We have also noticed the daylight planning in the office. You could solve that with a bigger window, or where do you see this room?
Yes, with bigger windows you get light into the study. I don’t know the use of the study. To open mail now and then and to do a tax declaration and sporadically a few hours of home office, the study would be fine for me. As a regularly used workplace, it would not be an option. If I spend a large part of my life there, I also make it nice for myself – with light and a view.
What do you mean by the all-purpose room? So where are surfaces wasted?
Here an all-purpose room is referred to as a living space that (at least) includes “cooking, eating, living.” The area between the kitchen and dining table is a pure passageway and relatively large for relatively little use – that’s what I call waste. I also don’t see any aesthetic benefit of this area with the opening to above.
The gallery is primarily about getting the warmth from the stove upwards.
The idea of guiding the warmth from the stove upstairs is physically plausible at first. Positioning and type of stove belong to such considerations – and I don’t see any conceptual integration there. In the end, you buy the disadvantages of a noisy upper floor without any significant aesthetic or thermal benefit with expensive space that you could better use in a compact building.
We also talked a long time about the garden access issue. We are of the opinion that you can get down well from the terrace in the west with the right stairs in the terrain.
I’m fine with the garden access from the living area on the ground floor. Highly attractive rooms with much potential for living space arise downstairs. I see that little used, even if a guest is pushed into a “generous seclusion.”
Given your plot location, I get the idea that one could have a central entrance leading onto a gallery from which you can see the living area below, which has a double ceiling height except for the kitchen. Free straight stairs up and down in the open space (no stairwell). Study over the kitchen, small room for guests, wardrobe. Upstairs the sleeping and children’s rooms, in the basement behind the living area the technical room and a cold pantry. That would give me a much better feeling of life and daily joy of a "wow effect" in the house. The study would be a real living space, far enough away from the action yet suitably located. Of course, such a concept also has impractical sides – for example, if groceries have to travel long distances to the kitchen/pantry and the way from the bedroom to the breakfast table goes over 2 stairs.