ᐅ Floor plan of a single-family house with two unresolved issues – design inconsistency due to access through the children's bedroom?

Hi everyone,

We are a family of four with 4-year-old twins and are in the process of realizing our own home. Our journey has been ongoing for a while now. We started with an architect who primarily helped us obtain individual exemptions from certain restrictions in the development plan.

The main challenges were:

• Building height – we were allowed to deviate from the ground floor (GF) and attic floor (AF) with knee wall of 1.80m (5 ft 11 in), so we can now plan the GF and first floor (FF) with ceiling heights up to 2.8m (9 ft 2 in)
• Garages and setback issues: we are allowed to build the garage higher than originally planned – but this is not the issue we want to discuss here.

Our planners are trying to meet our budget range by defining a cost framework depending on the gross floor area (GFA). As a result, we have gone through several iterations to reduce the GFA slightly from what was originally planned.

Below, we share our current status and would really appreciate any constructive feedback.

Development Plan / Restrictions:

• Upper Bavarian region ;-)
• Remaining restrictions include a 60cm (24 inches) setback from the garage to the neighboring property
• We have to include a roof overhang that we would have preferred to avoid

Size / Location of the plot: 660 square meters (7,104 sq ft), no slope
Floor space index: 0.2
Floor area ratio: 0.4
Building envelope, building line and boundary: see image
Roof type: gable roof with 20-24° pitch
Orientation: northwest/southeast
Construction type: currently planned as solid wood construction

Client requirements

• Modern, high ceilings, intelligent use of space and storage, open living/dining area
• No basement
• 2 adults, 2 children
• Regular visits from grandparents or family
• 1-2 home office spaces (one also doubles as a fitness room)
• Sauna
• Fireplace
• Open kitchen – cooking integrated into the living space
• Sunken living room (2 steps down so that you can sit around the fireplace)
• Children’s bedrooms ideally symmetrical, or at least similarly sized

House design

• Designed by an architect who would work with the executing company for turnkey construction. Dedicated planning contract signed up to detailed design so far.
• What we like: overall, we are happy with the zoning, although we had to scale down from the original design for budget reasons – especially the ground floor plan differs only marginally from our initial, self-drawn sketches
• Note: the designs show zoning. The exact planning of the window areas will be done next.
• Heating system: heat pump
• Cost estimate: turnkey including planning approx. 900,000€

What we dislike / open for discussion:

• 1. On the ground floor, the living/dining/kitchen area seems small in relation to the overall house. Recently, we extended the house by 30cm (12 inches) to enlarge the children’s rooms on the first floor. As a result, the guest area also gained 30cm (12 inches). We would prefer to allocate these 30cm (12 inches) to the living room but have not yet received feedback regarding potential additional costs due to structural or load-bearing issues, as the vertical walls on the GF/FF would no longer align.
• 2. Upstairs, we are happy to have symmetrical children’s bedrooms. The hallway (shown in green) will be open to the roof and illuminated by skylights. The children’s rooms will have a gallery where, for example, beds can be placed. Attached are two alternatives for the first floor. They differ only in the access to the children’s rooms: “rectangular” or “diagonal.” In the diagonal variant, the children’s rooms gain about 1.3 sqm (14 sq ft) of floor space, while the gallery loses some space. Additionally, with the diagonal option, there is the question of whether the hallway height above the children’s room entrance doors should be continued or closed off, which would benefit the gallery spaces in the children’s rooms. Our planner has a strong opinion here but also acknowledges the advantages of the opposite. We would really appreciate your opinion.
  
  
  
  
  
• We would welcome any other feedback as well

Best regards,
T&S

This is not an architect’s design! - A cramped toilet without natural light, and a staircase ending with a wall that is too close...
And whether the children’s rooms are symmetrical doesn’t matter. They are not equivalent here because one child’s room does not receive any sunlight in winter.

Please also upload the ground floor plan.

Here is the ground floor plan:
I thought I had already posted it..

Wow – I’m not a floor plan expert, but having designed my own, this one already seems quite strange and uninspired...

Keep in mind you’re paying 900,000!!! for the house – for me, just “size” wouldn’t be enough...

What kind of odd utility room is that right in the middle of everything? And you have a huge pantry but no kitchen countertop space? Sight lines?

Upstairs – corridor of darkness? Placing the extra toilet right in the heart of the action...

Hope the architect/designer hasn’t been paid upfront...
GD

What’s that strange utility room doing right in the middle of everything?

The utility room is located under the staircase leading upstairs. Where would you go up?

And you have a huge pantry but no kitchen countertop? Sight lines?

The front part of the pantry is the kitchen area, measuring 4.3m (14 feet), with a passage through the kitchen into the pantry. Then there’s also the kitchen island.

First floor – the corridor of darkness

There are skylights under the roof. How would you design a corridor?

baustei schrieb:
Upper Bavarian ;-)

More like above ground 😉

This is nothing.
Setting aside that even amateur designs can be quite good – you don’t have to present such poor execution and then claim a supposed third party expert was involved. Or maybe they really don’t know anything.
I admire those who own up to their “design.”
The staircase next to a sofa is not practical, nor is the space underneath it. An external cold storage room that is already very narrow, and on top of that, the utility lines seem to be built over what appears to be a very narrow garage.
A chimney in the middle of the room, which is intrusive on the upper floor. The kitchen is too short at 5.91 meters (19 feet 5 inches), especially with a table arranged as shown. The pantry has more cabinets than the too small, and therefore impractical, kitchen. Walls are inconsistently placed—sometimes present, sometimes omitted.
Using the living area as a passageway is also not functional for a household of four people.
The windows on the load-bearing side are far too large, unless you want to turn the house into a million-dollar project. The planned exits are quite questionable.

The upstairs hallway is dark. The window is almost pointless. A separated toilet has many disadvantages. It does not create the intended privacy, rather the opposite during getting ready (washing/toilet visits). And that without a window or washbasin…