Planning a Single-Family House on a Slope - Optimally Utilizing the Plot

Thank you very much for your feedback. There are already some good tips and points to ponder in there. Here are our responses:

Apparently, there are no load-bearing interior walls in this house.

You are right, the wall thicknesses are not correct yet; the planner's approach was to first put the room concept on paper. We will catch up on that as soon as the room layout is reasonably final. Whether this is the right or usual approach might be questioned. The planner said he usually does it that way anyway.

Then show us the plan to be canceled. If I understand correctly, it was also for this plot; and maybe we can find a better reinterpretation.

We have since said goodbye to that one because in the course of many talks with the builders and tradespeople we realized that the plan did not meet our expectations in many points. For example, the old plan had three floors, with the basement mainly intended for storage rooms and technology. The living area with the terrace was on the ground floor and about 2m above the garden. Also, on the upper floor there was a terrace (in front of the children's rooms) that we did not want (it resulted because the upper floor was planned smaller than the ground floor) and certainly would not have been used for years. The house was relatively narrow and quite long downhill (15m), which limited the room heights a lot. For example, in the large open living area, we only had 2.60 m! In hindsight, we probably let ourselves be "lulled" by the architect for too long before realizing that this was no longer "our" house. Additionally, we also found that despite the many compromises, the house was significantly over budget, which is why we pulled the emergency brake and went back to the start. Therefore, it no longer really makes sense for us to talk about the old plan.

In the garden floor, the few rooms get lost.

Honestly, we don’t understand that. This large living-cooking-dining area was very important to us because it will be the heart of the house. Storage and hobby rooms can still be subdivided if necessary / reasonable. In the first approach, we prefer fewer large rooms rather than several small ones. Could you please specify your concerns here a bit more?

The street floor itself looks like a labyrinth stuffed with little chambers.

We agree with you – therefore our request: what and especially how could one optimize the design here?

Now there is a half-height parapet planned on the upper floor .. possibly glass up to the ceiling there. But that will be expensive. Maybe one can try to let the staircase on the ground floor end with a spiral to the left according to the plan and then put a full-height wall with a window opening towards the dining area.

We take the point about the glass wall as an option. In the worst case, such a glass wall could probably be retrofitted if it really turns out that the noise from the dining area bothers us. We like the idea of a wall with a window opening less.

In general, I would set the doors everywhere to at least 90 cm width in the shell construction (except for WCs). The WC doors should also open outwards, especially in the ground floor WC, otherwise it will be too tight.

Good point. We will take a look at it.

I would rethink kitchen and storage access again.

Our consideration was that we also store food here and therefore direct access from the kitchen area would be very practical. Especially in everyday life, groceries will probably first be placed on the kitchen island and from there stored in the fridge, cabinets, or this storage. What would you change here and why?

Desirable would also be a window in the plan-right wall.

Thanks for the tip. This is indeed still an open discussion point for us where our opinions differ somewhat.

If you move the cloakroom and utility room, i.e., the room unit in the middle, which is the basis of the labyrinth, to the plan-right side, everything should get a bit less confusing and simpler.

The planner already tried such an approach but did not find a nice solution. Very limiting on the plan-right side is, of course, the lack of possibility to provide "real" windows along the garage. We will bring this up with him again.

In the medium term, grandma is supposed to move into the house. Which room is assigned to her?

Actually, our approach was possibly to accommodate grandma in the office/guest room. Barrier-free access from the street would be given here. The room should also be pleasantly bright and thus suitable for a longer stay. We will still widen the doors to 90 cm. In principle, it would also be conceivable to repurpose the hobby room and expand the toilet into a full bathroom. However, here the staircase would definitely be a barrier. Which solution is "better" in the end probably also depends a bit on how mobile grandma will still be.

What if grandma cannot use stairs or needs a walker?

Then one will have to reluctantly think about a stairlift. The main staircase should definitely be wide enough for that.

Why not actually make the upper floor at ground level without a few more steps within this floor?

If the separation office/guest room from private rooms is an important criterion, I don’t find the solution so bad.

This solution arose for two reasons: 1.) The idea of having the bedrooms on the entrance level did not appeal to us very much at first. The steps at least form a "small barrier" (even if only in the imagination) to the private sleeping area. 2.) Due to the ceiling drop, we create a higher room height in the living area without having to unnecessarily increase the height of the rear part of the house, which lies underground and where we don’t need the high room height. That reduces the required excavation a bit.

In principle, we would have liked the approach of a real split-level house (entrance level with guest room and guest bathroom on street level single-storey, then a two-storey building part each offset by half a floor – living area in the lower floor and private bedrooms in the upper floor). The planner, however, thought that the slope of the terrain would not be ideal for this, and the builder waved the cost cudgel, so we discarded this idea.

I find separate WCs more than suboptimal with small children. Especially since there is a second full bathroom on the floor.

Both of us grew up in households where the toilet is in the bathroom. Especially in the morning, when all residents want to use the bathroom at the same time, separate rooms reduce a lot of stress. This is therefore a conscious decision, and we are willing to accept possible disadvantages.

The gauntlet between the row of cabinets should indeed be tried to solve more elegantly.

We could take a few centimeters off both sides of the room to get from the current 107 cm (230 - 2 x 1.5 cm plaster - 2 x 60 cm cabinet) to e.g., 120 cm. Would that significantly improve the situation? Any better ideas?

I think the design fits your requirements well. The many rooms on the upper level sacrifice spaciousness, but they suit the forum name "Fuchsbauer". The dressing room, utility room, cloakroom, and office are very tight compared to general "German-speaking" standards. However, from English houses I know that you can live very well like this. Hopefully, you are not the type of people who have a lot of stuff and cannot throw things away easily, because then the house will quickly become an organizational challenge. Whether you use the slope optimally depends on the soil condition and the structurally necessary foundation support. It's good that it is not too steep and that you can access the slope from above. It looks quite cost-optimized to me. The house has a clear shape visually and a flat roof. Bauhaus houses also have that. Bauhaus style is still something quite different. There is nothing "Bauhaus" about the interior. Not every drink with barley is beer, after all.

Is there a possibility to accommodate the grandma/office downstairs? Maybe swap the hobby room and grandma?

I like the office access, especially if there would be public traffic; a grandma who might be limited in her movements, the location is suboptimal. Definitely make the bathroom for grandma barrier-free and plan space for a walker and a caregiver. The toilet downstairs too. Doors at least 90 cm, preferably 100 cm. Be sure to specify during construction that the wall by the stairs should support a lift (I don’t know if this is an issue with solid stone construction). Also, make sure that the pre-wall installations for the toilet are backed with solid wood on the sides so that grab bars can be attached.

Plan the access to the garden so that it is drivable. Not because of grandma, but so that sand, green waste, etc., can be transported.

You have a lot of space downstairs for storage, building services, and hobby, but you lack it upstairs.

has a point that in the UK there are often small rooms and closets and yes, that works, but not for a new build of this size. Space is available and the narrow corridor of the walk-in closet has an area that corresponds to a “princess dressing room” from TV.

Is there a possibility to accommodate the grandma/office downstairs? Perhaps swap hobby and grandma?

Hobby does not have good natural light. The garage seems planned for 2 cars. When you have children > 3 years old, you also have children's vehicles. This often leads to one car being banished from the garage, as otherwise it suffers damage from children and their vehicles. So you can make one part of the garage a bit smaller, use the space for the wardrobe in the house, and assign the space for the current wardrobe to the age-appropriate office-grandma section. The seating area downstairs seems tight to me when the partition wall is added. As a TV solution for big screen enthusiasts, a hidden, retractable window-sized screen with a good projector is recommended. If it doesn’t have to be a huge screen, a Samsung Serif will do – it stands on its own legs and even when turned off it is a rather attractive object for a TV.

I would not reassign anything for the "grandma": a mother or mother-in-law is already "available" = concrete = concretely plannable - at least "qualitatively," even if her move-in and its timing may not yet be predictable. In my personal opinion, the question of whether one wants to live under one roof with mom / mother-in-law should be answered with "yes" or "no" – not influenced by the degree of their increasing frailty. The idea of "grandma living with us" should be likeable even without a walker, or one should leave it.

Regarding the split level, I clearly see that the terrain either argues for it or against it: an elevation difference in the building envelope near half a story height (about 120 to 160 cm) is a strong argument in favor – conversely, such an elevation difference close to a full story height is a strong argument against. The same applies in principle for differences of one and a half or two story steps: half steps mean split level, full steps mean uninterrupted levels.

The planner said anyway he usually does it like this.

I do it this way, too, first giving the walls a layer and only later a dimension (together with the decision about which material they should be made of). In single-family house construction, this working method is rather exotic.

what and especially how could the design be optimized here?

With a more balanced distribution of the rooms across the levels.

You are right, the wall thicknesses are not correct yet, the planner's approach was to first put the room concept on paper.

It's basically okay, but the planner should generally plan the walls with 20 cm thickness; then, after proper planning, the rooms will tend to be somewhat larger rather than smaller. For example, in your calculation for the closet room ... And, you should rather calculate closets with doors at a depth of 62 cm. With sliding doors, already 66 cm.