Lobby at a building in Seattle, Washington, United States.

A lobby is a room in a building which is used for entry from the outside. Sometimes referred to as a foyer or an entrance hall.

Many office buildings, hotels and skyscrapers go to great lengths to decorate their lobbies to create the right impression.^[1][2][3]

Since the mid 1980s there has been a growing trend to think of lobbies as more than just ways to get from the door to the elevator, but instead as social spaces and places of commerce.^[4][5] Some research has even been done to develop scales to measure lobby atmosphere in order to improve hotel lobby design.^[6]

Many places that offer public services, such as a doctor's office, use their lobbies as more of a waiting room for the people waiting for a certain service. In these types of lobbies it is common for there to be comfortable furniture, such as couches and lounge chairs, so that the customer will be able to wait in comfort. Also, there may be television sets, books, and/or magazines to help the customer pass time as they wait to be served.

Supertall skyscrapers can often have one or more of what is known as a sky lobby, which is an intermediate floor where people can change from an express elevator that stops only at the sky lobby to a local elevator which stops at every floor within a segment of the building.

See also[link]

• Atrium
• Door
• Entryway
• Foyer

References[link]

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A youth hostel room in Japan

A room is any distinguishable space within a structure. Usually, a room is separated from other spaces or passageways by interior walls; moreover, it is separated from outdoor areas by an exterior wall, sometimes with a door. Historically the use of rooms dates at least to early Minoan cultures about 2200 BC, where excavations on Santorini, Greece at Akrotiri reveal clearly defined rooms within certain structures.^[1]

Historical room types[link]

A living room

In early structures, diverse room types could be identified to include bedrooms, kitchens, bathing rooms, reception rooms, and other specialized uses. The aforementioned Akrotiri excavations reveal rooms sometimes built above other rooms connected by staircases, bathrooms with alabaster appliances such as washbasins, bathing tubs, and toilets, all connected to an elaborate twin plumbing systems of ceramic pipes for cold and hot water separately.^[1] Ancient Rome manifested very complex building forms with a variety of room types, including some of the earliest examples of rooms for indoor bathing. The Anasazi civilization also had an early complex development of room structures, probably the oldest in North America, while the Maya of Central America had very advanced room configurations as early as several hundred AD. By at least the early Han Dynasty in China (e.g. approximately 200 BC), complex multi-level building forms emerged, particularly for religious and public purposes; these designs featured many roomed structures and included vertical connections of rooms.

Box-room[link]

A hospital room

Many houses are built to contain a box-room (box room or boxroom) that is easily identifiable, being smaller than the others. The small size of these rooms limits their use, and they tend to be used as a small single bedroom, small child's bedroom, or as a storage room. Other box rooms may house a live-in domestic worker.

Traditionally, and often seen in country houses and larger suburban houses up until the 1930s in Britain, the box room was literally for the storage of boxes, trunks, portmanteaux, and the like, rather than for bedroom use.^{[citation needed]}

See also[link]

• Entryway
• Great hall
• Room number

Notes[link]