IIRC there were some studies on where people in the US spend their waking hours at home and, at the time, for most people, it was overwhelmingly the bathroom and the kitchen/dining-area. The dining area especially was where everyone did their bills and homework and such, and where mail got left when it came in from the mailbox. I think a bad misreading of those results was why builders wasted kitchen space on built-in desks for a bunch of years, before everyone realized how dumb that was and knocked it off.

(this wasn't factoring in WFH, of course—I think most of the important original work was done in like the 70s)