Duplex 7x12m with additional room on the ground floor

The Town & Country City 136 is a semi-detached house on a floor area just slightly over your size (7.12x12.24).

If you put the HAR upstairs here and omit the WC and possibly reduce the kitchen, there is also enough space for a bedroom in the HAR, which is otherwise intended for that. A WC might be realizable under the stairs; try searching Pinterest for "staircase WC."

However, if you want to separate a granny flat on the upper floor, you would need 63 m2 of floor space here – from which about 3 m2 hallway in the entrance area would still be deducted – and a bathroom on the ground floor would also have to be provided, and then it gets so tight that I prefer not to imagine it. So 2 rooms, kitchen, bathroom on 60 m2... you don't need a house for that; better give up the granny flat!

That doesn’t make any sense at all. What’s the point of a (bed)room on the ground floor if neither a bathroom nor a shower, let alone one that is accessible for disabled people, is available.

The squaring of the circle simply cannot be solved.

That just doesn’t add up at all

That’s EXACTLY what I thought when I read the post by .

The prescribed base dimensions for the house are 7x12m or 6x10m, 2 full floors and a gable roof.

Then the gable roof should be used as well.

We are now looking for a floor plan that provides space for a bedroom on the ground floor (12 sqm should be enough).

Then the whole family has to manage together in the open space, just because you want a bedroom on the ground floor...

It would be nice if a granny flat could be separated.

A granny flat, and above that? And where will the laundry be done then? Or should there be an extra staircase? Are granny flats even allowed in a semi-detached house? Where are the parking spaces? Storage rooms?

Why not put the bedroom under the roof? That saves a lot of space on the ground floor now.

Exactly! A nice room just for the parents.

We wanted to avoid stairs a bit, so the bedroom rather on the ground floor.

Then look for something else.

It is what it is: whether 10 x 6 or 12 x 7... it will be neither a villa nor a bungalow with 4 bedrooms. It’s a semi-detached house.

From your words "actually we would like" I hear sighs.
Stand on solid ground, look at 6 x 10 or 7 x 12 and realize that a bedroom on the ground floor is nonsense.
There’s just enough space for a utility room of 6 sqm, stairs 5 sqm, hallway 6 sqm, kitchen 13 sqm, living/dining 35 sqm, shower-WC 5 sqm.
These are sizes for 5 people that don’t hurt when the gang has moved out. For 3 people a smaller living and dining room will do.
Everything else is a lifelong compromise. If the house becomes too big later, you can still switch to a smaller one without stairs.

I don't want to spoil anyone's mood, but semi-detached houses are really a crutch that no one really wants, right? Time and again, the question arises here about this type of building and how to best shield yourself from the neighbor while still living like in a bungalow.

Um... no, actually I don't feel like I'll be using a crutch anytime soon... I don't have to be able to walk around the house once to gladly call it "mine"

But we also didn't have such strange ideas...

But we didn’t have such strange ideas either...

Maybe it only strikes me because all satisfied semi-detached house owners here don’t ask such questions...