ᐅ House Floor Plan with a Separate Apartment – Suggestions for Improvement?
Created on: 31 Aug 2022 12:31
M
MarlenP
Hello everyone,
we plan to build a house with two residential units on a 472m2 (5,079 sq ft) plot of land (Unit 1: 143.39m2 (1,543 sq ft) / Unit 2: 69.57m2 (749 sq ft)).
The second unit is intended for my parents, while the main unit is for my family, which includes my spouse and three children (ages 7, 13, and 17).
Since our plot is relatively small, we want to build a compact house to maximize the garden space.
We are currently in the final planning stage and would appreciate your feedback on our project.
We have a feeling that we might have overlooked some important aspects or not paid enough attention to certain details because our planning focus was mainly on the compactness of the house.
Development Plan / Restrictions
Plot size: 472m2 (5,079 sq ft)
Slope: no
Site coverage ratio: 0.4
Floor area ratio: 0.6
Building envelope, building line, and boundary
Perimeter development: south and east
Number of parking spaces: 2
Number of floors: 2
Roof type: hipped roof
Architectural style:
Orientation: south/west
Maximum heights / limits: 10m (33 ft)
Additional requirements
Client Requirements
Architectural style, roof type, building type: urban villa
Basement, number of storeys: no basement
Number of occupants and ages: Unit 1 – 5 people (ages 43, 38, 17, 13, 7); Unit 2 – 2 people, both over 60
Space needs on ground floor / upper floor:
Office: family use or home office? -
Number of guest stays per year: 2-3 times per year
Open or closed layout: open
Traditional or modern build style: modern
Open kitchen, with or without island: open kitchen, no island
Number of dining seats: 5
Fireplace: no
Music / stereo wall: no
Balcony or roof terrace: no
Garage or carport: garage
Utility garden, greenhouse: no
Other wishes / special features / daily routines, also reasons why certain features are included or excluded
The house should be compact but still feel spacious.
House Design
Planning by:
- planner from a construction company
- architect: by the architect
- do-it-yourself
What do you particularly like? Why? It is a relatively small house with two residential units.
What do you dislike? Why? Maybe some rooms (children’s rooms and the rooms in the secondary unit) are too small?
Price estimate according to architect/planner: approx. 600,000€
Personal budget limit for house including fittings: 650,000€
Preferred heating system: district heating
If you had to give up something, which details or expansions
- could you do without: basically nothing – we have already minimized everything.
- could you not do without: the planned number of rooms
Why did the design end up like it is? For example:
Standard design from the planner?
Which wishes were implemented by the architect? Yes
A mix of many examples from various magazines…
What makes it particularly good or bad in your opinion?
What is the most important/basic question about the floor plan in 130 characters?
We wanted the house to be as compact as possible. Maybe we focused too much on compactness and neglected other important aspects.
What do you like about the house, what do you not like so much, and what would be unacceptable?
we plan to build a house with two residential units on a 472m2 (5,079 sq ft) plot of land (Unit 1: 143.39m2 (1,543 sq ft) / Unit 2: 69.57m2 (749 sq ft)).
The second unit is intended for my parents, while the main unit is for my family, which includes my spouse and three children (ages 7, 13, and 17).
Since our plot is relatively small, we want to build a compact house to maximize the garden space.
We are currently in the final planning stage and would appreciate your feedback on our project.
We have a feeling that we might have overlooked some important aspects or not paid enough attention to certain details because our planning focus was mainly on the compactness of the house.
Development Plan / Restrictions
Plot size: 472m2 (5,079 sq ft)
Slope: no
Site coverage ratio: 0.4
Floor area ratio: 0.6
Building envelope, building line, and boundary
Perimeter development: south and east
Number of parking spaces: 2
Number of floors: 2
Roof type: hipped roof
Architectural style:
Orientation: south/west
Maximum heights / limits: 10m (33 ft)
Additional requirements
Client Requirements
Architectural style, roof type, building type: urban villa
Basement, number of storeys: no basement
Number of occupants and ages: Unit 1 – 5 people (ages 43, 38, 17, 13, 7); Unit 2 – 2 people, both over 60
Space needs on ground floor / upper floor:
Office: family use or home office? -
Number of guest stays per year: 2-3 times per year
Open or closed layout: open
Traditional or modern build style: modern
Open kitchen, with or without island: open kitchen, no island
Number of dining seats: 5
Fireplace: no
Music / stereo wall: no
Balcony or roof terrace: no
Garage or carport: garage
Utility garden, greenhouse: no
Other wishes / special features / daily routines, also reasons why certain features are included or excluded
The house should be compact but still feel spacious.
House Design
Planning by:
- planner from a construction company
- architect: by the architect
- do-it-yourself
What do you particularly like? Why? It is a relatively small house with two residential units.
What do you dislike? Why? Maybe some rooms (children’s rooms and the rooms in the secondary unit) are too small?
Price estimate according to architect/planner: approx. 600,000€
Personal budget limit for house including fittings: 650,000€
Preferred heating system: district heating
If you had to give up something, which details or expansions
- could you do without: basically nothing – we have already minimized everything.
- could you not do without: the planned number of rooms
Why did the design end up like it is? For example:
Standard design from the planner?
Which wishes were implemented by the architect? Yes
A mix of many examples from various magazines…
What makes it particularly good or bad in your opinion?
What is the most important/basic question about the floor plan in 130 characters?
We wanted the house to be as compact as possible. Maybe we focused too much on compactness and neglected other important aspects.
What do you like about the house, what do you not like so much, and what would be unacceptable?
MarlenP schrieb:
Currently, we are not planning a room for my brother in the granny flat Dear Katja, dear planners,
We can start everything over again now 😉
K a t j a schrieb:
I can definitely understand when a building owner who goes through this journey eventually gets fed up. 😀 Notice anything? I like to puzzle things out… and I know that in the past few days I had several very good ideas… without my student son in the granny flat… and if I were now a professional architect working for the building owner, I would be fed up by now 😀 😱 😎 Because last week was wasted time… simply lost. 😳
ypg schrieb:
We can start everything over again now Well, it doesn’t have to be completely new. Würfel’s ideas were actually quite good. You could skip the interior bathroom and maybe turn that space into a storage room for the vacuum cleaner and so on. The washing machine could go into the children’s bathroom, and then the brother could use it too. The so-called “brother’s room” would then become a guest room.
@ypg .. my parents, 86 and 83 years old, are quite happy with their 120 sqm (1,292 sq ft) home with a basement 😉. They are still in good shape and simply can’t imagine having a separate apartment. Especially since they already need two bedrooms plus an office/piano room 😉. They renovated their kitchen 7 years ago and later regretted not doing it 5 years earlier. It was still the original kitchen from 1980, and of course, I made sure to plan in all the “good stuff” into their small two-wall kitchen 😉.
kbt09 schrieb:
Well, it doesn’t necessarily have to be completely new. Würfels’ approaches were already quite good.Then at least link the design… sorry, but it’s tedious having to search through all of that.ypg schrieb:
Then at least link the design… sorry, but it’s tedious to have to keep track of everything.Found it through Würfel’s profile. That completely slipped past me… yes, it’s great. The room for the brother as a guest room, the bathroom as a utility room. Could the kitchen in the granny flat give up some space for the bathroom?
I would say the images have been changed enough by now, and the original poster should start making a decision. @Würfel* made a suggestion in post #89, and Yvonne contributed ideas starting from post #116, which I propose as options to consider. Several proposals from Katja could also be "reviewed" to check whether the first two might have missed any significant ideas. When working with a hired architect, you wouldn’t endlessly revise the 148,713th draft hoping for the ultimate breakthrough; instead, you would systematically refine a design that can be approved and call it done.
My suggestion would therefore be that the original poster simply evaluate the designs from @Würfel* and @ypg against the simple criterion of "Has the Pareto optimum been reached—YES or NO?" (or, if necessary, "YES, but..."), and then instruct the planner to develop one or both of these further.
I consider the idea of trying to find a theoretical perfect solution by going all the way "back to the beginning" a lost cause, because any potential gains in perfection would not justify the additional time required. The point that
In my opinion, both of the aforementioned designs are mature enough that, if the brother’s guest suite is partially or fully removed, a professional planner could develop them into usable construction drawings. The final result might reach 99.75% perfection rather than 99.99%, but that is something to live with. The emergency brake has been pulled, but no one needs to take Ilsebill Fischer (or even Princess [USER=50531]@Shiny86) as an example.
https://www.instagram.com/11antgmxde/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/bauen-jetzt/
My suggestion would therefore be that the original poster simply evaluate the designs from @Würfel* and @ypg against the simple criterion of "Has the Pareto optimum been reached—YES or NO?" (or, if necessary, "YES, but..."), and then instruct the planner to develop one or both of these further.
I consider the idea of trying to find a theoretical perfect solution by going all the way "back to the beginning" a lost cause, because any potential gains in perfection would not justify the additional time required. The point that
ypg schrieb:seems too real to ignore in the quest for some ideal highest art.
pricing can no longer be maintained with the delays
In my opinion, both of the aforementioned designs are mature enough that, if the brother’s guest suite is partially or fully removed, a professional planner could develop them into usable construction drawings. The final result might reach 99.75% perfection rather than 99.99%, but that is something to live with. The emergency brake has been pulled, but no one needs to take Ilsebill Fischer (or even Princess [USER=50531]@Shiny86) as an example.
https://www.instagram.com/11antgmxde/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/bauen-jetzt/
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