Single-family house ~180m² in the city with a view of a nature reserve

I find your house idea refreshing because it is something different and individual. I generally like a cantilevered upper floor, but not the long one with the bedroom. That is too much in my opinion, and I could also imagine that it feels imposing when sitting underneath and that it blocks the beautiful view of the trees/the sky from inside.

Maybe consider a solution where you have an indentation in the living-dining room (so only on the ground floor) and automatically get a roof from the upper floor? Additionally, you could consider placing the guest room where the kitchen is and then the living room down to the bottom left of the plan, possibly separated with a sliding door or a room divider. That way you can enjoy the view from the living room, dining room, and kitchen; you need it less in the study, right?

I think the garage needs to be moved further back; currently there are only 4.50 m to the street, but usually 5 m are required. A normal car won't fit in 4.50 m either.

The exterior view is still not coherent to me; there are still too many different window formats in there. I would imagine larger windows/glass fronts facing south.

Due to this experience, I want to first strain my own brain cells when re-planning.

At the moment you are moving with your 200sqm at 500,000+ just for the house. Pure construction costs. The problem is, as you already wrote at the beginning:

If you have to do without, which details/finishes - can you do without: Unfortunately, we currently cannot think of anything else, as we have already cut a number of original wishes/ideas during the planning phase for cost reasons

Unfortunately with many planning mistakes and not exactly functional. Every builder here could create their dream house on a lot of space with a simulation program and then have everything they wish for - but it’s not about crafting, it’s about the most expensive purchase in life and it has to be buildable and affordable. An architect can certainly accommodate your wishes in a great design.

Good evening everyone,

we are already diligently revising our plan and hope that during the week we can "offer" a new arrangement of the rooms + outdoor design, in which we have already implemented some suggestions from the feedback. I still have to ask for a little patience, for those who are already very eager .

@ It is very refreshing and nice to hear a positive comment once in a while. In the new design, we have already said goodbye to the superstructure. Even though it pains me in my heart to gradually bury all creative ideas and wishes and still get into debt up to my ears with the rest. The 4.50m actually comes directly from the (to scale?!) site plan from the entrance of the eastern neighbor. I have already stood on it myself with the car...

@ I don’t want to outright reject going to an architect. But not yet. It will be much easier for me to go to an architect on equal footing and with concrete (feasible) ideas when I have played through everything myself beforehand. After all, otherwise it will be up to the architect to talk me out of all wishes and dreams because of the costs. That will certainly not promote the relationship.

@ The idea has already occurred to us as well. That’s why we will go to the Bauzentrum Poing in two weeks. Then you can certainly get more good ideas and a better sense of space.

Of course, it is up to you how you want to proceed, but I explicitly warn against presenting an architect with your finished floor plan. Based on experience, almost every architect will simply redraw it and call it a day, which deprives you of the opportunity to benefit from the core skills of an architect (as opposed to a draftsman). After such a start, it can be really difficult to shift to a creative design.

Wow, I have to disagree with you twice right away:

Because in experience almost every architect simply traces it and that's it,

Before a freelance architect does that, the template has to be extremely well designed.

which deprives you of the opportunity to benefit from the core skills of an architect (as opposed to a draftsman).

With that, you promote the naively popular view that the architect’s most important skill is design creativity. Or viewed the other way around: you contribute to the underestimation of detailed planning, tendering, and construction supervision.

We are not that far yet. I do not want to diminish the more technical side of the architect’s service, but here it is primarily about the overall design, and creativity is what distinguishes a good architect from a bad one. What distinguishes a good one from a very good one is the ability, despite a "finished" design from the client, to detach from it and still meet the requirements. Such a thing does exist, but I am gradually getting the impression that they are even rarer than unicorns.

Unfortunately, you only find out which category the respective architect belongs to during the course of the collaboration.