You’re thinking of expensive or maybe region-specific “designer” homes. If you just go look at most of the kinds of new houses being built, up to surprisingly high price points (as noted in TFA), it’s exactly as described. The waste of space especially drives me nuts and it’s everywhere in most new construction. Ditto shockingly bad and cheap-feeling fixtures and doors even in very expensive houses. When they do mimic huge “open” design spaces (incidentally, the Worst Thing Ever if you have kids) these kinds of builders usually do it because it’s cheaper, and then screw it up so the flow/layout, somehow, still sucks and wastes space—because all they care about is that the house looks impressive in photos on Zillow.