ᐅ Floor plan and 3D images of a 160m² urban villa. Please provide your feedback :)
Created on: 8 Jun 2019 13:44
K
Keenan86
Hello dear forum community,
My wife and I are planning to start our building project in a few months. It will be an urban villa with approximately 160 m² (1,722 sq ft) of living space. We have already purchased the plot of land (540 m² (5,813 sq ft)) and are currently in the planning phase. We would like to build with a general contractor and are actually quite satisfied with the one we have chosen so far.
However, we are not entirely sure about the floor plan and whether it really works well. This is our first (and hopefully last) building project. We would appreciate feedback from more experienced people who can offer us some tips. Thanks in advance!
My wife and I are planning to start our building project in a few months. It will be an urban villa with approximately 160 m² (1,722 sq ft) of living space. We have already purchased the plot of land (540 m² (5,813 sq ft)) and are currently in the planning phase. We would like to build with a general contractor and are actually quite satisfied with the one we have chosen so far.
However, we are not entirely sure about the floor plan and whether it really works well. This is our first (and hopefully last) building project. We would appreciate feedback from more experienced people who can offer us some tips. Thanks in advance!
Keenan86 schrieb:
Unfortunately, I don’t have an exact site plan yet. This is a new development area where no new houses have been built so far. I’m attaching the zoning plan in case it helps... Have you considered drawing the plot to scale at 1:100 and sketching in the house along with the driveway, front yard, garage, and terrace, including shading and sunlight exposure, etc.?
I find the house a bit too plain in terms of the living and common areas.
11ant schrieb:
Less ideal are the tree with two parking spaces in front of the property; and there is a playground behind the garden. It always depends on how you look at it.
You could also appreciate that an established tree already exists and that visitor parking is available.
A rather carelessly thrown-together design...
Why is there a large corner window on the ground floor? Sure, it looks stylish, but here it doesn’t fit and is actually disruptive. The kitchen cannot properly “unfold,” resulting in a dining area that hardly deserves that name, with plenty of unused space left in the middle. Consider what kind of kitchen you want, how large the dining area should be, and then plan the windows accordingly—not the other way around. Usually, you need more space for the dining table than for the living room—and often this is planned exactly the opposite. What do you really do in the living room corner? Sit a bit on the sofa, watch TV, relax—think about how much space in square meters is appropriate for that. And how unfortunate it is when there isn’t enough room around the dining table.
Walk-in closets without windows and too narrow! Access to the bedroom is better through the walk-in closet than having a walk-in closet trapped inside the bedroom. And what is the ballroom in front of the bed supposed to be? There is limited space on both sides of the bed instead.
I also fear that the utility room will be too small for a house without a cellar—at least if it’s supposed to accommodate the washing machine, dryer, and possibly a clothes drying rack once in a while. Or is the drying rack supposed to be in the open living area??? I wouldn’t want that... It’s better to consider a utility room on the upper floor—where the laundry actually happens! And if I take away the ballroom from the bedroom and reduce the larger child’s room by a few square meters, an extra utility room would fit.
I would also always consider running all the plumbing on one side of the house—either the bathroom on the same side as the kitchen, or vice versa.
If the extra room on the ground floor isn’t needed, then I wouldn’t plan for it at all or at least make it significantly smaller—allowing for more relaxed space on the ground floor.
Items that are rarely needed can probably be stored in the attic—but that’s hardly enjoyable, and with two children planned, you will quickly accumulate more “urgent!” items than you can imagine. And you don’t want to constantly carry those things up and down.
The exterior views are ugly, sorry. While I also support arranging windows according to function rather than designing rooms based on how the exterior looks, you can still consider the external appearance a bit.
The entrance area strikes me as too narrow—and visually, I find the standard-width front door without sidelights... well, let’s politely say “suboptimal.” With two children, possibly both still using strollers/prams, the hallway is definitely too small. Where should the stroller go in winter?
There are standard floor plans that are better.
And I agree with 11ant—try to think beyond the square shape, even if the general contractor prefers that. With a rectangular floor plan, you always have more window possibilities relative to the floor area than with a square— or put differently: with a square, there tends to be dead, windowless space in the middle. I don’t like that...
Why is there a large corner window on the ground floor? Sure, it looks stylish, but here it doesn’t fit and is actually disruptive. The kitchen cannot properly “unfold,” resulting in a dining area that hardly deserves that name, with plenty of unused space left in the middle. Consider what kind of kitchen you want, how large the dining area should be, and then plan the windows accordingly—not the other way around. Usually, you need more space for the dining table than for the living room—and often this is planned exactly the opposite. What do you really do in the living room corner? Sit a bit on the sofa, watch TV, relax—think about how much space in square meters is appropriate for that. And how unfortunate it is when there isn’t enough room around the dining table.
Walk-in closets without windows and too narrow! Access to the bedroom is better through the walk-in closet than having a walk-in closet trapped inside the bedroom. And what is the ballroom in front of the bed supposed to be? There is limited space on both sides of the bed instead.
I also fear that the utility room will be too small for a house without a cellar—at least if it’s supposed to accommodate the washing machine, dryer, and possibly a clothes drying rack once in a while. Or is the drying rack supposed to be in the open living area??? I wouldn’t want that... It’s better to consider a utility room on the upper floor—where the laundry actually happens! And if I take away the ballroom from the bedroom and reduce the larger child’s room by a few square meters, an extra utility room would fit.
I would also always consider running all the plumbing on one side of the house—either the bathroom on the same side as the kitchen, or vice versa.
If the extra room on the ground floor isn’t needed, then I wouldn’t plan for it at all or at least make it significantly smaller—allowing for more relaxed space on the ground floor.
Items that are rarely needed can probably be stored in the attic—but that’s hardly enjoyable, and with two children planned, you will quickly accumulate more “urgent!” items than you can imagine. And you don’t want to constantly carry those things up and down.
The exterior views are ugly, sorry. While I also support arranging windows according to function rather than designing rooms based on how the exterior looks, you can still consider the external appearance a bit.
The entrance area strikes me as too narrow—and visually, I find the standard-width front door without sidelights... well, let’s politely say “suboptimal.” With two children, possibly both still using strollers/prams, the hallway is definitely too small. Where should the stroller go in winter?
There are standard floor plans that are better.
And I agree with 11ant—try to think beyond the square shape, even if the general contractor prefers that. With a rectangular floor plan, you always have more window possibilities relative to the floor area than with a square— or put differently: with a square, there tends to be dead, windowless space in the middle. I don’t like that...
Keenan86 schrieb:
I don’t have a detailed site plan yet. This is a new development area where no houses have been built so far. I’m attaching the zoning plan in case it helps...
[IMG alt="planer-Architekt-Lageplan-328320-1.jpg"]https://www.hausbau-forum.de/data/attachments/34/34564-ab13767dbfb563a927ae759b2dd850cd.jpg[/IMG]11ant schrieb:
Less ideal are the tree and two parking spaces in front of the plot; and there is a playground behind the garden.Two parking spaces and a tree in front of the property initially block access to the plot according to the sketch plan.
It is probably not to scale and only a schematic representation, but it could still hold some surprises.
For example, in our case, there was a city plan for the driveway access. In individual cases, driveways could be relocated upon request.
Hello everyone,
I visited the planner again today and discussed some of the points mentioned here. We will remove the living area on the ground floor to make room for the kitchen there. The dining area will then have enough space. The guest toilet will be located to the west, underneath the kitchen, so that the utility room on the ground floor becomes larger. We want to keep the corner window and possibly create a play area for the children there, so that the kids can be seen both from the kitchen and the living room. We prefer a very open layout and do not like smaller, more compartmentalized rooms. The master bedroom upstairs will be shortened in length and made a bit wider. We will also reduce the size of the bathroom slightly and give the extra square meters to the smaller children’s bedroom. We will see if we can make the entrance area larger as well. Regarding the front door, it will probably not be possible to have sidelights, as we will have a concrete staircase due to the storage space underneath. What do you think about these proposed changes?
I visited the planner again today and discussed some of the points mentioned here. We will remove the living area on the ground floor to make room for the kitchen there. The dining area will then have enough space. The guest toilet will be located to the west, underneath the kitchen, so that the utility room on the ground floor becomes larger. We want to keep the corner window and possibly create a play area for the children there, so that the kids can be seen both from the kitchen and the living room. We prefer a very open layout and do not like smaller, more compartmentalized rooms. The master bedroom upstairs will be shortened in length and made a bit wider. We will also reduce the size of the bathroom slightly and give the extra square meters to the smaller children’s bedroom. We will see if we can make the entrance area larger as well. Regarding the front door, it will probably not be possible to have sidelights, as we will have a concrete staircase due to the storage space underneath. What do you think about these proposed changes?
Otus11 schrieb:
For example, we had a plan from the city for the access and driveways. In individual cases, driveways could be relocated upon request. Yes, that is often the case.
Otus11 schrieb:
It is probably not to scale and only shown schematically, I do not share that hope at all.
Keenan86 schrieb:
What do you think of the proposed changes? I think none of those just mentioned are good. I stick to my point: assign the appropriate dimensions to each room—separately for each floor—then see what results, and stack the floor plans of this intermediate version on top of each other again. Don’t make the mistake of trying to “redistribute” space within the current exterior walls—the walls from the design discussed so far don’t exist yet, so there’s no reason to work as if you were remodeling!
You don’t necessarily have to follow the idea of side panels next to the front door with floor-to-ceiling, directly attached windows. I like the idea of a play corner. But don’t forget to correct the currently unfavorable orientation of the windows according to the cardinal directions!
My personal opinion—based not only on taste but also on construction technique—about corner windows is that they are a relatively expensive gimmick. A classic mullion doesn’t really obstruct the view; after all, you’re not looking out over Lake Geneva here.
Otherwise—@Climbee already said it—consider a cost-effective alignment of the plumbing stacks, and access the bedroom through the walk-in closet.
https://www.instagram.com/11antgmxde/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/bauen-jetzt/
Keenan86 schrieb:
since we are getting a concrete staircase because of the storage space underneath This is also possible with risers on a wooden staircase.
Where will the living room be located if
Keenan86 schrieb:
We will be painting the living area on the ground floor ?
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