Floor area has almost nothing to do with it. Section, light and proportion do all the work.
This idea recurs across our work because it keeps proving itself under real conditions, not just in the studio. The smallest room we've built reads larger than most double-height atriums.
"The smallest room we've built reads larger than most double-height atriums."
We first noticed this while documenting a completed project long after handover — the kind of observation that only shows up once a building has been lived in for a while, not on the drawings.
What follows from this isn't a rule so much as a bias we now bring into every early design conversation: a default we have to actively argue ourselves out of, rather than one we have to remember to apply.