roof rafters, vent windows, beams, interior design elements). Meanwhile, most low-ceiling classes has low and plain ceiling thus provide better focus towards the lecture. So, high and highly decorated ceilings isn't always better.
When I was a kid, my family attended church in a lovely older building. It had a vaulted ceiling with interesting moulding that zig-zagged across it. I'd get bored and gazed up at it for hours fantasizing it was some sort of freeway system for bugs, or something... I'm sorry, what were you saying?
My personal experience is just me, and not the rest of the population, but I felt freer and more relaxed and more open in classrooms with high ceilings. Those new classrooms with their low drop ceilings felt oppressive and squashing. I made better grades in the older classrooms. But then I'm left handed and turned out to be autistic, so of course my experience in those spaces was in contrast to the majority of the population. As for highly decorated ceilings, no matter how high they are, they feel oppressive and burdensome much like ca low dropped ceiling, plainer is better.
I swear this is why I get constant allergies and sinus infections living in an apartment with a drop ceiling! My partner gets lung infections more now too. The panels are badly done, with a hole somewhere in the building as an added bonus, so when it’s windy they flop around. This is the dustiest place I’ve ever lived. Plus, they put it in our BATHROOM. I don’t even wanna think about what the humidity has done up there…
I may have said this before, but thank you for making such a well organized and thought out channel. Your videos are not merely content - they are substance.
Quiet does not equal dull. Repetitive does not equal monotony/oppression. It is only by choosing to think of it that way which makes it so. Humans generally enjoy and need patterns / routines psychologically.
This is a good point! Nobody sees plain white bathroom tiling and thinks "the monotonous repetitive design of this wall makes me feel oppressed." The association with dullness and oppression likely comes more from experience, and also just cultural iconography, than it does intrinsically from this style of drop ceiling.
Humans generally enjoy and need STIMULUS psychologically. There is a reason why so many people forced to live this sort of boring, monotonous, totally controlled existence begin to exhibit stereotypic behaviors similar to animals in captivity.
That same pattern recognition is the reason we associate the quiet of an office space and the repetition of ceiling tiles oppressive. We subconsciously associate the environments they appear in with their physical properties.
@@quilynn but "monotonous repetitive design" is not on anyones wish lists. sure when its part of sometinge bigger, but when its in 9/10 places you go then it becomes really oppresseve. Just adding a color or having another form than squire would work.
It's very impressive to listen to interesting content created using excellent English NOT generated by AI, read by a narrator who genuinely understands which words should be stressed, and how appropriate intonation can dramatically improve the quality of a presentation. My congratulations!
I worked at a JCPenney store that was the largest they built in 1969, I worked there around 2000 and it was wrecked in 2020. The store went through 2 sets of light fixtures, the latter when I was there. To change the lights, the electrician would dislodge the old fixture, take the wire out (it as lit and live), shove the old fixture further into the ceiling, pick up the new one, wire that fixture and it would light up, and drop it into its place. We had more old fixtures up in that ceiling than the ones that were actually lit.
I live in a former girl scout camp turned into a cabin. It has drop ceilings throughout. It was never intended to be lived in full time, but it's been my home for 5+ years. I used to hate the ugly ceiling until a storm damaged the roof. It's _way_ easier to change a few water damaged tiles than it is to repair & paint sheetrock.
I always liked drop ceilings, but I never knew how important they are for sound dampening. It’s so nice to see a component of architecture that’s focused on making a building more livable and human-scaled instead of hostile and philosophical.
Go into a Walmart, and then go into a Target (not one of the rare Walmarts with a ceiling or even rarer Targets without one), you'll definitely appreciate the difference. Target still puts ceilings in their stores.
Acoustics, fire rating, concealment/access of more mundane building systems, creating a return air space, supporting electrical and electronic equipment. There are even grid systems that have conductors inside so that you can attach low-voltage devices to the grid for power rather than needing to wire to the device. They do a lot of things well, and while the basic white tile on a 2x4 pattern with drop-in troffer lights is bland and creates cave-like aesthetics with poor lighting design, I think people would like buildings without them a whole lot less. They probably keep costs down as well.
Drop ceiling rooms are tremendously easier to paint. My first assignment as an apprentice was a Zumiez with the industrial exposed ceiling. I had to paint each pipe and air duct. That painting job changed how I view rooms and especially ceilings.
While I was in college a teacher in one administrative skills class told a story about a place she had worked where this woman who had been there a very long time retired, and although she was considered one of the most efficient, fast workers, which no one could keep up with, when they went into the drop ceiling to change out some wiring they found hundreds of documents she had hidden. Seems she would put them up there at the end of the day to make it look like she was "finishing" all of her work.
I grew up in an older house that for some reason had a drop ceiling and fluorescent lights in the living room, likely from a renovation done in the 90s. When we did our own renovations years after living there, it was so nice to remove it and get the space back. There was no benefit to it unless it was doing something like helping with heat insulation of the space, as there was nothing above the space like ducts or wires to hide.
The apartment at 9:00 is so familiar to me. I’ve been fixing up a 19th century house that is subdivided into 4 apartments. It was never meant to have HVAC so of course they put in 9’ drop ceilings hanging below the 12’ actual ceilings, so they could run the ducts. They looked like they were resting atop the door and window frames. We’ve since removed them all, replaced the furnaces with mini split systems that don’t need ducts, and gone back to full ceiling height. Now the doors and windows no longer look squished beneath the too-low ceilings. Drop ceilings are ugly anywhere, but ridiculous in an old building like this one.
I was visiting my buddy at his lake house in Ohio and there was a helicopter flying low over the lake. My friend said to me that the owner of the helicopter lived at a huge compound. This compound he said was built by the inventor of the modern day drop ceiling.
Why did I, an Interior Designer fully aware of plenums, fire code, acoustics, etc. watch this entire video ? Hahah I guess your videos are just that entertaining!
11:28 these dark spaces don’t reveal how they work - they are shadowed and mysterious, designed by nobody, shaped like nothing else, unmapped and beyond the control of humanity. I think we have to remember how regularity and predictability offer comfort to some of the people some of the time. The danger is in the banality and the menaces masquerading as famiar & harmless - it is the juxtaposition and contradiction that gives “creepy office” vibes their surprise and fear.
I never knew drop ceilings had so much hate. Must be a designer thing. As an IT guy, I really like drop ceilings because I can easily expand networking/power
The space above drop ceilings is not necessarily plenum. It is only plenum if that space itself is part of the ventilation system, if there are a supply and a return duct running through the space or the air above the drop ceiling is not actively being circulatedvas part of the ventilation system, it is not plenum. Easiest way to think about it is if the entire area above the drop ceiling is one giant duct, then its plenum, if not, not plenum. It's important because being plenum or not drastically changes what wires and cables can be run through it and what those wires can carry. I believe they have to be halogen free and self extinguishing along with other restrictions and certifications that make them more expensive.
Small film nerd quibble: the up-shots with oppressive ceilings usually aren't shots of the protagonists, but the antagonists. Protagonists are usually down-shots.
@@needamuffin Swingline didn't produce a red stapler originally, but because of the film, demand got so high they started making them. The props for the film were painted.
Support this channel by signing up for Nebula using my link and get 40% off an annual subscription: go.nebula.tv/stewarthicks!
Could you make a video about the backrooms ?
Especially the Level 0 or lobby the yellowish beige or flower wallpaper the suburbs and the pool rooms which are either a Part of the backrooms or exist independent from them
As a Nebula subscriber, could you do a summary and review of Branko Mitrovic’s excellent book _Architectural Principles in the Age of Fraud_ ?
@stewarthicks Great video!
FYI: Drop ceiling return plenum is the source of a LOT of building problems.
No
Plenum is not the name of the space above the ceiling unless it's being used as an HVAC return. If the return is ducted all the way to the drop ceiling the space cannot be called a plenum.
My worst experience of this type of drop ceiling was when I spent 2 weeks in hospital, looking up into a bright light and a white ceiling, I had to get friends to bring me sunglasses.
I really hate hospitals ceilings and everything about hospital's interior it makes the process worse
The nurses couldn't supply you with sunglasses??
I spent nearly 3 months in traction, 40 years ago.
For a little while it was a game to count the holes in the trimmed tiles at the perimeter.
But it really went off the rails when I factored all the whole tiles and added up the ones I'd counted!
I forget the number today, but the nurses weren't impressed that I'd figured it out in my head. 😂
@@jimurrata6785 I am so sorry for the 3 months in purgatory you experienced.
@@godknows4454What do you think is wrong with hospitals and how do you want them to look?
I'm not saying hospitals look perfect but I like that they look clean.
I work in a building where there is no drop ceiling, because it's the faculty of engineering, they decided to show off all the HVAC and piping and whatnot. It makes you acutely aware of all the rather heavy looking stuff bolted to the ceiling above your head with rather thin threaded rods.
This is the same way our engineering firm does it. Equally important is the sound abortion panels they added.
we are lucky to have an acoustic engineer who dialed it in.
@@---l--- Is that what those grey rectangular panels hanging beneath everything on wires are?
I studied in a institute that had a mix. The classrooms had drop ceilings but the hallways didn't.
@@---l---that's a hell of a typo lol
That "industrial" look was all the rage again a few years ago. I think it's stupid.
I think drop ceilings might also get a bad rep due to their association with terrible lighting. Old flickering tube lighting with its weird colour profile and strange hum, were mostly seen in a drop ceiling, miles away from natural light.
I mean, yes and no. Fluorescent was the first "energy efficient" lights to come out, and was considered progressive during their era; You used fluorescent because it was the 'new technology that didn't heat up the room'. Drop ceilings naturally were a candidate for one because drop ceilings were used vastly across the states in multiple ways -- from homes (so many homes had drop ceilings, especially for the working class) and even more so for office spaces that were renovated. The benefits of drop ceiling was the accessibility to new technology, like romex electrical, cable for phone, and especially for basic tasks, like changing a florescent tube or cleaning.
To be entirely fair with this, the reason why "drop ceilings get a bad name" is because they were used for poor people.
And instead of acknowledging "hey, this was a vital important history to remember", it's like whitewashing it (literally) because they forgot that gypsum was incredibly costs, expensive, and required plaster on ceilings, which wasn't just expensive but difficult. This only changed post 1970's to 1980's, where lighter-weight building material started hitting shelves and technology changed over time.
Meanwhile, for the corporate and companies who used dropceilings, the use-case for them increased, rather than decreased. From the creation of Central Air (hvac) and various technologies, such as later rj11 internet, to rj45 90's-00's ethernet, all the way to what you would consider as a modern company today all use drop ceilings just because accessibility between ceilings is incredibly important for new data runs, new electrical runs, access to cleanout and supply/feed for hvac, and various other reasons.
In closing, the "why it gets a bad wrap" isn't lighting. It's typically the association with a persons experience, which gravitates back to "if they had a drop ceiling, it's possible they couldn't afford anything more and thus the experience was probably bad". In modern days, drop ceilings are associated with, truthfully, any non-warehouse enterprise, as they're super convenient for a multitude of reasons, and most finished basements that "have a ceiling" utilize drop ceilings just because they can still access vital, important parts of their house -- such as water supply lines, gas lines, the panel box & romex, data lines, low voltage lines, etc.
I'd have to argue that the only "bad wrap" that exists, is the experience intertwined with why people dislike it. "bad hospital visit" and they only look at the ceiling, while they think "where are the normal ceilings". Meanwhile, I not only grew up in houses with only drop ceilings, I replaced them in my own house, and worked with them at work running data lines in the past. truth be told, lighting and, especially fluorescent lighting, wasn't a bad association with them. I'd argue a lot of the negative association of them is due to bad experiences by people and them associating their time with something. Give it 20 more years and it'll be "why does red oak furniture give a feeling of existential dread".
@@itsJoshW doesn't change the FACT that fluerescent lights light is shitty
@@diablo.the.cheaterit’s better CRI and light balance than lots of cheap LEDs in offices. It depends on the quality more than the technology
@@lawrencejob 100%! Modern high efficiency low CRI LEDs are soo bad!
@@diablo.the.cheater other than the full spectrum ones that acurealty matched the color of natural daylight
I hated drop ceilings for all of the cultural associations you mentioned, so when I rented my new studio that came with drop ceilings I had planned to take them all out.
But then I started looking into it a bit more and they're insanely useful. I was able to buy really nice LED panels that just dropped into place, I upgraded the other panels to extra sound absorbing panels, and I was able to route all my network and power cables through it.
I recently found some clamps that can mount lighting rigs directly to a drop ceiling so that I don't need to use light stands that get in the way and can be knocked over.
The standardisation of the drop ceiling is just too useful, and there are thousands of products built for it.
I'm now a drop ceiling convert. 😉
offices aren't loud, cielings are loud
Yes, it's great if you considered about functionality and price.
Now I got flat ceiling. Great to look at.
But if I got a new house, I would put drop ceiling up for the whole house.
For now with flat ceiling, as my dad was a technician and can fix everything imaginable in the house, and I'm EE grad.
It's real hard when I need to run more ethernet cable/electrical wire somewhere.
Or when I need to cut out a hole to touch up the roof countless of time.
And when I want to redesign the ceiling lighting, I just can't without leaving some hole in the ceiling.
When there's pipe leak, that patch of swamp just stays there forever, because, yes, I just can't without tearing down the whole room.
And when the wiring looks bad, you just don't see it. Live your life happily.
Bare ceiling with all those cool black metal pipe is very nice to look at. But in my country, it cost a lot.
And everything needs to mount on the solid concrete. Which I hated, for maintenance.
If I got drop ceiling, everything would be so easy and so cheap to replace and maintain.
I guess there's a channel rebranding in order: "Not just bikes and drop ceilings" 🤗
Thats probabky why they're frowned upon. Its a bit brutalist, and practical above all else. Usually its the building itself you tie into it all. It's crazy to see everything drop ceilings hide, like the ductwork, pipes, and electrical.
Nah. I'd take them out and have a couple of feet more headroom, less hiding spaces for vermin, and less dust 😌👌 .
In elementary school there was one teacher I had that made a project out of taking the invidual squares down from the ceiling and having kids in class paint them. After that teacher left the ceiling went back to being white.
Probably got taken down because letting kids paint them makes them go from "fire resistant" to "fire yes please" and/or because they bounce off less light and the space gets darker, not an entirely good idea despite how much more child friendly the space might have looked.
Damn, when the teacher left, the soul of the class left with them.
I like what I think that lesson may have been about.
@@freedomfighter22222 Better not paint those 1 Hour and 2 Hour fire walls then. While acoustical ceiling tiles do have a light reflectance value, most building codes for commercial buildings in America requires a minimum luminance. Whether the sun is shining to bounce off those tiles or not. They provide this luminance with lights. Really helps out when it gets dark.
@@SoberAddiction The paint your painter uses from a hardware store that follows regulatory codes and the paint your school gets for children to play with have very different fire classifications.
For the latter it is a lot more important that children doesn't get cancer from breathing in the fumes than it is that their drawings can't catch fire easily.
"most building codes for commercial buildings in America requires a minimum luminance"
Which is achieved by calculations based on reflective surfaces expected in the rooms, the amount light fixtures installed is adjusted according to the ceiling, walls, floor and other surfaces reflective values.
When the electrical engineer says you need x amount of lamps he says so based on the ceiling tiles being the reflective surface it says it will be in the building plans, not based on what color som teacher might allow to be painted on it in 20 years.
On a purely functional criteria, the drop ceiling is a marvel of modern architecture that solves dozens of problems all at once. What the drop ceiling needs, is a revolution of Form. Every office opts for the cheapest white plastic frame with cheapest white porous panelling: both of which yellow with time, and become dust magnets. We need more colours, more materials, more patterns, etc. Additionally, the smallness of the grid could potentially be changed too - larger panels would feel less constricting - even if it was just one meter panels (about 50% bigger). The grid size can feel like it determines your personal space - if it's 2x2ft, you can feel like a sardine in a can. The infinity of the ceiling that spans the entire level gives it an authority over the space. So even if your cubicle is larger, the space is defined by its unit: the drop ceiling size. Bigger grid, better materials, colour - entirely different world. Note: "World" here means Accounting Level 7, I'm not saying it'll fix the middle east.
You could make the grid much smaller if the panels clipped in. There wouldn't be any metal showing, just a thin line. Or you could make panels longer and offset them like subway tiles.
They need a better system of putting tiles in the grid, putting a tile back is the most annoying thing about the ceilings when you work in them.
everything you mentioned is available now, businesses go for low cost solutions. every color, every size, with grid showing, without grid showing, curved, vaulted, wood, metal or cloth. they even has cloud systems that just hide certain equipment.
They tried 5x5 in the 70s with (optional) matching wall panels that locked into the grid (for easy office reconfigurations) and the lights came in several styles too including a "coffered" variant where a 2x2 light troffer was raised into an angled coffer and it looked pretty darn cool. Fell out of style by the early 80s. They were popular in the "open plan" concept schools in the 70s that had very large rooms, the larger size helped the scale.
I co-own a pet grooming shop, and one of the key things we did outfitting the space for our use was to swap the standard ceiling tiles out for *slightly* more expensive plastic ones because moisture. It looks about 1000% better with that one change.
I’ve installed drop ceilings, and the installation process is about as fun as you would imagine. The system is made entirely of fiberglass, styrofoam and cheap sheet metal. If you don’t cover yourself head to toe or wear a mask while you work, you’ll end up inhaling the dust and get cuts from the metal and hives form all the glass that is now embedded in your skin. I had to throw away all the work clothes I used while installing these things since the glass would not come out. The worst part was that client installed the drop tiles because the original and beautiful hardwood vault ceiling was “dated.”
I love good quality hardwood, staining and a clear coat is the most they need. Staining is optional.
I binge watch home reno shows sometimes, especially those of historical or just even 'boring' old buildings. I live for the moments when an ugly floor is stripped to reveal original hard wood or tile, or when a drop ceiling is removed to reveal architectural elements designed for beauty or at least natural elements like wood beams. I can't imagine anyone choosing to add drop ceilings now! It even drives me crazy when people paint over natural wood....
Im an electrician and i install all the lights and equipment above these ceilings, i love putting a nice lighting system in but these are really dreadful that lights they use are cheap and they are frustrating to install
Jesus.. You Americans really have it rough on so many levels. Even drop ceiling are ten times worse in the US...
But just think that, even though the wood is hidden, it is still just hidden ready to be rediscovered
As an electrician apprentice, I've never thought about it like that. They are easy to work with and to make changes to. But its absurd how gross it gets above them
I'm an electrician apprentice as well and totally agree with you.
What sort of gross? Can you describe? I'm curious.
@@Boodlumsdust, dead mice, mouse droppings. Old insulation. Sometimes you find tools which is nice
I think there was a video somewhere about a pharmaceutical manufacturing plant that blew up due to dust collecting in the drop ceiling. They did the rest of the cleaning perfectly, but in the ceiling and inaccessible it's not brought to mind.
@@Nuka_Gaming, oh. Do you wear an N95 mask when you are working up there. There are nasty viral diseases that you can get from inhaling the dust from dried mouse urine.
In "Aliens," the xenomorphs attacked from the drop ceiling. I've never trusted them since 😂
To this day, whenever I'm in a space with dim blue-green lighting reminiscent of the color grading of the interior shots in 'Aliens,' it makes part of my brain uneasy.
I was thinking of the scene in Jurassic Park when they were running from raptors that were jumping up through the drop ceiling.
This was the reference I waited the whole video for 😁
Warden Harold Andrews disappears through the drop ceiling in Alien³.
Yes , but in Jurassic Park they escaped from the raptors in the drop ceiling .
To nerd out for a moment about the use of the “up” shot (one showing a drop ceiling with fluorescent lights) in movies and TV shows, those shots were essentially impossible to get on SD video cameras, the sensors didn’t have sufficient dynamic range to show both the ceiling and the lighting at the same time, either the ceiling tiles would be ridiculously dark, or the lights would be completely blown out. Only film allowed for sufficient dynamic range, and even there the shots were tricky to get technically correct. So you won’t see “up” shots in TV shows that were recorded directly to video, only those shot on film, and even then, only rarely. After the advent of HD video, with its much higher dynamic range, were directors free to casually point their cameras up at the ceiling and get a useable shot.
I appreciate that you explained that, bro. I love intimate tech details!
That’s so interesting
When I was in grad school, one of my professors was the architect Jan Hird Pokorny. He and his firm specialized in the adaptative reuse of older buildings, but he was also very much a Modernist at heart. His method of incorporating HVAC requirements into older interiors in a way that respected the architectural character of the old spaces while providing for contemporary needs was innovative at the time and is still controversial among preservationists. Basically, he exposed everything; he didn't hide anything behind a dropped ceiling. He made sure the utilitarian elements were nicely arranged and finished so that they were not unpleasant to look at. In a few cases he suspended a grid like a dropped ceiling, but only filled in the elements that were needed closer to the floor, like lighting, leaving all the other panels empty so you could see the "real" ceiling above it. He installed acoustical baffles on the walls and on the real ceiling when needed to control sound, but they were there, frankly expressed without any disguise or attempt to hide them. I prefer that approach to the ubiquitous dropped ceilings we all know too well.
I would add that he was a European gentleman of the old school and a wonderful man. He was born in what is now the Czech Republic just as World War I was getting underway, and emigrated to the US in 1939 to escape the Nazi occupation of Prague. He died in 2008.
Thank you for your comment. I had to have a look. There's the close attention to the human element. Architecture really can solve a lot of problems if only more people could appreciate and read these fine stone books. Far better than feeling like a consumable in a plastic cookie box.
Huh
It is nice until the dust collects on the open pipes
@@PowerControl I think Jan's feeling was that the dust would collect on the pipes and ducts just as much in a plenum as out in the open and would have to be cleaned in any case.
Appreciated this insight, any buildings of his that retain this style that you can think of? Wondering if I can catch glimpses via photographs
When I was in high school, I did a bunch of cable running and A/V installing for the schools I.T. department (very large well funded school) and that was my first encounter with drop ceilings. I hate them, and I hate how nobody understands why I hate them.
Looking at one from below sucks, but being up inside one is a dusty lifeless nightmare where even eye protection wont stop you from poking your eye out. The best part is always getting hit in the face by crumbling ceiling panel as you try to get the last one to slide back into place
Haha, I had the same gig while in high school. That crumbling fiberglass down the back of the shirt is something I won't forget.
I hate them too, putting the tiles back is a pain in the rear, then the dust that comes out when you take a tile down is horrible since that tile most likely didn't move in like 20 years.
Yeah, if you're actually an IT guy then it will be basically impossible to convince people that you actually hate drop ceilings. Objectively speaking, you appreciate it as an IT tech, and it's effectively impossible for you to disagree on that, so I'm assuming your distaste for them stems from a phobia? Your IT job is made SOOOOO much easier by drop ceilings. I have one in my basement and it's the reason I was able to wire a surround sound system for free in one day. I was able to do an ethernet run across the entire house without hiring an electrician or breaking anything. Just try and explain how that's so horrible.
Most buildings with drop ceilings wouldn't be helped by their removal or replacement with something more interesting. The buildings are uninteresting, cheap, boring and ugly, and the drop ceiling is just a part of that. It's a bit like complaining about doorway trim, when the real problem is the building the doorway trim is in is the true culprit.
thats facts, also the whole way of thinking that leads to building cheap, uniform, purely functional spaces with barely any human dimension
I agree that removing the drop ceiling would not fix the building. A large floor office is just dehumanizing, no matter whether in cubicles or the modern open spaces. People are not made for this environment and there is only one way to fix it: make smaller floor plans and smaller offices for 1-4 persons with real walls.
The ceilings themselves are too low, in most cases. They'd feel like white cages without these, except with a jumble of wires, pipes, and HVAC in sight
This is a good point but I disagree that it does not make much of a difference. The color temperature of lighting has a subconscious mental impact. Doing something as simple as changing the lighting in a home can completely transform the space.
@@Secretlyanothername They'd be low anyhow. Because they want to fit as many floors in as possible, so they can fit in as many people as possible. And for cred, people think it's a lot more impressive to have 50 floors than 40, even if they are buildings of the same overall height, and even if each floor of the 50 floor building is qualitatively worse than the ones in the 40 story building.
[Edit: I just reread your comment and this is what you said already lol. Sorry for repeating you!]
That said, I have noticed some new office building construction where I live that actually have some decent height between the floors.
i worked in offices with typical drop ceiling for a long time and now work in a faux-industrial office were you can see the pipes and ducts and all. frankly, it makes no diference. if there's one interior design element that actually has an effect in making you feel bad, it's the tall cubicles. low cubicles or half cubicles are already a huge improvement. windows can be even more important, even if they don't open. seeing the day outside, sun, rain, snow, sunset makes all the diference. completely enclosed spaces are the worst!
In high school ap chem class, we used to kill boredom by throwing sharp pencils into the ceiling and seeing how many would stick.
Literally "throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks" but with sharp pencils and ceiling tiles.
did that but in calc lmao
You probably ate a lot of glue too.
@@mondo_burrito In AP Chem? They'd have access to far more worrying substances than glue.
Everyone did that
I spent 9 months working night shift alone at a hospital, installing some HVAC automation. I didn’t get a sense of dread I just learned that a lot of incompetent installation can be hiding behind those tiles.
As an acoustical ceiling installer, I have very different views about ACT tile and grid. I have installed some unique ceilings in some fairly interesting places, and I love doing cloud ceilings with a custom design. They take work, but the finished product is so satisfying to me.
As an IT guy, I prefer cloud ceilings, so much easier to access and I can throw a bunch of equipment up on top of it that I'm sure it's not rated for :D
@@JohnVance in the book "How Buildings Learn" Stewart Brand says lowered ceilings are junk compared to raised floors. That book was published thirty years ago and these days most data centers have raised floors so the book was prophetic about this. The problem is that raised floors are ugly and expensive, but functionally they are superior.
@@error-xn7hn Oh yeah, raised floors are the bees knees, it would be interesting to see them deployed with more attention to aesthetics outside of the data center.
@@error-xn7hn raised floors are a nightmare in real life. anything spilled on the floor will just leak down and never be cleaned, mold will grow quickly in these unventilated areas. any new installs or maintenance will require moving alot of furniture. it also requires barricades around any opening for fall hazards while work is being done
I agree. They are frequently featured as the "money shot" in architectural publication photos when featuring a building, they can be made very interesting, all depends on the designer/architect.
Drop ceilings are functionally OK and can even look good. They do have a big problem in an area of typical application, offices, where the cheapest type of tile is used, which is made of mineral fiber. It absorbs sound, which in addition to being cheap makes it attractive, the problem is that due to action of curculating air (or if it's touched), it emits a shower of dust and particles, that are constantly circulating in the air that the occupants are breathing.
Dropped ceilings are average. But have you ever witnessed a dropped floor? Or more accurately a *raised* floor.
When I started working in Datacenters, I was blown away to know the floor I was walking on was false. Just like a dropped ceiling. It raised the servers off of the actual, real concrete floor. It was a few feet off of the ground. In the under-floor, you didn't need to crawl. But you couldn't quite fully stand either. I think it was 4 feet. Enough to you could shuffle around on your knees.
The false floor was a very tight mesh. But it meant the air circulation system could go both under and over the servers. Cabling into the room and between the severs was below. Only cables that went out were above. It prevented flooding from immediately affecting the servers.
It was crazy to walk in one day and just see someone about waist high, standing IN the floor 😂.
Clever use of space. I've only seen under-floors used like that in one other place: Japanese traditional houses. Where a fire can be made below the threshold of the normal floor. Or even seating that let's you sit on the floor, but dangle your legs into the under-floor. Hah, might be an interesting companion video to this one on dropped ceilings.
Have you ever been in a casino. Most casinos are raised floors. I always assumed they used them. My local casino added on. When you walked from the old to new you went down a ramp about 18” then across a floor were restaurants were and back up a ramp. I later saw them working and an employee confirmed. The old space was 18” and the new 12”. Now it made sense why Atlantic City casinos had a couple steps before you entered the game room.
There’s a lot of “fake” floors at my work. I work in broadcast tv so the studio buildings have a lot of cables and equipment under the flooring. They’re just big tiles that can be picked up easily so repairs can be done. They’re super loud to walk on too because they shift with every step.
Ha, I'm old enough to have called them computer floors.
Starwars
I noticed them in Server and Electrical rooms on oil rigs. Makes sense since it's a lot tidier and easier to get to and install cables below all the devices.
3:00 "More importantly, it hides all the mechanisms that you don't want to see."
Uh excuse me, why would I NOT want to see that cool stuff?
I once knew a dude who pranked his co-worker by putting a syringe with water in it with no plunger pushed into the drop ceiling tiles over his desk. Every few hours, a single drop of water would drip on his desk, and drive him nuts.
I worked somewhere that required two-factor authentication to get into the computers (card and password.) If you forgot to take your card out of the computer, sometimes people would hide it somewhere - including tucked into the edge of a ceiling panel.
@@Eloraurora I worked as a computer operator decades ago. The locking system failed, and I HAD to get inside the computer room. I stacked furniture outside, removed a ceiling tile in the hallway, pulled up a tile in the computer room, and climbed over. So much for secure rooms.
@@BlankBrain That's hilarious. Ours was just pranking people when they got slack about data security measures, but you got your own little Mission Impossible!
@@Eloraurora I once worked for an insurance company that took security very seriously. They had a manned security station at the entrance to IT and the computer room. All of their fiber optic cables to the main building and other buildings went up one wall in the computer room in an area about three feet wide. Behind the bare cables was drywall. On the other side of the drywall was drywall in a low-use public public area with a tunnel to a public parking garage. Fifteen seconds with a chainsaw would have been disastrous.
I had a buddy at work that bought one of those "annoy-a-tron" devices that emits a piezo beep at random intervals. I didn't really understand at first why "random intervals" -- it seemed like a beep every seven minutes (or whatever) would do just fine.
And then we pranked a coworker with it. We placed it in a modular desk lighting fixture, near his computer. One day, we stopped by his desk to invite him to lunch, and in a moment of conversational lull ... " beep. " He didn't react _at all._ Not even a blink.
So we asked, "...what was that?"
"The beep?"
"Yeah."
"Oh. I dunno. It does that every few minutes."
"Huh. That's annoying."
"Yeah. I haven't been able to figure out what it is yet. I thought it was the computer, but I unplugged it for 15 minutes and it still beeped. And it's not a consistent interval..."
He then pulled out a legal pad with a detailed log of timestamps....
"So it was five minutes, then three minutes, then six minutes..."
That's when we totally lost it... The payoff couldn't have been any better. It went from mildly annoying, to all-consuming experiments, to an obsessive exercise in detailed note-taking... and then it broke him, to where he just accepted his fate. Ah. * chef's kiss *
12:38 as someone from Texas, trust me, when the AC goes out in one of those buildings, we can absolutely tell
I like it when you have an office that has the drop ceiling only partially filled in, so in places you can see the concrete above but in places where you have a lot of pipes wires and ducts you have a patch of ceiling tiles. It breaks it up and keeps it from feeling too monotonous but also less harsh and cluttered than with no tiles at all.
One of the buildings on my college campus was like that, I used to spend most of my time in that building between classes looking up.
Our office is like that. Also part of the floor is polished concrete. It’s pretty and has a hipster industrial vibe to it, but is also quite noisy. Some managers complain that people are being too noisy because, heaven forbid, they should laugh in the echo chamber.
My high school has actually become a refuge for students who are hard of hearing because the dropped ceiling and the solid reinforced concrete construction blocks noise really well and makes it easier to focus on the teacher's voice.
I am pretty sure creating this video was Stewart's excuse for sharing his favorite Office Space clips.
It's even funnier to me as I was just watching that movie last night.
And Madmen and The Office and The Matrix etc.
Okay but the stapler is red?
@@VioletEdgar yes. Looked for this comment.
The best drop ceiling tradition is staying late to swap all the stained and broken ceiling tiles in your office with nice ones from your boss' office.
Personally, I like seeing the infrastructure that the drop ceiling hides. I work in huge old-time industrial building in Chicago, I think we have a 20 foot ceiling, no drop ceiling.
I’m a commercial designer in Chicago … I remove all the drop ceilings I can 😅
Yeah, that's a pretty common aesthetic downtown.
Now there's someone who knows where the meat comes from!
@@canary_inthecoalmine Thank you!
@@cherylm2C6671 I have a lot of meat
I just learned today that some people hate drop ceilings. Never heard about this before
I think it's more of a subconscious dislike rather than an explicit one.
No one "hates drop ceilings" because no one "cares" enough to have hate for them.
But they still a thing that is bound to the dule repetitive opressive system.
You even see them in Portal, as the parth towards a humanless world controlled by AI
The intro to the video confused me, do people really care that much about drop ceilings?
@@JamEngulfer No, I don't think many people actually care at all
hate would be a strong word for me, but i really appreciate any place where i can see the technic above/behind/under me, especially if it's build with aesthetics in mind
I work overnight security in an office building, but I rarely think about the ceilings (unless there's a water leak) and I think that's the point. Functional, cheap, clean; it may not be *your* aesthetic, but it's still its own aesthetic. Having seen many offices remodeled through the years, the practicality really stands out.
The flat plane of the drop ceiling, without exposed beams, is very important for the performance of the air diffusers in the space too. The air outlets are designed to shoot the cool air along the ceiling which then mixes with the air in the room. Buildings without smooth ceilings actually make air distribution much more complicated.
This is another part of the reason cubical walls don't go all the way up, they'd get in the way of the air movement.
Exposed beams are bad Feng Shui too, so double skippy, lol
I do miss the sound blocking properties of drop ceilings in restaurants. Hope sound dampening design catches on.
Restaurants in the past, and in many other countries, have booths, partitions, carpets, and/or separate rooms, to control sound. I too really dislike the currently popular bus station design of restaurants (even very expensive ones), with rows of tables in a big room (like an old schoolroom), with the sound reflecting off the floor, walls, and ceiling, it's hard to even hear people at your table speaking.
I live in a relatively small and rural town and my favorite local restaurant added like 2 grand worth of sound foam on the ceiling this year. I was impressed and I told them to their faces that I was.
I literally clicked on this video to defend drop ceilings for their actually pleasant effects on sound. These new naked ceilings are the absolute worst for sound abatement and turn a normal restaurant into hell for anybody with the slightest auditory processing disorder because you’re no longer just hearing a dull roar and your buddy in front of you- you’re hearing the fryer, refrigerator, soda machine, and fifteen different conversations all at the same time at ear piercing levels.
When I worked in constuction, we installed many ceiling tiles. We called it "dropping" the tile into place. We always installed the ceiling tiles around the perimeter (border) of the room first, since those required cutting and took more time. There was also special metal grid for hanging drywall on, which was silver and without a finished coat of paint. There were 2 foot and 4 foot pieces called "tees" and longer 12 foot pieces called "mains". When we hung drywall as part of a drop ceiling, we called it hanging the "lid"!
I always started with the hole boards hoping someone else would do the cuts 😂😂
10:44 You did not just call the Red Stapler an Orange Stapler. I feel like you're just baiting us.
Content generator.
This should be the only thing anyone is talking about lol
It's so we comment and the video's ranking goes up in the algorithm. The author is a master of baiting.
@@EndlessV3rtigo Egg Zachary!
@@EndlessV3rtigothat is honestly kinda genius lol
The existential dread of false shutters.
The existential dread of false eyelashes.
The existential dread of fake plants.
The existential dread of laminate wood flooring.
The existential dread of office chair
For me, the dropped ceiling perfectly represents the oppressive, soul-crushing monotony of office-life: the desperately uninspiring regularity, stretching endlessly into a tedious, unseen, inevitable fate while looming over a sea of drones.
Practical, efficient & economic they may be, but they're also (and I stress again. for me) a cipher for a life I wouldn't wish on anyone with a soul.
So say we all
Worked for a company that assembled cubicles.
Acres and acres of cubicles!
OMG, it was soul crushing after a while (but the pay was good if you did piecework)
Go work in a mine. Or literally any other hard job. And tell us more about your tough life in your office
Utilitarianism incarnate.
Its a bit unfair to compare our modern ceilings to ceilings that was made for a tiny aristocracy when there was no middle class.
When installing lights in drop ceilings as an electrician, I would switch them to a warm color because it just feels cozier and less sterile, but eventually someone would switch them back to the bright white, making sure things look sterile. It’s apparently to keep people more awake.
While it is probably out of the scope of the video, enhancements to HVAC designs (fan based VAV boxes vs constant volume) have allowed for more variety of office ceiling design. Additionally material science improvements to sound deadening materials have helped with noise design when you have opened ceilings, and you can combine the use of white noise generators to fight perceived noise. While I still think suspended ceilings are more economical and provide a better environment for the occupants it's nice that there are more options.
i’m actually a fan of exposed hvac & wouldn’t mind the wires as long as they are neatly placed & organized well
The critical analysis of the drop-ceiling: an age-old, epic battle between aesthetics and utility, fought on the battlefields of efficiency 😆
From my experience looking into, of all things, migraines, I discovered that humans on a physiological level find grids extremely uncomfortable, and this is exacerbated through perspective (lower ceilings distort the grid more). Our visual pathways evolved around the idea of one horizontal horizon and many vertical markers like trees. We aren’t really designed to process such an abstract and perfect grid; it can even trigger seizures in certain people. I only discovered this research because of my completely incidental question about migraines and seizures, but I hope that it becomes more popularised in design in the future. I think that making livable and productive spaces should be more considerate these factors.
I also think that the lack of quality materials in most offices is emblematic of a lack of respect for employees and providing them high-quality space. I noticed that a lot of the original lights are really well diffused and subtle; a lot of modern lights, particularly the ones installed before LEDs became popular, now bare fluorescent bulbs. In ways like this, I think we have regressed.
Having said that, the Bloomberg building in London is a fantastic example of a 21st century drop ceiling, with non-square tiles, liquid passive cooling and careful design for acoustics; it’s a shame it didn’t make it into the video.
I remember when I was a kid, my parents got me an HO-scale train set and a book on model train construction. One of the lessons of the book was how to use drop ceiling tiles, earth tone paints, and a wire brush to make cliffs and similar rocky features.
Great topic, Stewart! While I prefer “hard” ceilings or thoughtfully designed exposed structure/mechanicals, suspended ceilings do have their place in this world. Being able to access the wiring, plumbing and HVAC in my finished basement is a huge convenience. As is being able to easily replace a damaged or water-stained tile. As others have commented, it’s mostly the cheap, cold, optically poor lighting that typically accompanies a drop ceiling that makes some of them feel inhuman. The average spec office building or home contains terrible, cheap lighting. So do the national home improvement stores. Visit a good, dedicated electrical supply store or someone experienced in lighting design and you can drastically improve the character of these spaces. Be well!
I love a high, high ceiling with exposed ductwork, etc., but I also don't at all ascribe to the idea that a drop ceiling is oppressive or sad. In fact, I really appreciate it's utility, cleverness, and flexibility. The idea that it's a marker of lazy design or conceals some unsaid horror is entirely due to its association with boring office spaces and the public's general un-curiousness about how and why buildings work. It's the same reason people covered their gorgeous hardwood floors in the early 20th century, why many people think Brutalism is somehow fascist (when it's extremely socialist), and why people think you're allowed to park in a bike lane if you turn your hazard lights on.
I kind of also expected you to talk about the end of the drop ceiling. Many buildings built in the last 10 years just don’t have them anymore. They either have a smooth false ceiling, or more commonly, no false ceiling with all of the cables and ducts visible. Sometimes they are painted black, and/or there are random plates hanging from the ceiling to make some sort of vibe
Hung ceilings are function over form. The function is undeniable. So what are the alternatives? I do see buildings with the hung grid and the space above painted black. All the equipment etc is visible, if you look up. This has even more function value because any maintenance is easier. In addition some/all of the equipment/utilities in the plenum can be sprayed black to void them out along with the structural ceiling and plenum walls. For me that’s ok as the lighted plane is below the plenum. Occupants of the space really never really look up and the perception is that the hung grid only and lighting make the space a closed feel below the plenum. What say ye?
It certainly looks more interesting. But you are now heating and cooling the entire volume of the space up to the deck. An acoustical ceiling doesn't provide much R value but it does provide a thermal break. And of course painting everything above the line of the ceiling is more expense than a drop ceiling - and if you leave it completely open then you have to choose alternative light fixtures which are always more expensive than lay-in fixtures, you have to use duct that's attractive to look at, and paint that etc etc
The cost advantage of a drop ceiling assures that will be using them for a loooong time
As someone whose job it is to run wires in commercial buildings, I absolutely love these ceilings. From my perspective, they’re prolly the single biggest redeeming quality of working on commercial spaces
The ceilings are fine. The lights are what suck
No, you suck.
6:09 hey, so i paused the video once the author started comparing the ceilings of ancient and renaissance mega-projects to modern office ceilings. it just felt like a silly and sensational comparison. those were massively funded public works projects, not really a fair comparison. it's a common public misconception that older building were built better. what really is the case is that the most well built and beautiful old buildings are the only ones that survived till today. since, those are the only buildings we see, we somewhat glorify past architecture
Drop ceilings need to come back in places like restaurants. Do a video on how loud modern restaurants with their ‘industrial look’ have gotten.
A local diner near me is located in the same location where there was previously an electronics goods store which had the typical drop ceiling.
The diner, however, upon moving in and remodelling , eschewed the drop ceiling. Instead is an exposed, higher ceiling. Suspended lights hanging, exposed air-con ducting and all. The whole upper space including the ducting is painted black. I love the vibe, it's spacious and cosy at the same time, like a converted warehouse to apartment type of refurb.
A local diner near me is located in the same location where there was previously an electronics goods store which had the typical drop ceiling.
The diner, however, upon moving in and remodelling , eschewed the drop ceiling. Instead is an exposed, higher ceiling. Suspended lights hanging, exposed air-con ducting and all. The whole upper space including the ducting is painted black. I love the vibe, it's spacious and cosy at the same time, like a converted warehouse to apartment type of refurb.
@@razeezar a local diner is located in the same location... :D
@@frida507 A local diner was -
Yeah, I don't know why my original comment posted twice either 🤘
@@razeezar 😀
A thought this would be interesting but I was wrong, this is amazing! As a scifi rpg referee this tells me the history of architectural change but as a computer game developer it teaches new things; no you don’t have to adopt that old cliche of Bruce Willis crawling through (ridiculously large) vents when the player can crawl in the entire crawl space above the drop ceiling, just make sure you crawl only on the edges of the grid!
Great stuff!
It’s not just “business” but “Medicine” too where the drop ceiling is ubiquitous. Think cold sterile exam rooms, waiting rooms, and hospital corridors.
Drop ceilings are SO common that when you walk into a business without them it feels odd. Like the business isn’t talking itself seriously.
This video does a good job of explaining why I get a little bit excited every time a drop ceiling has some missing tiles and I can see what's above it.
Back in the 90s I worked at a Walmart. Non super center. It had the infamous drop ceiling. It went on forever. One day a coworker was on a lift hanging something and knocked a couple panels loose. I jumped back and expected a loud bang. No it floated down like a feather and landed on something. It was fiberglass like Owens Corning one side had a white textured plastic backing (exposed side) and the other just fluffy. I’m used to the hard type. Not heavy but hard.
Oh, yes…I’ve seen that type.
1:09 "Nothing hangs below it, it's dead flat..." That's what I like about them. My first house was an older one with nine-foot ceilings. The walls and ceilings were plaster/lath. The ceilings had noticeable ridges, and were covered with some kind of crappy paper. When I remodeled, installed a drop ceiling grid (8" drop) with dimensional acoustic tile which protruded below the grid slightly. The tiles were expensive, but the difference was amazing! It actually made the room seem larger, improved the acoustics, and looked fantastic. Down the road, if you want a new look, just drop in new tiles. What's not to like?
Dare not forget how these false ceilings age and wear. When the neat white grid over the years becomes a bunch of splotches of off-white yellows and browns it feels more like being surrounded by unbrushed teeth. And I generally don't think people like the sense of something precarious and fairly heavy hanging above their heads. They do not inspire confidence.
same could be said for carpet, paint and trim. none of these last long term that is why most companies remodel every so many years
Not as big a problem once people stopped smoking inside. Used to be we'd build a corporate office in 1984 and by 1990 the ceiling grid was orange from all the cigarette smoke. All the smoke alarms too, especially the ones under skylights because I guess all the smoke went up into there.
@@viktorakhmedov3442 I was about to leave the same comment. When replacing ceiling tiles, the tiles above a smoker's desk would be covered with that brown sticky tar.
Grew up having a drop ceiling in our basement. Tiles are nearly identical. Replacing them is trivial because they haven't discolored one bit, and it was a very easy way for my (at the time) broke-ass parents to have a finished basement. Also, I can't honestly think of the last time I thought the drop ceiling would fall on me. Probably never, tbh. The ENTIRE ceiling may be heavy, but the metal trim is quite thin and those panels don't weigh much. I suppose if you had a full 2x2 panel that was just a light (common in offices, not homes) that might get a bit heavy, but again drop ceilings are relatively stable regardless.
@@EnderSpy007 Virtually zero danger of anything falling, the grid parts themselves are light aluminum, and they’re held up by thick steel struts that are pinned to the concrete slab above. Light units are made of aluminum and are pretty light too, and are doubly secured by additional struts to the slab. In an earthquake some ceiling tiles might fall, but they are very light weight.
When remodeling an old space, sometimes the grid is repainted, which is quick and easy to do. Tiles of course are quick and easy to replace.
I’m a fan of drop ceilings. Had one in our kitchen, and installed one in the bathroom as well, with translucent white panels for tiles, and LED lighting above, so the light is diffused through the ceiling and sort of coming from everywhere. And it’s super easy to lift the tiles to work on anything above, or to wash the tiles themselves like once a year. Much quicker and easier than a drywall ceiling.
As a commercial electrician myself, these ceilings are a blessing. I couldn't imagine working with tight ceiling cavities.
As always, great video!
I think part of this idea of this opressive monotony is because regulations in the US seem to not be very strict on sufficient daylight and windows per surface area. You can end up working in a space with no view of the outside world, making the office seem endless.
2:15 the justification for why its louder makes no sense, since it does not take into account that drop ceiling tiles absorb a lot more sound
He said that drop ceilings SOLVE that problem, not cause it.
@@Antigravity_lol oh yeah i missed that
My house came with a finished basement. The ceiling tiles are made of pressed fiberboard that are interlocked and stapled. It’s difficult to impossible to run wires and pipes. A drop ceiling gives you way more flexibility to do repairs and improvements.
I wish my basement was finish with a drop ceilling. I looked in a crack from the mahine room and saw that sone of the ducks aren't connected. Now, I have to tears down the ceilling to have a good heating in the house.
I have been a commercial/industrial electrician for about 35 years and have spent so many hours, days, weeks, months, years working up in drop ceilings, old and new.
It's a pain in the ass.
You did a pretty good job explaining what drop ceilings are and how they work.
the drop ceiling exists to be a place where ninja assassins can hide while they wait to decapitate the ceo
This was recommended to me RIGHT AFTER I watched the latest Kane video where a portion of the backrooms ceiling was inspected. The algorithm has done well today
I suppose the dread of drop ceilings is the reason that so many restaurants now have open ceilings which expose all the utilities. Open ceilings make the space much louder, and diners have to speak over the noise of the clatter of forks and kitchen prep, and of dozens of people talking all at once. But it doesn't look like the office.
One of the oldest, grandest buildings at my undergrad university had a 1960s-renovated interior that looked like an office built last year. But a glance into the air return vents revealed the 1902 pressed tin ceilings, illuminated by the topsides of the drop-in fluorescent light fixtures. I'm far from the only student who has noticed. The university has talked about restoring at least the lobby area, but they can't even afford to tackle some of the absolute worst deferred maintenance on campus, so they're stuck with it. The building is by a fairly notable architect as well - Harrison Albright, who is best known for the West Baden Springs Hotel in Indiana.
2:10 But doesn't a higher ceiling make things more echoey?
probably depends on the design and what things are in the space. the main public library in calgary is mostly conrete with high ceilings but it doesn't echo, which i think is due to "fins" that are installed along the ceiling, it seems to reduce noise bouncing around.
depends on the amplitude of a person talking, well yes it would be echoey but it wouldnt be decaying enough to be disruptive. Optimal is to have a big enough room so the voices will decay before bouncing back or use sound absorbers or materials that absorbs sounds. In human speech mosten times these tiles will absorb the sound good enough to give a dry room
Yes acoustic wise it depends on the absorption drop ceilings are more comfortable for offices
I work in an office that was originally built in the early 70s and of course it featured drop ceilings. The building was remodeled in the late 2010s and the drop ceilings were moved. It’s very obvious they once were there and now the celling just looks unfinished. My coworkers and I often comment how cool and loud the space is and now I know it’s like that.
One of the first things that these drop ceilings make me think of is how often there would be missing or broken tiles in my school ceilings, in Jr High and High school. Especially when sat underneath a broken tile, it would make me anxious that it would suddenly fall out of the frame and on my head. Plus, it was just a good example of the general neglected maintenance of those school buildings.
Each panel would have cost about $5.00 for a new one. That says a lot about school maintenance.
I'm a sparky thats done a shit ton of offices and other commercial installations. The worst looking installs generally occurred in areas without drop ceilings. We have them for a reason.
I love it when a youtuber can take something as goofy and simple as a drop down ceiling and make it feel like its the most interesting and complex subject ever xD
Well, _The_ _Complex_ does have a drop ceiling, after all. 🫥
Amazing video! RUclips recommended this to me because I've been researching a lot about custom printed acoustic tensioned ceilings. I really don't like these typical office ceilings, so I was looking for an alternative for my home that could isolate sound and also hide LED lights, allowing the whole ceiling to illuminate when I turn on the light. I also love that you can choose a design with a pattern, so it's not just plain. This seems like a perfect solution!
I feel like comparing ancient Italian church ceilings and office building drop ceilings is a massive miscomparison. Churches are supposed to give you the feeling of awe. That's the point of a church and religion as a whole. Office spaces are utility spaces. So maybe if you are dead set on making that comparison, instead compare it to a roman administrative building. I'm sure the majority of them are still ornate, but it's at least a comparable structure.
Yes a church and an office isn't all that comparable, but those were the only kinds of spaces with false ceilings in the early days. Admin buildings wouldn't have had them.
@@stewarthicks ooooh I see now. As I wrote that comment, I was thinking about how those churches did have false ceilings themselves, and maybe that was your intended point. Though, I did just rewatch that section of the video, and I'm not so sure that it conveys this point.
Anyway I love your videos please don't think I'm a hater lol
@@ModernAtomX Also acoustic screening which hid the secrets of vault architecture. Massed bells can be fierce.
The idea that offices are utility spaces is what makes them so dehumanizing. The generic ceiling tiles are the architectural representation of that mindset.
The ANZ Gothic Bank in Melbourne was a working space, but also magnificent. The degradation of work into something uninspiring and monotonous is a bad development for society. We want people to feel that their job is important, and that they are valued by society for what they do. Giving them mediocre and oppressive spaces to work in can erode their motivation.
Stewart Hicks. Excellent video! Never knew I wanted to know this! 😂
I always had existential dread of "drop ceilings" (never knew that name, thanks).
You "pulled back the curtain", showed us the monsters hidden beneath.
Now they seem less scary or uncomfortable.
They serve a purpose. We are better off with them then seeing the mess underneath.
There's a research about the height of ceiling regarding college student's grade. Students in high-ceiling classes tends perform worse in academic than those in low-ceiling rooms. The main reason is high-ceiling classes reduced students attention to the lecture, because it's higher it means there are many objects to see (like roof rafters, vent windows, beams, interior design elements). Meanwhile, most low-ceiling classes has low and plain ceiling thus provide better focus towards the lecture. So, high and highly decorated ceilings isn't always better.
When I was a kid, my family attended church in a lovely older building. It had a vaulted ceiling with interesting moulding that zig-zagged across it. I'd get bored and gazed up at it for hours fantasizing it was some sort of freeway system for bugs, or something... I'm sorry, what were you saying?
My personal experience is just me, and not the rest of the population, but I felt freer and more relaxed and more open in classrooms with high ceilings. Those new classrooms with their low drop ceilings felt oppressive and squashing. I made better grades in the older classrooms. But then I'm left handed and turned out to be autistic, so of course my experience in those spaces was in contrast to the majority of the population. As for highly decorated ceilings, no matter how high they are, they feel oppressive and burdensome much like ca low dropped ceiling, plainer is better.
Half the kids are playing CSGO anywho lol
7:20 that gives me a heavy vibe that drop ceilings were developed by non others than Aperture Science.
Suspended ceilings also act as a reservoir for dust and allergens that can replenish cleaned rooms when the tiles are disturbed.
I swear this is why I get constant allergies and sinus infections living in an apartment with a drop ceiling! My partner gets lung infections more now too. The panels are badly done, with a hole somewhere in the building as an added bonus, so when it’s windy they flop around. This is the dustiest place I’ve ever lived. Plus, they put it in our BATHROOM. I don’t even wanna think about what the humidity has done up there…
I may have said this before, but thank you for making such a well organized and thought out channel. Your videos are not merely content - they are substance.
Quiet does not equal dull. Repetitive does not equal monotony/oppression. It is only by choosing to think of it that way which makes it so. Humans generally enjoy and need patterns / routines psychologically.
This is a good point! Nobody sees plain white bathroom tiling and thinks "the monotonous repetitive design of this wall makes me feel oppressed." The association with dullness and oppression likely comes more from experience, and also just cultural iconography, than it does intrinsically from this style of drop ceiling.
Humans generally enjoy and need STIMULUS psychologically. There is a reason why so many people forced to live this sort of boring, monotonous, totally controlled existence begin to exhibit stereotypic behaviors similar to animals in captivity.
That same pattern recognition is the reason we associate the quiet of an office space and the repetition of ceiling tiles oppressive. We subconsciously associate the environments they appear in with their physical properties.
@@quilynn but "monotonous repetitive design" is not on anyones wish lists.
sure when its part of sometinge bigger, but when its in 9/10 places you go then it becomes really oppresseve.
Just adding a color or having another form than squire would work.
It's very impressive to listen to interesting content created using excellent English NOT generated by AI, read by a narrator who genuinely understands which words should be stressed, and how appropriate intonation can dramatically improve the quality of a presentation. My congratulations!
I worked at a JCPenney store that was the largest they built in 1969, I worked there around 2000 and it was wrecked in 2020. The store went through 2 sets of light fixtures, the latter when I was there. To change the lights, the electrician would dislodge the old fixture, take the wire out (it as lit and live), shove the old fixture further into the ceiling, pick up the new one, wire that fixture and it would light up, and drop it into its place. We had more old fixtures up in that ceiling than the ones that were actually lit.
I live in a former girl scout camp turned into a cabin.
It has drop ceilings throughout.
It was never intended to be lived in full time, but it's been my home for 5+ years.
I used to hate the ugly ceiling until a storm damaged the roof.
It's _way_ easier to change a few water damaged tiles than it is to repair & paint sheetrock.
I always liked drop ceilings, but I never knew how important they are for sound dampening. It’s so nice to see a component of architecture that’s focused on making a building more livable and human-scaled instead of hostile and philosophical.
Go into a Walmart, and then go into a Target (not one of the rare Walmarts with a ceiling or even rarer Targets without one), you'll definitely appreciate the difference. Target still puts ceilings in their stores.
Well no one would know if it was hostile. lol jk
I always enjoy your videos. Interesting topics, informative, nicely produced, and very well written. Great work, Mr. Hicks!
Before finishing: it's for accoustics right?
Acoustics, fire rating, concealment/access of more mundane building systems, creating a return air space, supporting electrical and electronic equipment. There are even grid systems that have conductors inside so that you can attach low-voltage devices to the grid for power rather than needing to wire to the device.
They do a lot of things well, and while the basic white tile on a 2x4 pattern with drop-in troffer lights is bland and creates cave-like aesthetics with poor lighting design, I think people would like buildings without them a whole lot less. They probably keep costs down as well.
Drop ceiling rooms are tremendously easier to paint. My first assignment as an apprentice was a Zumiez with the industrial exposed ceiling. I had to paint each pipe and air duct. That painting job changed how I view rooms and especially ceilings.
...Sorry, an ORANGE stapler?
That's a *red* stapler.
While I was in college a teacher in one administrative skills class told a story about a place she had worked where this woman who had been there a very long time retired, and although she was considered one of the most efficient, fast workers, which no one could keep up with, when they went into the drop ceiling to change out some wiring they found hundreds of documents she had hidden. Seems she would put them up there at the end of the day to make it look like she was "finishing" all of her work.
final and most damning evidence: 3 movies and a show says this!
I grew up in an older house that for some reason had a drop ceiling and fluorescent lights in the living room, likely from a renovation done in the 90s. When we did our own renovations years after living there, it was so nice to remove it and get the space back. There was no benefit to it unless it was doing something like helping with heat insulation of the space, as there was nothing above the space like ducts or wires to hide.
Personally, I always loved ceiling tiles. It's a shame seeing them less these days.
The toddler’s endless tantrum caused the entire plane anxiety.
7:12 Americans will do anything but adopt the metric system
The apartment at 9:00 is so familiar to me. I’ve been fixing up a 19th century house that is subdivided into 4 apartments. It was never meant to have HVAC so of course they put in 9’ drop ceilings hanging below the 12’ actual ceilings, so they could run the ducts. They looked like they were resting atop the door and window frames. We’ve since removed them all, replaced the furnaces with mini split systems that don’t need ducts, and gone back to full ceiling height. Now the doors and windows no longer look squished beneath the too-low ceilings. Drop ceilings are ugly anywhere, but ridiculous in an old building like this one.
I was visiting my buddy at his lake house in Ohio and there was a helicopter flying low over the lake. My friend said to me that the owner of the helicopter lived at a huge compound. This compound he said was built by the inventor of the modern day drop ceiling.
Possibly. Which Iteration? Pre 1992, or after 1992 when Worthington and Armstrong got together to make the system we use now?
@@SoberAddiction Don Brown
Well i invented the adhesive for post-it notes
Why did I, an Interior Designer fully aware of plenums, fire code, acoustics, etc. watch this entire video ? Hahah I guess your videos are just that entertaining!
Why in the world would you compare the ceilings of churches and temples to ceilings in office buildings?....
Because he's a pretentious twat.
yeah that was stupid, as if all buildings had highly decorated ceilings in the past.
11:28 these dark spaces don’t reveal how they work - they are shadowed and mysterious, designed by nobody, shaped like nothing else, unmapped and beyond the control of humanity. I think we have to remember how regularity and predictability offer comfort to some of the people some of the time. The danger is in the banality and the menaces masquerading as famiar & harmless - it is the juxtaposition and contradiction that gives “creepy office” vibes their surprise and fear.
Especially man jump through then yell at you harshly like monster the resorb back into ceiling and hide for next person coming by
I never knew drop ceilings had so much hate. Must be a designer thing.
As an IT guy, I really like drop ceilings because I can easily expand networking/power
The space above drop ceilings is not necessarily plenum. It is only plenum if that space itself is part of the ventilation system, if there are a supply and a return duct running through the space or the air above the drop ceiling is not actively being circulatedvas part of the ventilation system, it is not plenum. Easiest way to think about it is if the entire area above the drop ceiling is one giant duct, then its plenum, if not, not plenum. It's important because being plenum or not drastically changes what wires and cables can be run through it and what those wires can carry. I believe they have to be halogen free and self extinguishing along with other restrictions and certifications that make them more expensive.
Small film nerd quibble: the up-shots with oppressive ceilings usually aren't shots of the protagonists, but the antagonists. Protagonists are usually down-shots.
The iconic Swingline stapler from Office Space is red, not orange, while we're being nitpicky. I own one.
@@needamuffin Me too :)
@@needamuffin Swingline didn't produce a red stapler originally, but because of the film, demand got so high they started making them. The props for the film were painted.