Orientation of the house on the property - fewer retaining walls?

Hello,

we already have a plot of land and are working with an architect.
However, we now face a question of orientation, where we would still like to hear some independent opinions.

Size of the plot: 1100sqm +- 26x40m
Slope: yes - +- 6.5m gradient over 40m
Building window: 16m deep, width doesn’t matter; 3m distance to the boundary (also garage); knee wall 6.5m

Style, roof shape, building type: preferably gable roof; modern/classic
Basement + ground floor + upper floor
Number of people: 2 adults (31, 33) + child (2 years) + baby + 1-2 more children desired

I’ll spare you the further details of the rooms until we get to the real floor plan discussion. Here is what might be important for the orientation:
Basement: kitchen and living room (door open and out into the garden - this is not changeable)
Huge kitchen (at least 8.50 x 5.50) with dining table inside and children’s play corner
Living room: about 20sqm (includes piano)
Upper floor: children’s rooms, we wanted to work with dormers

[*]Which house orientation is advantageous - rather wide or rather long? Why would you decide that way? (If long, the dormers in the upper floor will probably be dropped)
[*]Kitchen: Is it better located on the northeast side with a view of the wide garden or better on the south side?

[*]Own assessment kitchen northeast: disadvantage here - kitchen gets shadowed relatively early, advantage: you don’t have to constantly shade and have a free view into the large garden. How is that with the light?
[*]South side (possibly indirectly shaded by garage expansion) advantage: short distances - garden stuff/kitchen/parking space grill; disadvantage - lies on the side to the unknown neighbor, constant shading; will the large garden still be used/showcased or will everything happen just there in the corner?
[*]How much shade do I create through my garage itself? Is that problematic?

[*]Do I save money if I place the garage in the south and thus don’t have to build extra retaining walls?
[*]Would you rather place the garage in the north or in the south in combination with the kitchen?

The drawn house proposals are not exactly to scale. We were thinking of 11x14m. I have drawn the garage even though it is on the ground floor and living room and kitchen are in the basement.



Thank you in advance :)

Of your variants, I like the "breite1" the most.

For the site, I would consider setting the garden level on the southeast side flat and deeper so that the entrance level of the house in the southwest becomes garden-facing as the first floor in the southeast. A wall, for example made of boulders, supports the particularly radical cut towards the street. In front of the large kitchen-dining area on the garden level, a large bright and privacy-protected area is created, which transitions to the natural slope towards the southeast.

Do you have a building line that you have to build to? Or does the location of the house result from the irregularly sloping hillside? I actually prefer the first option as well, but probably also because there is still some land to the west. I would try to make not only a garden terrace but also a small evening terrace, possibly right outside the front door (on the ground floor?) for a bench to enjoy the evening sun. Please also set the building envelope and how much slope there is there. Basically, I would also probably use the southeast corner for kitchen/dining - the more windows, the better. Or else place the retaining wall already on the west side crosswise, so that with medium-sized boulders facing south the slope can be followed (in terraces), so that the south corner in the basement can already get bands of light. How good that you have an architect. It is not exactly easy :)

Building line: 6m away from the street, 3m away from the neighboring properties.
Slope: along the street a little over one meter (calculated from boundary to boundary); from the street towards the garden about 2.5m to the end of the house - roughly exactly one floor, after that we still manage to keep a terrace and some garden before we have to go down again (2nd garden plateau is one level lower).

The main entrance and garage should be on the ground floor. Since we have to stay 6m away from the street, there would still be space here to place a cozy bench for the evening sun (although this sets very early around 6:00 pm because the neighboring houses cast their shadows on us).

On the south side we could have 8-9m of space for windows in the basement. Hence the question of where the kitchen is best located. The window front remains approximately the same. Whether we place it on the large garden side facing northeast or on the south side towards the neighbor does not matter for the windows.
I tried to sketch the slope along the house, maybe that helps? I haven’t drawn the upper floor.

We would prefer to place the house on the 3m boundary towards the northwest neighbor (see picture), to have more south terrace. West sun is not really available anyway due to trees and houses.

Thanks for thinking along ;)

I thought something similar. You can do and play with a lot with that. I would call the ground floor "Ebene 0" and the basement "Ebene -1"; basement does not fit what you have in mind.

You can play with a wooden terrace on Ebene 0 in such a way that you roof an area of the terrace on Ebene -1 at the retaining wall and at the same time get an evening sun deck, which is not necessarily in front of the house.

For a garage for one car, you can consider integrating it into the building structure.

I would place the building services in the windowless part of Ebene -1.

How big will Ebene +1 be? There might also be space for an evening sun terrace on the roof of Ebene 0.

Where exactly is the "foreign country" of your construction site?

Your post reminds me of a post from the Hochrhein from a few months ago:

I don't quite believe in the construction as shown: a retaining wall, on one side the slope presses, on the other side it stands free and is supposed to simultaneously be an exterior wall, and thirdly also support the entrance floor.

Firstly, I miss its anchoring in the slope, secondly I question its load-bearing function, and thirdly it would be very difficult to implement with similar heat loss regulations as in DE. So I see it at least needing to become a twin, with a first wall for slope retention and a second for room delimitation of the basement and support of the entrance floor.

The "excavation" of the garden compared to the natural terrain would also have to be suitably sloped.

By the way, a "building line" does not mean a building boundary, but rather a line with an obligation to build along it.