ᐅ Single-family hillside house with basement for 2 people, including a home office and hobby rooms

Development Plan / Restrictions
Plot Size
Slope: see attachment. Quite steep near the street at the bottom, fairly flat at the "garden" area at the top
Floor Area Ratio 0.4
Building Coverage Ratio 0.8
Building envelope, building line, and boundary: irregular building envelope, see attachment, 18 meters
Edge development: not permitted except for ancillary buildings
Number of parking spaces: 2
Number of floors: not specified
Roof shape: not specified
Architectural style: not specified
Orientation: not specified
Maximum heights / limits: eaves height (section from exterior wall to roof covering at street level) 7.5 meters (24.6 feet), ridge height not specified.
Other requirements

Homeowners’ Requirements
Architectural style, roof shape, building type: gable or hip roof, preferably with dormers to add variation to the large roof
Basement, floors: basement, then ground floor, then upper floor with 1.40-meter (55 inches) knee wall
Number of occupants, age: 2 adults around 30 years old, 3 cats, no children planned but 2 rooms on the upper floor specifically desired for hobbies
Space requirements on ground and upper floors: see floor plan
Office: family use or home office? Both working from home, so office needed on upper floor and a partially finished basement for a second office (this layout is desired)
Guest stays per year: about 6 nights per year
Open or closed layout: ?
Conservative or modern construction: ?
Open kitchen, island: no kitchen island, closed kitchen
Number of dining seats: 4
Fireplace: yes
Music / stereo wall: no
Balcony, roof terrace: no
Garage, carport: garage for 2 cars with a wide door
Utility garden, greenhouse: no
Further wishes / special features / daily routine, including reasons: garage access to basement is important because of frequent off-site appointments, so I don’t want to walk through wind and rain. This elongated room is the sports room and must be kept as is.

House Design
Who designed it:
- Do-it-yourself
What do you particularly like? Why? Laundry room next to the bathroom, as I want a laundry chute for dirty clothes here.
What don’t you like? Why? After about 100 redesigns, everything is now satisfactory.
Price estimate according to architect/planner: no cost estimate yet for this floor plan.
Personal budget limit for the house, including fittings: 500,000
Preferred heating technology: air-to-water heat pump with underfloor heating

If you had to give up, which details / extensions
- could you do without: second hobby room on upper floor, guest room on ground floor, instead use rooms in the basement.
- cannot give up: everything else

Why did the design end up as it is?
It’s a mix of many examples from various magazines… then tailored to our needs and the required functions of each room. Considerations included whether a room should be on the ground or upper floor, orientation, adjoining rooms, and traffic flows. Bedroom next to dressing room and bathroom, facing the garden, not above the living room, because my partner often has visitors in the evenings when I want to sleep. Office with no morning sun because sunlight disturbs me when working on screens, and I usually work early in the morning. Bathroom facing the garden.

What do you think makes it particularly good or bad?

What is the most important / fundamental question about the floor plan in 130 characters?

Do you have any suggestions for improvement?

The garage is planned on the left side of the house. The street is on the south side, and the garden extends to the northeast. The terrace should wrap around the corner near the living and dining area to get evening sun, but also provide shade during the summer midday heat. It is a south-facing slope. The neighboring houses are only bungalows built into the slope, so they do not block the light.

wibble schrieb:

The garage is planned to the left side of the house. The south faces the street side, and the garden extends to the northeast.

wibble schrieb:

Bathroom facing the garden.

The bathroom in your plan faces the entrance side, but also the garden. The street is on the south side, so the entrance is not facing the street...
This is a bit confusing. It reads like a daily puzzle: “find the basement.”
Please simply mark the orientation of the plot and draw the house including the garage on it.

wibble schrieb:

Personal budget limit for the house, including fittings: 500,000

This is tight in this case. The basement is still missing. Do you have one?

wibble schrieb:

Any suggestions for improvements?

Yes. The upper floor feels poorly planned; many rooms are badly shaped and dark without windows. The corridor is dark, the bedroom is a small cramped space where you almost trip over the bed at the door.

wibble schrieb:

because my partner often has guests in the evening when I want to sleep already.

Is that why the walk-in closet, where you also undress, is located behind the bedroom? That layout will be very disruptive for you. Have you considered this? Definitely swap that around.

wibble schrieb:

This elongated room is the gym and is needed as such. L

Since I exercise myself, I find it hard to believe that 1.60 m (5 ft 3 in) in width is intentional. Or do you want to install a pull-up bar between the walls? Please clarify. Otherwise, to me, it looks like a storage room. Even a storage room deserves a small window.

On the ground floor, the open-plan area has an okay layout but will be quite dark if north is supposed to be to the right side (oh yes, the orientation is still not confirmed...). The guest room there also feels like a small cramped space to me. The house is large, but there are only small cramped rooms everywhere...

Where will the terrace be located?

According to the questionnaire, you don’t have many overnight guests. Do you really need a separate guest room, especially if you are planning to have many other rooms?

Ps: I also didn’t understand which floor goes where (terrace, garage…). Is one of them the basement?

wibble schrieb:

What do you think makes it particularly good or bad?

The positive aspect is that you have thought about living in the house—evening noise, sunlight on screens, exercise...

wibble schrieb:

A mix of many examples from various magazines... and then reviewed

The negative aspect is the order—first the requirements, then the design.

A few points about the design:

• To achieve real soundproofing from people downstairs, the living area needs a door. You will hear everything through the staircase, regardless of whether the bedroom is above or opposite upstairs.
• The workspace is laid out so that you have to squeeze between the desk and the back wall. A matter of preference—but ergonomically this is suboptimal, especially since there is enough space available.
• The arrangement of the bedroom and walk-in closet is questionable. If the bedroom should remain central, I would suggest a second door from the closet leading to the hallway. Otherwise, consider a layout where the closet provides access to the bathroom on one side and the bedroom on the other.
• The L-shaped exercise room might be designed for a specific piece of equipment—but if you don’t necessarily need three rooms upstairs, it would be better to plan for a larger office and a bigger exercise space.
• There are no windows on the upper floor—unless you specifically want a basement-like atmosphere. In that case, the planned basement rooms would also suit that purpose.
• What times of day do you use the dining table and the living room? This affects the orientation and the associated natural light.
• You have the space to include a proper guest bedroom—consider giving it a dedicated bathroom as well (this comes from someone skeptical about showers on the ground floor).
• A closed kitchen is fine, but the distance to the dining area is inconveniently long. A layout with a serving hatch would likely be more practical.

With a budget of 500,000€ you can build something truly special and exactly right for two people on a hillside. With your current design, you are pushing the budget limits and not even translating the requirements into good architecture. That’s a shame. Give an architect who is enthusiastic about your project a budget of 420,000€ and your requirements. If they have creative freedom, you have a chance of getting a result that far exceeds your imagination in a positive way. At the same time, keep 20% in reserve for finishing touches and cost contingencies—architects can sometimes nonchalantly overshoot the budget.