Since no one else has chimed in on this I will play advocatus diaboli here since it’s a topic I feel strongly about. I grew up in a very open floorplan house and have come to hate the trend.
Open floorplans have been sold to people as "trendy" or "modern" or any number of other adjectives that get thrown around that don't really mean anything. However, it's important to remember this trend started in the not too distant past, and for a very long time before that the norm was separate rooms, so it's not surprising that there are actually considerable disadvantages of open floorplans and advantages of more traditional ones.
Opening the kitchen to the rest of the house has to be one of the worst aspects of this trend. The kitchen is supposed to serve as an area to prepare food, but in making it part of the rest of the house it becomes necessary to make it aesthetically pleasing, which not only makes it expensive but also tends to impair its function. Imagine for a minute if the home shop had the same trend, where now a workspace is supposed to be part of the rest of the house. I suppose we would see granite workbenches and stainless steel table saws appear on the market so you could sit one next to your living room and feel good about it. And for the same reason we don't put table saws in our living areas (yet) its stupid to put dishwashers, mixers, blenders, and other noise generating kitchen equipment in the same room. I'm sure whoever is watching "the big game" will love hearing the blender instead of the big play until you finish the drinks. Additionally, all odors and smells now permeate the entire house, for good or for bad, and the same goes for moisture, grease, etc.
Of course the usual explanation (excuse) offered for this is something to the effect of how much people like to entertain and need an open floor plan to do so. Which frankly I don't buy as an explanation. I love to cook, and when I am cooking I do not have time to talk to other people, watch football games, or do anything but focus on the task at hand. People that are "entertaining" guests while cooking can't be making anything too spectacular. If you are a serious cook you need space and focus, not half a dozen people milling about making small talk while you try not to burn a roux or break a mayonnaise.
I also find it ironic that people claim this is about being able to "entertain" even though people today hardly entertain at all, while people 70 years ago entertained a great deal and seemingly with no issues despite their kitchens not being integrated into their living rooms. Likewise, my grandmother raised 6 kids without ever having an open kitchen, while most people today are not going to raise more than 3 kids but somehow need the open floor plan to make this feasible, I don't buy the parenting excuse either.
Aside from the issue of integrating the kitchen into the house however, the open floorplan has other problems. Although it is often portrayed as making the house "feel" bigger, I would argue it makes it "practically" smaller. You have basically one large room, and that is it. You have considerably less wall space, and trying to fill furniture into that one big space is often awkward resulting in a lot of wasted space that does not really do anything.
And while these open floorplans are often promoted as "family friendly" I have come to the conclusion that they are a double edged sword in that respect. When I was growing up the open floorplan seemed fine as a little kid, but as I grew up I found it problematic since there was only one space in the house (aside from bedrooms and bathrooms) that everyone had to use. Yes it was huge, but there was no privacy. If I had friends over we were constantly in close proximity to the rest of the family to where everyone could hear everyone else. Not surprisingly, I mostly went to other kid's houses that had some space that was not constantly next to parents. Now while some parents might like the idea of discouraging the kids from congregating at their house, I would argue that it is better to be the parents with the house everyone congregates at. Not only can you keep a closer tab on what your kids are getting into as they grow up but it will help them build a social circle. And this same issue extends in other directions, for example, what if one family member loves watching the big game all weekend long on the TV, but other people would like some quiet time to read. Either you have conflict or everyone withdrawing to their own little rooms, which is less social than if you just had 2 spaces that people could spend time in.
I could go on, but I think I have at least answered the question of what is the other perspective on this issue. That said, I don't expect the trend will reverse on a large scale, however much I may personally want to see it happen. People usually like what they are told to like, and builders know these floor plans are cheap and easy to build. Most homes that I have seen which use a less open floor plan tended to be very expensive ones where real entertaining of clients and the like was a consideration, and curiously those people tended to have formal dining areas where you could not see the kitchen sink…
