Draft single-family house with garage/carport - please provide evaluation

Hello there,

I have been following for a while and would now like to become active myself. My wife (29) and I (32) have reserved a plot of land for which we have made an initial draft to check whether our ideas can be implemented on this plot. We have already gone into great detail, so that there is now an almost finished plan. I would like to present this today with a request for evaluation/criticism. Feel free to be ruthless ;-)

First, the list of questions:
Development plan/restrictions: Everything except flat roof is possible, max. building height 9.0m, two-storey, site coverage index 0.4, floor space index 0.6, 2 parking spaces, no specification of ridge direction, edge development with garage possible, building inquiry has already been submitted and positively approved.
Size of the plot: 830m², perfectly level

Requirements of the builders:
Style, roof shape, building type: somewhat modern look, pitched roof (15°), single-family house with office (permanent home office)
Basement, floors: usable basement under main building, 2 full floors
Number of people, age: currently 2 people, 29 and 32 years old, two more little ones planned :-)
Space requirements on ground floor, upper floor: approx. 160-180 sqm
Office: home office
Guest sleepers per year: approx. 5
Open or closed architecture: open architecture
Conservative or modern construction:
Open kitchen, kitchen island: open kitchen
Number of dining places: permanently four, option to expand to 10-12
Balcony, roof terrace: no balcony, possibly use of the flat roof extension as a roof terrace
Garage, carport: double garage

House design:
Who created the planning: self-created, the basic requirements were discussed with a friend who is an architect (who however has little experience with building single-family houses!)
What is liked especially? Exterior views, bright office with garden view
What is not liked? Rooms on the upper floor are somewhat too large
Price estimate according to architect/planner: -
Personal price limit for the house, incl. equipment: 330,000 €
Preferred heating technology: wood pellets (condensing technology), underfloor heating

I hope the draft is understandable in all respects. I am a mechanical engineer and have done the entire design with SolidWorks, which is certainly not the standard program for such purposes. But in return you get everything in 3D and nicely colorful at the end :-)

The main problem I currently see with the draft is that due to the fact that a certain room program is to be placed on the ground floor, the floor plan becomes so large in its external dimensions that the upper floor and basement will be hopelessly oversized. Possibly by enlarging the extension a bit, one could save some overall length (the guest room would then retreat more into the office cube). But maybe a completely new arrangement would also make sense.

A brief note on the life situation again: I work for a small engineering office, where all employees work full-time in the home office for reasons of flexibility. Therefore, the boundary between living and working sometimes blurs for me. So I need a room where I am secluded enough to have my peace and still close enough to participate in family life.
We want two children, who, however, are only to be born after the home project is completed. The planned start of construction would be mid-2016.

If anything is unclear or information is missing, please just ask. I look forward to criticism and hopefully a pleasant discussion. When you create the draft yourself, there are certainly things where you cannot see the forest for the trees.

We have already gone into great detail, so that an almost finished plan has now emerged.

I hope not.... :)
Well, I'll start cautiously. At first, without looking at the views, I had to search for a while to even find the front door. I assume it is "top right"?
You want to build a large house with two floors and hide the entrance?

To put it briefly overall, the ground floor layout feels to me like beads on a string; or in other words, the desired rooms were just slapped on one after another (hence also this dark corridor in the middle), until everything was checked off.
Lots of space, but not particularly logically arranged. For example, the distance from the garage/carport to the kitchen is quite far and you have to go through 4 doors to get to the pantry.

Upstairs there are fairly large children's rooms, but a narrow corridor. For instance, I would enlarge the hallway and design the master bedroom differently. Your dressing room is also not wide enough. If there are wardrobes on both sides, the total width should be about 2.30 - 2.40 m.

I seriously wonder at which point the open floor plan begins and where the closed one ends. Apart from the open living-dining-cooking cuboid, the design is very closed off, tubular, and not pleasing to me.

Are the 330TEUR only the pure construction costs plus ancillary construction costs? Then it might fit. Otherwise rather not, and certainly not with a basement.

Thank you very much for the initial feedback.

Regarding the hidden entrance: The idea of placing the front door to the side is based on the consideration that the path from the garage into the house is shorter, because the garage is already some distance away compared to the front edge of the vestibule, and you then don’t have to walk around the vestibule. So it is not meant to be an intentional hiding and can certainly be solved differently.
There is surely still a lot of potential for improvement in the ground floor layout. The hallway is a consequence of my thinking that it is structurally favorable if a load-bearing wall runs in the middle. This inevitably results in a division of the layout into two parts with this hallway. To be able to stack the walls of the floors, the upper floor is designed the same way (even though there is of course plenty of space there to do it differently).
Basically, I want the office at least to be separated enough so that you don’t have to go through any living space to get there. If you don’t create a direct connection in the entrance area of the house, some sort of hallway is necessary, right?
The four doors on the way to the pantry could possibly be reduced by one if the vestibule is not separated by a wall with a door/window. Would the function as a vestibule still be given then? The necessary adjustment of the width of the dressing room is noted.

Regarding the open plan concept, there seems to be a misunderstanding: I was actually only referring to an open kitchen/living/dining area and apologize for that. We do not want a gallery or similar, so rather a closed construction.

The 330,000 EUR are the current idea of the available budget including the basement. If the design cannot be realized with this, we will have to either adjust the budget or the design (or of course both :-) ). We have some craftsmen in the family, so quite a bit of DIY will be possible. Among other things, the entire heating/plumbing area will be taken care of by my father, who will retire in time before construction starts.

Hello,
to get straight to the point: this works much better with a complete fresh start!

Dabei sind wir schon sehr ins Detail gegangen, so dass inzwischen eine fast fertige Planung entstanden ist.

You can’t say that when you yourself notice that a certain room program is to be placed on the ground floor, the floor plan in its external dimensions becomes so large that the upper floor and the basement will be hopelessly oversized

Dafür bekommt man am Ende alles in 3D und schön bunt

Unfortunately, the colors then blind you and you don’t see the mistakes. put it well:

To put it briefly, the ground floor layout feels to me like pearls on a string; or in other words, the desired rooms were slapped on one after another (that’s why this dark corridor in the middle), until everything was checked off.

What should be changed specifically:

Sleeping guests per year: why then have a separate guest room on the ground floor? With 5 guests you can either free up a sofa bed in the study, put the guest room in the basement, or book a hotel with the money saved.
Study: one should maybe consider whether self-employment could be an option in the next 30 years, so the study finds its place directly next to the guest WC and in the entrance area. The guest room door is also too far from the guest WC.
Regarding the argument "to be used as a bedroom in old age," one should consider taking the office as such.
Hallway is simply horrible, just dark and not furnishable.
Ground floor in general: if you structure the facade with inserted cubes (currently entrance, office), you should also include the resulting corners in the rest, e.g., plan the terrace there because corners offer visual and weather protection. Otherwise, the cubes would just be too expensive if they only serve to reduce the upper floor. Besides, you have two stories stipulated -> your cubes make the house single-story, or you would have to calculate this and check the building regulations in Bavaria what counts as two stories.
Kitchen has too little workspace: the corner will fill with kitchen appliances and bottles, leaving only the island to work on.
Dressing room is too narrow at 190 cm, it doesn’t work if you want to place real wardrobes on both sides. Besides, you get dizzy if you want to get in there quickly from below. With a laundry basket, all the workflows become somewhat disorderly...

I don’t know how fast you are with your program, but pencil and graph paper are still the favorite so you can erase!!! A bit of sketching wouldn’t hurt either ;)

Now something positive: the fronts! I really like the front with the window positions and arrangements. The facade has tension! Unfortunately, this becomes void with a new design.

Suggestion: don’t make the basement only a utility cellar, but accommodate guests there. That relieves the room program (work should take place close to the family, right?!)
A reasonable hallway that can be furnished, you can do without a vestibule.
Pay attention to two stories.

Regards, Yvonne

At the risk of repeating points from other answers. Too many extensions and protrusions give the whole a restless appearance. Long corridors, narrow and dark. Staircase is difficult to access from the living areas. I would place the staircase in the center of the house. Either straight or quarter-turn, or possibly as a platform staircase on an exterior wall. The 45-degree corner in the WC is unfavorable, indicating a makeshift solution. Cramped conditions in the living/dining/kitchen area but 13 sqm guest room for (5Personen im Jahr) along with a large office... You can get much more out of this development plan. Don’t skimp on good planning!