Floor plan single-family house 1 full floor technology and daylight

Exactly, I don’t want that either, the house has already grown by 25m2 since the first draft.

The problem is that you can’t let go of the draft and instead keep fiddling with the walls until it might somehow fit. This automatically leads to it becoming bigger and bigger. A clean break is much more effective here and you can try a fresh start with a clear mind.

Unfortunately, we don’t know the development process, so we can’t fully understand everything. My first question regarding this draft would be: Does the living room really have to be that huge, and couldn’t it be aligned in one line if you insert a separation between the chill room and the dining area?

It feels a bit like I constantly have to make corrections because important things are wrong in every draft. Things are corrected in the next draft, but the consequences are not sufficiently considered, and now the concept is no longer correct.

Starting points are, as described at the beginning, the typical daily routines and 2 wishes.
- Parents stay overnight weekly, so living area on the ground floor and bathroom with shower. Bathroom right next to the entrance, as after a long drive this is usually the first place to go. Living area remains flexibly furnished with a sofa bed and will definitely be used partly as a play area again.
- Short distances with groceries, so access to the kitchen via the garage (e.g., through the utility room). Assumption is that the kitchen is not next to the entrance. :)
- A lot of spicy and smelly cooking is done, please separate the kitchen from the rest, e.g., with a transparent sliding door, so that the whole house does not smell, but we can keep an eye on the kids. So cooking direction facing the living room.
- In the mornings, usually 2 people have to get up early, breakfast is short and quick. Therefore, 1st wish is for an island with seating to avoid carrying everything back and forth.
- 2-3 days home office, 2 PCs often used, so a separate office. We currently have 5m², it doesn’t have to be much bigger. So about 8-9 m² is sufficient.
- Further use of current furniture desired, the most important would be the wardrobe with 5 doors ~3m wide and the bed 2x2m. So there must be a possibility for that somewhere in the bedroom, or else a separate dressing room.
- Living areas are probably rather for later use, please lots of daylight, so maybe 20% window area in relation to the room size.
- Because of sun on the terrace in the SW, place the garage on the left (east), so kitchen and utility room as well. Office to the north, bathrooms upstairs and downstairs on top of each other.
- 2nd wish is floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room on both sides as a kids’ table corner/relax/fun/decor quasi winter garden area (see SW and NW elevation). We currently also have that before the fixed part of a terrace door, so the seating area for TV must be somewhere else in the living room. The dining table is drawn there in the draft, but that was not the idea, it should be closer to the kitchen. We know the elongated L from friends and found it very appealing. Typically, we move between the garden, kitchen and living room for playing/painting/reading, TV is rarely watched, so the TV can be further away from the center.
- Technology: air-source heat pump, photovoltaics and possibly controlled residential ventilation (since the known ventilation behavior is already poor with the less airtight house). Air conditioning for the bedrooms upstairs.
- Plot is 23m deep and 20m wide, for roughly 6-7m garden, the house is preferably wide and max 10m deep.

All together resulted in a variant as posted yesterday, and the rest emerged in the dialogue, e.g., entrance on the left, technology in the garage, a narrow staircase to the upper floor etc.

Three remarks on this:

please separate the kitchen from the rest, e.g. with a transparent sliding door,

A sliding door lets quite a bit through.

but we can keep an eye on the kids. So cooking direction facing the living room.

How do you imagine that then? Briefly intervening during cooking, opening the sliding door and whoosh, the smells spread completely in the room. You do this three times on exhausting or everyday days and then leave the door open. For me, sliding doors are always a bit illusory: you have to have them, mainstream, but whether they are really functional and practical is not considered.
With spicy cooking, I would enjoy the scent or invest in a good extraction system.

the TV is rarely watched, so the TV can be further away from the center.

Yes, such a chill lounge where you have peace and nobody annoys you is important. However, you also have to consider short routes when you have to go to the toilet or door. Such a hidden dead-end room can also “corner” you. Joking aside: it can be annoying when you have no exit. Why should you rush through the whole house when with good planning you can reach the hallway in 2 seconds?
For that, a storage room gets two doors because you want to go through such an airlock every day with two bags full of groceries, which is, however, located as far away from the wardrobe as possible.

It feels a bit like I constantly have to make adjustments because important things are wrong in every design.

Things get corrected in the next design, but the consequences are not sufficiently considered and now the concept no longer fits.

Maybe it is also the case that with your constant “corrections” (whether they are _im_provements, we cannot judge) you yourself do not consider the consequences, that a small change causes a domino effect. You usually can’t say: this is all fine, but “here I would like it this way or that.” If you already have such a confused floor plan, it becomes even more complicated. Usually, you actually have to change a whole element (plan segment) or the entire floor plan.
For example, I did that by changing the whole quarter. Otherwise, it would be insufficient for me. Whether for you it is then again a downside. Often you also have to leave the shoe in the box instead of constantly looking for the mistake.

An internal staircase is usually dark, especially if it is also walled in. You have to counteract this with short corridors and openness, otherwise it will not be inviting.
The bend then becomes the highlight. And then the fact that upstairs there are only closed walls.

A sliding door lets quite a bit through.

How do you imagine that then? Intervene briefly during cooking, open the sliding door, and whoosh, the smells spread completely throughout the room. You do that three times on stressful or everyday days and then leave the door open. For me, sliding doors are always somewhat illusory: you have to have them, they're mainstream, but whether they are really functional and practical is not thought about. I would enjoy the scent when cooking spicy food or invest in a good extractor.

I have to slightly disagree here. We have a sliding door between the living room and kitchen, which is used regularly. It’s not made of glass, that would annoy me because you’d constantly be cleaning it. But of course, you could plan a window in the doors. Otherwise, it blocks quite a bit - both noise and smells. It is, however, somewhat less effective than regular doors.

I haven’t read your list completely but the question right away: Why does the utility room have to be in the east and the kitchen as well?

I find the problem of food odors in the living space to be marginal and temporary. We have a completely open area, but here there is an exhaust hood. It removes so much that a partition is practically unnecessary.