ᐅ Why are most urban villas built with a square floor plan?

Long narrow urban villas with gabled roofs are called Schloss, Palais, or Palazzo. If there are golden lion heads in front, it is a Bavarian castle; if two eagles, Prussian; if two fish heads, then Schleswig-Holstein. Karsten

Nordlys schrieb:
Elongated urban villas with gable roofs are called Schloss, Palais, or Palazzo. If there are golden lion heads in front, it is a Bavarian castle; if two eagles, Prussian; if two fish heads, then from Schleswig-Holstein. Karsten

But I can hardly just search for Schloss on Pinterest or Google now.

MIA_SAN_MIA__ schrieb:
Is there a specific term for houses with a classic hipped roof?

During the era of town villas, houses with hipped roofs were often considered the more typical style, and today, in the era of replacement villas, there is no special term for them.

Alex85 schrieb:
I was just trying to come up with a definition based on my impression of this house type. I’m not building this kind of house myself,

That’s how I understood it too: it reflects your understanding of the term, not necessarily that you are building like that yourself.

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https://www.instagram.com/11antgmxde/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/bauen-jetzt/

I imagine it always has to do with the era in which the villas were built. Perhaps square-shaped villas also appear more impressive the larger they are... they are certainly beautiful.

Alex85 schrieb:
To me, a city villa is a house with two full stories, no knee wall, and a relatively shallow hipped roof.

11ant schrieb:
That means you belong to exactly the majority that markets respond to.

I agree with Alex85, although I want to emphasize that the term was introduced from the seller’s side.

The houses geometrically similar to today’s so-called city villas, which were built all over Germany mainly in the 1930s, I generally only knew as "single-family or two-family houses." At most, some people called them a “coffee grinder.” Back then, shallow hipped roofs were not yet common; typical roof styles were hipped roofs and mansard roofs.

Of course, there were villas as well, usually called manor houses (in rural areas) or villas, industrialist villas (in urban areas). In my opinion, the truly proper villa or palazzo exist only south of the Alps. Castles are older but are practically absent in bourgeois building traditions, in my humble opinion (exceptions confirm the rule).

We were looking for a house with two full stories and no sloped walls. The sellers always answered, "So, a city villa." Fine by me... The building permit, however, states “single-family house.”

By the way, the footprint of our house is square. We like it, and a custom architectural design was not possible anyway due to the developer’s setup.

Maximum and nearly square landscape formats (or transverse and nearly square portrait formats

Hello @11ant,

could you explain what you mean? I’m a bit lost here.

We built on a plot that allowed a maximum house width of 10 meters (33 feet), but then the garage could only be 3 meters (10 feet) wide. In the end, we built with dimensions of 9 x 15 meters (30 x 50 feet). So I can speak as a homeowner directly affected by a highly non-square floor plan. We designed our house ourselves “back then,” about a year ago. One advantage is that the long north side provides enough space to place the front door and staircase side by side in the center. On the south side, we like that the ground floor accommodates the dining area, living room, and guest room. The upper floor is symmetrically divided into four fairly large rooms, meeting our desire for large bedrooms, children’s rooms, and a bathroom with a sauna. I’m sure not everyone would like that.

Today, I would consider the excessively large roof area in relation to the enclosed volume a disadvantage. We have a 43° half-hipped roof with 60 cm (24 inches) eaves overhangs. Also, our living area is logically relatively small due to the unfavorable ratio of perimeter to floor area of the footprint, especially with the wall construction of about 54 cm (21 inches) (brick construction).