Log cabin with a clipped gable roof by the forest - improve planning?

For children, the garden belongs to the kitchen. Toddlers practically live outside. Your garden invites you to do so.

Smells. Have you ever tried the Berbel?
Our controlled residential ventilation system is currently off, so there is no smell upstairs at all, and hardly any smell downstairs.

I would leave living, eating, cooking downstairs.
Children can go in and out without carrying dirt through the whole house.
Dogs as well.
Dogs and children don’t take off their shoes just to quickly get something to drink.
Eating, drinking, grilling outside; the kitchen is right next door.
You don’t disturb the children, and the children won’t disturb you later with nighttime visits.

We had/have an expiring preliminary decision, if it had expired, we might not have received a building permit. At least the application has now been submitted and stamped, so we only need to make major changes – legally speaking. Besides, we thought we were done, we did not expect so much justified criticism with an architect's design. We thought he would look at everything we don't have in view. Yes, the current idea is a functional arrangement that suits life and thus also the use. The kitchen is the center for us, together with the fireplace with a baking chamber. We want to eliminate the odor problem, and so in case of doubt, we just have to carry all the food up one floor. That seemed like a good compromise to us at first.

The fear of smells is hardly understandable to me. The rooms upstairs also have doors if necessary, and with that budget, there is probably an exhaust system installed that is second to none.

Maybe you should also take a look at the ideas from Eksjöhus. With their "Kaptensgarden" they recently won a prize. I think you can learn something from that.

Leave the kitchen downstairs. You don’t cook sauerkraut every day or fry spoiled fish or open a can of Surströmming. Most food only smells unpleasant when too many roasted flavors come into play. By the way, there were also suggestions here to design the stairs etc. more generously and still have the possibility to close doors.

Please don’t misunderstand us, we don’t want to step on anyone’s toes. Some fears may be exaggerated, but I think everyone has their own "ideas" that they bring into the process. The suggestions were great, but they also set a process in motion for us to rethink everything once again with regard to things we hadn’t seen that way before. We have an extremely elaborate roof structure that costs a lot of money, from which we gain nothing if we make the rooms small or integrate a laundry room. However, we now also realize that we need it. Once the staircase is decided, the rooms shift and there are other "hard boundaries" that we initially set that will no longer be maintained. Overall, it feels like we are only making compromises, and when the design becomes "complete," it won’t be what we wanted anymore. And as for the style, we no longer even know what it is ourselves. I hope you won’t lose patience with us. We are now trying to approach everything once again from a different perspective; maybe it will turn out even much better. Moving the kitchen upstairs does not mean it is disconnected from the garden, the children just have to go up a staircase; they will survive that. With kids, dog, and so on, it will get dirty anyway, we are aware of that. I will upload a new design tonight or tomorrow.

Thank you for the tip, I did not know the floor plan yet. Some details are really great, also the arrangement of the kitchen and living room.