Floor plan optimization city villa approx. 180 sqm with basement in Berlin

Hello everyone,
after much reading and gathering suggestions & ideas, I would like to present our construction project and hope for hints on pitfalls + suggestions where improvements should be made or changes would be sensible.

Development plan/restrictions
Size of the plot: 710 sqm, 19m wide, approx. 37m long
Slope: Completely flat
Floor space index: 0.2
Plot ratio: 0.4
Building window, building line and boundary: Building lines 5m from the street and 5m from the right property side. Because of the dead end, the driveway must be to the left next to the house, so there remain 14m plot width for house + driveway. Therefore, the floor plan has a width of approx. 10m.
Edge development: No
Number of parking spaces: No requirement
Number of storeys: up to 2
Roof shape: -
Architectural style: §34 - Almost all building styles exist on the street
Orientation: -
Maximum heights/limits: 2 storeys, open development, otherwise §34 Building Code
Other requirements: -

Client requirements
Architectural style, roof shape, building type: Town villa with clinker bricks, windows/main room orientation facing the garden at the back
Basement, storeys: Basement + 2 storeys
Number of persons, age: 2 adults, 2 children (1 + 4 years)
Room requirements on the ground floor: Living room, kitchen, guest room, guest/spare bathroom. Upper floor: Bedroom, 2 children's rooms
Office: Currently partially home office, could become 100%
Guest overnight stays per year: >50 nights
Open kitchen, cooking island: Kitchen semi-open
Number of dining seats: 8
Fireplace: No
Garage, carport: Driveway with 1-2 parking spaces is sufficient.

House design
Who created the plan: A mix of planner (initial draft) and DIY many adjustments
What we particularly like: Windows on the ground and upper floor to the garden (to the back) floor-to-ceiling, open kitchen, short routes kitchen<->basement and living room<->upper floor
What we don’t like: Large hallway on the upper floor - is due to the direction of the stairs on the ground floor and the inconvenient house shape because of the plot.
General contractor offer: 410,000 + approx. 120,000 ancillary costs/furnishing/flooring/painting/demolition of old building (We will do a lot ourselves and have no unrealistic demands)
Personal price limit for the house, including equipment: 550,000
Preferred heating technology: Air-to-water heat pump (Gas too far away, drilling is uneconomical. Possibly trench collector if the space is sufficient according to the heating load calculation, but there are some trees and installations in the garden that cannot/should not be removed)

If you have to give up, on which details/extensions
-you can give up: Additional WC on the upper floor, although it is currently actually missing in our apartment because guests are often there.
-you cannot give up: Large windows to the garden/terrace & basement (There is still a (far too small) house with basement on the plot. Without basement construction, almost the same amount of soil would need to be replaced). Basement expansion will initially not be done (only tiles planned in the utility room and front basement)

Why has the design developed as it is now?
A mix of standard design and many adjustments. The plot basically dictates the house shape quite precisely, it can only be extended to the rear.

The fundamental question about the floor plan summarized in 130 characters:
Does the floor plan work from your perspective? Should the stairs still be rotated (with the disadvantage that the access to the upper floor passes through the "dirty area")?
Have we completely overlooked anything?

Thank you very much!

Hello
Should the kitchen be this wide? 1.20 m is actually enough between the two rows - it would be worth considering whether to design a larger wardrobe or a pantry behind the stairs instead.
Upstairs there is somehow a lot of hallway... Is one wardrobe enough for you? And do you really need two toilets upstairs? I have to admit, I don’t like the upper floor at all.

Have you ever looked at the first steps of your staircase, how are you supposed to step onto the stairs like that, I can't imagine that working. Where is all your clothing/bedding supposed to be stored, only a 1m closet fits in the bedroom. I would at least widen the house by 50cm, I find the rooms too narrow.

Best regards
Sabine

Do you really need all the rooms if you are building with a basement? Like separate guest room and office? 3 toilets? If laundry is to be done in the basement, I would try to plan a laundry chute so that the laundry only has to be transported in one direction. has already mentioned the stairs. I also find the access to the basement a bit narrow, only 80cm as a passage? I also imagine it would be difficult to maneuver larger items there.

Thank you very much for your suggestions and feedback! We have looked at them very carefully and took this as an opportunity to look for another solution with the staircase. What you said about the kitchen is absolutely right, although we currently have 1.60 m between the cabinets in our apartment, which I already find a good width. However, I haven’t found a solution to squeeze another room/storage between the kitchen and the stairs, and if the stairs move further to the left, there are unattractive effects on the upper floor, so the kitchen will now be even wider (so that the rooms upstairs also become larger). Well, the 1 m cupboard is a bit exaggerated, the top of the stairway was only 80 cm, and 110 cm were planned towards the basement – anyway, now it’s better solved I think! Widening the house would be expensive because the basement slope can no longer be done without shoring (neighbor’s garage on the boundary), and we would like to keep the approximately 4 m driveway width/distance to the neighbor that we have with the 10 m wide house. Yes, we have also thought about the number of rooms... but if child #3 should still happen, the living situation would no longer be as we imagined (then we could simply move the guest room to the basement). Thank you all very much and maybe someone still has a few comments on the new floor plan sketches!

The design is not consistent: the kitchen has no ergonomic dimensions, cupboard space is too small. The children's room is too long... you can only judge this with a site plan, but that is completely missing.