Are all hallways wasted space?

[Tom Wagner]

Recently I've been really interested in floor plans, mostly for apartments but also for houses. On the apartment side, if you have a 800sqft 2bedroom apartment and have a 4ft x 10ft hallway, then 5% of your apartment is "wasted" hallway space. Likewise, in many 3000sqft houses there are 300+ sqft of hallways.

A lot of older Sears Craftsman style homes have virtually no hallways. The stairs lead directly to 3-4 bedroom/bathroom entrances, and there is no "wasted" hallway space on the first or second floor:

Today, if you wanted a modern floorplan you could have something like this:

Or this:

My take: all hallways are essentially wasted space, and most floor plans being built today are not very good. Agree or disagree?