Initial ideas for building a small house on a backlot

ah good to know. I have always found the information in the podcast good and interesting so far

I find the "colleague" Schoen himself competent, but his style of explanation often quite confusing. I always think that on the one hand, laypeople must be very impressed by his expertise and his thought-provoking comments, but in the end even more "flustered" than before he educated them. And I am amazed how, in the current decade, his presumably no less competent colleague appears in the role of the moderator and keyword giver. That seems almost retro to me.

I'm not an architect but we would roughly imagine the layout like this, then we would be at about 90 sqm

At least that is a very good drawing. Honest hand scribbling - just right in the preliminary design stage - instead of pseudo-professional 3D clicky-colorful. Also with the walls as single lines. Whether you write down their thickness or only consider it in the sum is a matter of taste. A blanket 40 cm for exterior and 20 cm for interior walls, plus thinking in whole or half calculation boxes (or double decimeters), helps to keep the overall goal well in focus.

I'm not an architect but this is roughly how we would imagine the layout, then we'd be at just over 90 sqm :) :

I just had an idea that I’m not sure if you’ll like. I’ve been thinking about it too late: Would it be an option to do without a hallway? In American series/movies you sometimes see apartments/houses without a hallway. If the "entrance area" living kitchen/living room (?) is cleverly designed and had a second door into another room, privacy would still be ensured. Just an idea.

Would it be an option to do without the hallway

I can't really imagine going completely without a hallway. You would probably have to look at the floor plan. But based on experience with the current apartment, it is relatively impractical in some cases.

The advocates of the tiny house idea still haven’t realized the light with the constant number - they are creating demand pressure. Developing a normal house plot with a tiny house only relaxes the sealing at the level of the floor space index of the individual plot - but not at the level of the building areas. So the land consumption remains, even if it might look averted in the naive calculation. A tiny house is essentially a detached apartment (or even maisonette). Those who want to save space ecologically and economically cannot avoid multi-family houses. I could imagine that political steering would prefer semi-detached and two-family houses in the future, possibly already during the development of the building areas.

The latter is already partially practiced. The former is only the case if the demand pressure is met. For example, if a municipality develops a building area with 50 plots for single-family houses and does not designate any further building areas in the future, exactly 50 single-family houses will be built, no more.

I just had an idea, although I don't know if you will like it. I thought about it too late at our place: Would it be an option to do without a hallway? In American series/movies, you occasionally see apartments/houses without hallways.

I can't think of how your house would benefit from having no hallways. But staying with the current case or in general: hallways can't really be omitted, but rather their walls. Only where on both sides of a wall that separates a hallway (i.e. in the hallway and in the room on the other side of the wall) space is needed to pass through, would the width of this "overall passage" then be reduced to the larger of the two individual dimensions. But that is already the entire saving potential. In many amateur plans, you can observe the traffic area paradox that a bungalow becomes larger precisely by omitting hallways.