Kitchen: closed or open? What room layout?

.... Definitely too early, my fingers are not doing what my brain says!

My cooktop with downdraft takes up one height unit. A hood on the wall takes up space in the cabinet. I hardly see either as an argument if you simply plan the kitchen so that you have enough storage space.

Well ... the ideal place without "cabinet waste" for the cooktop is in the window row, for example, if the window is planned as a window band with a sill height of 120 to 135 cm anyway. No wall cabinet fits there anyway, but you can wonderfully plan a ceiling extractor hood in that area.

But, it's true, everyone has to find their ideal workflow for themselves. You can listen to others' arguments, partly accept, partly discard. The important thing is simply to have considered as many suggestions as possible and not just approach everything with the attitude "we've always done it that way."
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And, as a statement for the original thread question:

I am a fan of open kitchens combined with a spacious dining area preferably located by the terrace. I prefer a sink/preparation island and cooking along one wall. When guests are there, food is plated at the cooktop and then served. The island is then tidy and pots etc. are partly kept warm on the cooktop.

Living area/TV corner/reading corner etc. preferably separate or separable.

Ah. kbt09 sees it exactly the same way as I do. So I'm not isolated after all.

And a cook knows: first you clean the food, later the dishes.

Anyone who lets both collide is doing something wrong.

Situations where food cleaning still needs to be done while dishes could already be away arise automatically in larger actions. You just have to leave some things standing longer to correctly maintain the separation. You don’t let that collide, it is an unavoidable side effect of larger cooking events.

I also don’t have two sinks, but I would see an advantage in that. Reason see above!

And I stick to my opinion: With the open concept, especially as described by kbt09, I want to be facing the guests in the dining area as much as possible while cooking, or chatting with those who are sitting opposite at the island.

In both cases, I find a preparation island better, because a) more time is spent on it (of course this doesn’t apply if preparations are completed before the guests arrive), b) I don’t like it when things are frying and a guest is sitting opposite in the direction of the grease splatters, and c) I prepare cocktails there and the A&O for that is a sink right next to it.
And d) extraction systems have much higher costs on islands than on a wall with the same effectiveness. Nothing against downdraft in principle, but it’s definitely more expensive.

An ergonomic workflow can be realized in all variants, I do not dispute that.

I like separate kitchens. For me, I can no longer imagine an open kitchen. I once had one in an apartment, but I didn’t really cook elaborate meals or bake much there. Nowadays, it’s different.

Currently, we have a small separate kitchen, but we are remodeling. The kitchen will then be moved to another room, which will be about 25 sqm. On one side of the room there will be an L-shaped kitchen with a peninsula, opposite a small line of units. In the back part of the room, in the corner, is the door to the pantry, and along the wall around the corner there will be 4 tall cabinets with a small table in front. On the right side there is then a door leading to the laundry cellar and garden. To the left is the door to the hallway/dining room with a large corner bench. Another large secondary entrance door in the kitchen leads directly to the terrace – which is in front of the house, so I can conveniently use this door to put away the groceries.

I cook and bake a lot, well, of course that would also work in an open kitchen; but I also do a lot of canning. For that, you need a lot of space for preparation, then a lot of steam is created during the canning process so the hood runs (or ventilation is done), and the jars also need to cool down afterwards. Our living room is upstairs and is only used in the evening – it’s not huge, rather cozy and with a somewhat lower ceiling. Then the wood stove is fired up and it quickly gets nicely warm.

In summer, we celebrate on the terrace or in the hallway at the large table. Although I don’t serve huge menus at celebrations; rather, a buffet with cold and warm/hot dishes is prepared.

We actually do almost everything on the island. Somehow nice when you look into the room. Our ground floor is open, so you can see over the dining table into the living room. Even when one cooks alone, you don't feel lonely. I would do the cooking area on the island exactly the same way again. The hood is used 90% of the time just as a lamp. We cook vegetarian and mostly low-fat; the odors are eliminated by the controlled residential ventilation within 30 minutes.

Unfortunately, I only have an old picture in a half-finished state. The terrace door is directly to the left.