Hello,
My wife and I visited a model home park for prefabricated houses yesterday, and we noticed that each house offered various features and floor plans whose practical benefits I don’t quite understand. That’s why I’m starting this thread, hoping you can explain the advantages of these choices or point out what I might be missing and why it still makes sense to design a house that way:
1. Almost every house had floor-to-ceiling windows installed. What’s the purpose of these? I imagine they would be terrible both in summer and winter. Wouldn’t it get extremely hot in summer? And in winter, don’t you constantly have to lower the blinds so that anyone passing by can’t look directly into the living room or inside the house? Also, isn’t the effort to clean those windows huge? Am I missing something? Do they have advantages that I don’t see?
2. There wasn’t a single house where the kitchen and dining area were separated from the living space; at best, the kitchen was separated from the dining area. I understand that having everything open makes the space appear larger and is better for hosting many people, but isn’t it very impractical? If I’m frying or cooking something in the kitchen, doesn’t the whole living room end up smelling like food? It would also bother me that as soon as my wife or I have guests over, the other person couldn’t sit in the living room and watch TV quietly, for example. This might sound a bit picky, but for me, it’s important that everyone can invite their friends without the other person always being within earshot or needing to get out of the way somehow. Why are open-plan ground floors so common? What are the real advantages?
3. The balconies on the upper floor are always accessible from one of the children’s bedrooms and the parents’ bedroom. Doesn’t that significantly affect privacy? I can’t imagine it’s great if my child can constantly knock on our bedroom door via the balcony, for example. Also, if you have two children, wouldn’t the one without a balcony be at a disadvantage?
I don’t want to bias you with my opinions here—I’m completely open to your views because I’d like to be convinced of the benefits. So I would like to know your reasons for including such features in your plans. Alternatively, has anyone built in a more “traditional” way and can speak to the practicality of these layout choices?
Best regards
My wife and I visited a model home park for prefabricated houses yesterday, and we noticed that each house offered various features and floor plans whose practical benefits I don’t quite understand. That’s why I’m starting this thread, hoping you can explain the advantages of these choices or point out what I might be missing and why it still makes sense to design a house that way:
1. Almost every house had floor-to-ceiling windows installed. What’s the purpose of these? I imagine they would be terrible both in summer and winter. Wouldn’t it get extremely hot in summer? And in winter, don’t you constantly have to lower the blinds so that anyone passing by can’t look directly into the living room or inside the house? Also, isn’t the effort to clean those windows huge? Am I missing something? Do they have advantages that I don’t see?
2. There wasn’t a single house where the kitchen and dining area were separated from the living space; at best, the kitchen was separated from the dining area. I understand that having everything open makes the space appear larger and is better for hosting many people, but isn’t it very impractical? If I’m frying or cooking something in the kitchen, doesn’t the whole living room end up smelling like food? It would also bother me that as soon as my wife or I have guests over, the other person couldn’t sit in the living room and watch TV quietly, for example. This might sound a bit picky, but for me, it’s important that everyone can invite their friends without the other person always being within earshot or needing to get out of the way somehow. Why are open-plan ground floors so common? What are the real advantages?
3. The balconies on the upper floor are always accessible from one of the children’s bedrooms and the parents’ bedroom. Doesn’t that significantly affect privacy? I can’t imagine it’s great if my child can constantly knock on our bedroom door via the balcony, for example. Also, if you have two children, wouldn’t the one without a balcony be at a disadvantage?
I don’t want to bias you with my opinions here—I’m completely open to your views because I’d like to be convinced of the benefits. So I would like to know your reasons for including such features in your plans. Alternatively, has anyone built in a more “traditional” way and can speak to the practicality of these layout choices?
Best regards
C
chand198620 Oct 2017 21:16haydee,
I think 11ant and nordlys are being a bit sarcastic.
I want my kitchen open because I use it a lot. It’s not about the money for a wall either.
I think 11ant and nordlys are being a bit sarcastic.
I want my kitchen open because I use it a lot. It’s not about the money for a wall either.
I still find the following layout the most practical:
- Living area – preferably a closed room with a sofa corner, TV, and other cozy features
- LARGE kitchen/dining room – for everything related to cooking, eating, playing games comfortably, chatting, parties that end in the kitchen, and so on
- Advantage – there is a door between the kitchen and the living area
- You save a dining spot and can instead have a really great table
- No one has to sit on the sofa facing the dishes
Or you can build a cozy L-shape, so you can just barely see the dining table from the living room, but not much more.
Large open-plan living areas were not even possible structurally in the past, or in kitchens where staff worked and you didn’t want to see them, just the finished food. Nowadays, technology is completely different, and of course, you can’t rely on loud, low-quality appliances like those from IKEA. Many people today don’t primarily cook greasy, dripping, and smelly meals anymore, but rather use, for example, a steam oven for vegetables or prepare a raw salad. When odors do occur, they are quietly and efficiently extracted by systems like Berbel or Gutmann, not by the IKEA Molnigt. I still remember from my parents’ and grandparents’ generation that the kitchen constantly smelled. There might be homemade fish soup again or a large meat stew or something else – all dishes that seem unusual to us now (a lot of meat, greasy, unhealthy, bland...).
Nutrition is a pretty big trend topic right now, as anyone who occasionally reads a newspaper will know. Even local papers have started publishing articles on Paleo, vegan, gluten-free, clean eating, and so on, though often very superficially covered.
And in contrast to these healthy or seemingly healthy diets, there is the now permitted import of the world’s most widespread toxin (high fructose corn syrup). Because it’s extremely cheap, it will soon be used in all ready-made meals.
So, if you have the right technology available that works quietly and efficiently, I see no reason to outsource certain daily living activities to separate rooms. Of course, if you make fish soup every other day, you might be better served with a separate kitchen.
Large open-plan living areas were not even possible structurally in the past, or in kitchens where staff worked and you didn’t want to see them, just the finished food. Nowadays, technology is completely different, and of course, you can’t rely on loud, low-quality appliances like those from IKEA. Many people today don’t primarily cook greasy, dripping, and smelly meals anymore, but rather use, for example, a steam oven for vegetables or prepare a raw salad. When odors do occur, they are quietly and efficiently extracted by systems like Berbel or Gutmann, not by the IKEA Molnigt. I still remember from my parents’ and grandparents’ generation that the kitchen constantly smelled. There might be homemade fish soup again or a large meat stew or something else – all dishes that seem unusual to us now (a lot of meat, greasy, unhealthy, bland...).
Nutrition is a pretty big trend topic right now, as anyone who occasionally reads a newspaper will know. Even local papers have started publishing articles on Paleo, vegan, gluten-free, clean eating, and so on, though often very superficially covered.
And in contrast to these healthy or seemingly healthy diets, there is the now permitted import of the world’s most widespread toxin (high fructose corn syrup). Because it’s extremely cheap, it will soon be used in all ready-made meals.
So, if you have the right technology available that works quietly and efficiently, I see no reason to outsource certain daily living activities to separate rooms. Of course, if you make fish soup every other day, you might be better served with a separate kitchen.
Nordlys schrieb:
What you wrote was actually our plan too. But with 13.5 by 10 meters (44 by 33 feet), it didn’t really work. And bigger wasn’t possible for financial reasons and because of the floor area ratio. So we ended up with just a small four-person table in the kitchen.Yes, it is possible even in small houses—exactly!
I already said this last week [emoji12]
You just have to give up a 20 m² (215 sq ft) living room and choose a slightly smaller size for watching TV, which then benefits the kitchen.
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