ᐅ Floor Plan Single-Family Home 165 sqm First Draft – Architect Dissatisfied

Created on: 27 Oct 2024 14:06
K
Kirschsaftlady
Hello everyone,

since we are not completely satisfied with the first draft from our architect and find it difficult to translate our wishes into a design ourselves, or because some things might even be incompatible, we would appreciate suggestions and tips.

Development Plan / Restrictions
Plot size: 954 sqm (10,270 sq ft)
Slope: approximately 1 m (3.3 ft) downward from the street along the entire length
Floor-space index (FSI): 0.4
Building envelope, building line, and boundary: see architect’s plan

There is a development plan, but all exceptions we want have been approved without issues or have already been permitted for our street.

Client Requirements
Style, roof shape, building type: gable roof, single-family house, possibly with a bay window
Basement, floors: slab-on-grade, 2 full stories with a sufficiently high knee wall, small storage space under the roof
Number of occupants, age: currently 2 adults and one toddler, planning for an additional child
Space requirements on ground floor (GF) and upper floor (UF):
GF: combined utility and technical room, entrance area, cloakroom niche, guest bathroom with shower, office, open living-dining-kitchen area. Pantry, storage under the stairs
UF: 2 children’s rooms at least 15 sqm (160 sq ft) each, master bedroom with walk-in closet, family bathroom with walk-in shower and double sinks, hallway with daylight and preferably space for a chair or a small table for a sewing machine
Office: family use or home office? Home office nearly daily
Guests per year: hardly any
Open or closed layout: semi-open
Conservative or modern construction: modern
Open kitchen, cooking island: semi-open (visually screened) with attached island
Number of dining seats: 6
Fireplace: no
Music/speaker wall: no
Balcony, roof terrace: no
Garage, carport: either a double garage or a garage with carport

Additional wishes:
Stairs either straight or with a landing, not spiral
Living-dining-kitchen area should not be arranged in a single line without privacy screens, all areas with a view into the garden
Prefer an additional access from the garage/carport through the utility room
Master bedroom oriented top left on the plan, bed with a view out of a floor-to-ceiling window into the garden. Preferred access to the bedroom through the dressing room or the dressing room behind the wall behind the bed (headboard).
Prefer children’s rooms not adjoining the master bedroom wall-to-wall
I will link a plan of a kitchen we really liked in a show house
Prefer the stairs to be naturally lit
Living room at least as large as in the current plan

House Design
Designed by: architect
What do you particularly like? Why? The ground floor, except kitchen and dining area, especially the living room, is well separated and without direct view into the kitchen. The dining area feels somewhat cramped; the kitchen should be wider rather than longer, as currently the attached island looks lost.
What do you dislike? Why? Kitchen and dining area, walk-in closet cramped in a niche, bathroom too large, upper floor hallway without windows. Window areas in the master bedroom and also in the dining-kitchen area too large, cloakroom niche too small.
Price estimate according to architect/planner: none yet, a discussion about the design is still pending.
Personal budget limit for the house including fittings: excluding the plot, with all additional costs, survey, and soil report, we still have a budget of 600,000. It will be a prefabricated house, possibly painting and partial flooring done by ourselves, landscaping also mainly DIY and not immediately.
Preferred heating system: air-to-water heat pump with photovoltaic system

If you have to give up on certain details/extensions:
-can you do without: children’s room next to the master bedroom, storage and office could move upstairs if necessary, utility and technical rooms separated, second access not mandatory, pantry access directly from kitchen as well as from utility room not mandatory, bay window not essential as long as it doesn’t make the layout too open
-can’t you do without: stair shape, room layout, bedroom location, “semi-open” living-dining-kitchen area, cloakroom integrated into a niche

Why is the design the way it is?
There was an on-site meeting where brainstorming on paper followed. The current draft more or less resulted from this, but it was not yet final with dimensions and sizes, so for example, the problem with the kitchen and dining area was not visible. We communicated the negative points about the upper floor on site and actually expected a new alternative afterward.

I think all relevant information is included above; I’m happy to provide more if needed.

The dining table does not have to be directly in front of the kitchen; the focus is solely on the kitchen layout itself.

Thanks in advance for all your tips!
Upper floor plan: sleeping area + dressing room, two children’s rooms, bathroom, hallway, stairs.

Garden plan with terrace, viewing perspective, house, garage, and row of trees.

Upper floor plan: bedroom with dressing room, two children’s rooms, bathroom, hallway, stairs, flat roof.
Y
ypg
30 Oct 2024 13:48
Tolentino schrieb:

Of course, there are always individual preferences, but I argue that 80% of all (prospective) homeowners have not yet lived with a pantry and greatly overestimate its everyday importance. My recommendation for an average single-family house would always be a larger kitchen or more space for built-in cupboards in the hallway/utility room.

Off Topic
The pantry is a trend that originated from the stylish Pinterest pictures of meal prepping and storage in elegant jars. A country-style shelf with fancy jars. It has less to do with actual canning and food storage.
However, those who do get a pantry tend to maintain it and stockpile food in a storage room that would normally fit inside a kitchen cabinet. Of course, you can also use it for a second freezer or less attractive appliances and items you don’t use often.
Ultimately, it remains a storage room that needs to be cleaned and organized from time to time.
What’s emerging now is kitchen planning designed just for show, where you can mix a drink. The functional kitchen disappears as a back kitchen in a separate room, even though you initially wanted an open-plan kitchen.
E
Enrico02
30 Oct 2024 15:47
Tolentino schrieb:

Of course, there are always individual preferences, but I would argue that 80% of all (prospective) homeowners have never lived with sliding door systems and greatly overestimate their importance for everyday life. My recommendation for an average single-family home would always be a larger kitchen or more space for built-in wardrobes in the hallway/utility room.

Yes, that’s certainly true, although this is the case with almost all new things.
Almost nobody has lived before with lift-and-slide doors, huge bathrooms, large garages, separate dressing rooms, kids’ bathrooms, etc., but many people still want them in their new house, at least some of those features.
K
Kirschsaftlady
30 Oct 2024 21:12
hanghaus2023 schrieb:


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At 7%, it looks like this if you don’t want any slope from the street to the house.

1730277704690.png

That requires quite a bit of filling. In reality, the plot does not seem nearly as steep.

We will definitely bring this up in the meeting next week.


Regarding the storage room, our main concern is to have enough storage space. It doesn’t matter to us whether it is called a storage room, pantry, utility room, or actually a cellar.

In fact, we even currently have a cellar.
A
Arauki11
30 Oct 2024 21:23
That can be deceiving; here, everything initially looked flat on the green lawn, but in the end, we built a platform with two steps at the entrance and also needed a retaining wall about 80cm (31 inches) high at the back leading to the terrace, adjusting the terrain to the slope. I would recommend taking a closer look at this so that the costs don’t catch you by surprise later, especially since your plot is not small.

Therefore, you should now also consider how the outdoor area will look with the fully planned house on the site and how to handle it efficiently. The architect should include this in the design as well.
M
MachsSelbst
30 Oct 2024 22:21
By the way, you can also create a terraced garden.
I recently talked to a gardener who was working on the green strip here... he said that the trend to level everything as much as possible by filling, cutting, retaining, etc., is quite new but not beneficial.
H
hanghaus2023
31 Oct 2024 09:20
Here is a revised version of the kitchen.

Floor plan showing dining area with dining table and kitchen island in open layout