Architect's suggestions disappointing - What next?

Hello Tepee,
A clear yes from me as well for planning it yourself. Because you know best what is important to you.

We were also not very happy with the architect's design.

That's why we started planning ourselves, and once we had put our ideas into a plan, we discussed feasibility and final adjustments with the architect.

That was of course more work and took some time, but that way we found a perfect floor plan for us.

All our ideas were incorporated, and when we walk through the building now, it feels really good.

Best regards
Birgit

I can understand your situation. It was similar for us. No architect really captured what we wanted. In the end, I drew it myself and we have been completely happy ever since. If you spend enough time working on floor plans, it can work out well. Give it a try and get inspired by the countless floor plans on the internet and visit prefab house exhibitions to see floor plans built in real life.

I wish you much success.

All of this applies to a more or less flat plot, unfortunately not to a somewhat more difficult slope

You don't have to draw yourself. But first you can consider how big the house should be, then arm yourself with a tape measure and four wooden stakes, stand out on the land, and then think and try where it should go. For this, you have to keep in mind what is allowed and what is affordable. Here where we built it is also a north-facing slope. So, if you build uphill like we did, you build into the slope and have a rising garden to the south. Or the other plots have the access path to the south and you build downhill. Everyone, really everyone, to avoid lift stations, proceeded as I described. East usually the driveway with a carport, garages are rare here, then the house is quite high up by the road, the leveling often retained downhill with angle supports, west and north garden. Everyone has evening sun. But at noon still shade, which is now forgivable. Since no one is stupid, there must be something to doing it this way. Karsten

If it is a bit hilly there (although the term hilly is already subjective), then take a look at other already built plots. Often one still lacks the feeling of how much space is needed for driveway, stairs, and so on. It helped me a lot to look at already completed constructions and also to talk to the owner whether the slopes are so usable.

As far as the question "make or buy" in planning is concerned, in my opinion, two fundamental ways must first be distinguished in how one comes to an architect:

A) one goes to an independent architect, who is an architect in the true sense of the word. He plans in dialogue with the client, submits, and supervises construction.

B) one goes to a contract or employed architect of a construction company, who is a plan drafter. His job is to copy the client's sketch into a form eligible for submission. He is almost never the construction manager himself and gets no further information about the entire subsequent pregnancy process after the approval stamp. Thus, he never gains experience in the feasibility of "his" drawings. To avoid endangering the signing of the construction contract, he should ideally have no aesthetic-creative opinion about the client's dream house (except in every case: "yes, we will build that for you").

Naturally, higher quality of the design by the professional is to be expected in type A, and by the client himself in type B.

And just as "logically," the "architect" type B is only suitable for low-maintenance weekend plots because, as a theoretician, he can only handle such practice that adheres to laboratory conditions. He also thinks purely in terms of approvals: solar position simulations are not required by the building authority, so he is not interested in a north arrow at all, but exclusively in the building envelope; that there should still be passage width in front of open wardrobe doors is also not required by the building authority – so he plans the dressing room shamelessly and unconscientiously too narrow.

He also lacks the imagination to have the scent of bath oil in his nose when planning a wellness bathroom – so he designs a core soap bath from which one just wants to get out quickly but obediently with the desired fashionable "T". Naturally, he also plans kitchens from the pizza orderer's perspective, thereby unnecessarily increasing the housewife's mileage.

Accordingly, it is also "child's play" to guarantee success for a nightmare house (or at least a nervous breakdown in the planning process): one only has to combine an "architect" of type B with a spatial specification for the garage relative to the house, a certain staircase, or a hipped roof with open roof undersides.