interesting tone you take with your question but i'm happy to explain the thinking behind this layout...if you look at the rest of the pictures of this room, it is a very large living room so we created a few different seating areas. there are 4 club chairs around the fireplace, a round table with 4 chairs/game table in another corner of the room, the built in bar to the left in this picture and then the custom built in couch you see here. this area used to be a wooden built in bench/eating nook but b/c the kitchen/great room is in the background, they didn't need another casual eating area. we changed it to what you see here. this family does a lot of entertaining and this set up seems to work perfectly for their needs.