Bauhaus: 2 full floors + staggered floor (approx. 200 sqm) - optimization

I unfortunately have to say: no Bauhaus, just a 3D Tetris, which looks very ugly and disharmoniously cobbled together. I basically like this type of houses, but the interplay of the levels and niches should be planned, and not just happen randomly. The garage area, for example, looks absolutely disharmonious next to the other two floors above. I don’t understand why you even use the setback floor. With the floor area ratio, you have the possibility to design the building harmoniously, namely a bit wider than high – also visually. Furthermore, there is nothing exciting inside either. Ok, it doesn’t always have to be. I would probably actually cut off the third floor and create a nice parents’ wing on the ground floor.

The building volume, especially one view, reminds me more of a Tetris block.
You actually already recognized it yourself. The house has too little floor area for three floors, combined with the many recesses, it just looks like Tetris.

Especially where there is one recess too few: I would give the garage a shadow edge, meaning I would push it a quarter of a meter forward so that the house doesn't look "crooked" because of the continuous back side. I already thought about that last night but couldn't quite find the words for it. Tetris fits well.

Don't find ypg's proposal to dissolve the Staffelgeschoss bad. It becomes more practical and pleasing.

Yes, eliminating the mezzanine floor was also what I meant in my first post. I just wrote first floor, no idea why.

As I said, the current design is not budget-friendly either. If that is "adequate"... try two shifted cubes with somewhat larger dimensions than now. The lower one remains as close to the street as possible, the upper one you shift to the north. So, it cantilevers over the ground floor to the north. This automatically creates a south terrace on the first floor.
Structurally not ideal, but neither is the current design.

Just an idea...

Hello,
thank you very much for the many contributions. You have confirmed our opinion that everything does not look quite perfect yet and the appearance still needs to be improved.
Since we want to have the largest possible garden and therefore want to keep the footprint as small as possible, we want to stick to our plan to build 2 full floors + [Staffelgeschoss].
To make this look a bit better visually, we will recess the [Staffelgeschoss] on all sides and possibly also enlarge the floor plan to 11x10 meters, so that the house no longer appears quite so tall (so that the house is not taller than it is wide). Furthermore, we will move the garage so that it is no longer flush with the house on the north side.
We would be very happy to receive further suggestions, also regarding the entrance area/stairs.

Have a nice evening and best regards
Lena

Mmmh, I'm curious to see how it continues. I think it will only get minimally better. It will still look like (maybe modern) terraced housing with only the adjacent houses missing. How do you now come to 10x11? Does that mean you are now giving the house one more meter in width when viewed from the street? So you are taking 1m from the garden, which is so important to you, on the west side? Why not, for example, 12x9? I believe this approach will not lead to success. Why actually the strong insistence on the possibly large garden? You have quite a lot of space in the north, what is wrong with taking 2m away from it? Why are you so obsessed with the recessed floor? Just because of the garden area problem? I also believe as long as you stick to the building volume, it makes little sense to rack your brains over other things. You would first have to see the new floor plan. My amateur assessment is that the meter on the west will not bring much except that the open plan will seem somewhat more generous to you.