Tag: spaces

The second area (and second floor) of our house contains the private spaces. The activities located here are more personal: sleeping, bathing, dressing, and quiet activities such as reading, writing, crafts, etc.  There will also be storage and laundry space.  The second floor works well for all of these, as it is separated from the public areas of the first floor, and is “deeper” into the house than the first floor — you must cross through the public areas and go up the stairs (a transition) to get to the private spaces.  This provides a feeling of privacy and security.

Mirroring the first floor, the second floor must have an entry. Where the stairs enter into the second floor should be a landing or distribution area.  Unlike the first floor, where the open public spaces allow flow through each area, the second floor should have direct entry to most of the spaces (e.g., you should not have to cross through the master bedroom to get to one of the children’s bedrooms).

Our bedroom (the master bedroom) will contain two functional areas: sleeping, and dressing.  In most bedrooms these areas are combined into one large room; we are considering having them a bit more separate, but we haven’t decided for sure yet.  Clothes storage is part of the dressing area, but this does not mean we’ll have a traditional walk-in closet; instead, we may look at built-ins along the wall which would conserve floor space while still providing plenty of storage.  One of the areas should accommodate some quiet activities that require light — for example, reading a book, or writing a journal before bed.

Attached to the master bedroom will be the master bath, with most of the normal pieces: shower, sink and toilet.  We will probably skip a bathtub, as neither of us use it regularly; instead, we’ll just have a larger shower and still save space.  We do want two sinks so we can share the use of the bathroom.

The other main area for upstairs will be bedrooms for children (we want children; but we prefer to have only one major life change at a time, so we’ll wait until the house is done).  Planning ahead for children can be a bit tricky, and the needs of children change over time; building in one particular way might not work even if we already had kids.  We’re thinking about starting out with a shared room (with private bed alcoves) for when they are young. We would design it in such a way that it could be divided as they get older (especially if they end up being different genders).  This could possibly be accomplished with dynamic walls that allow us (or them) to join or separate the rooms as desired.

We think that the convention that adults should have elaborate master suites while children should have simple boxes is backwards. The rooms for the children should accommodate sleeping, dressing, play, homework and many other activities that we, as adults, would use the office or living area for. They will also need a bathroom, which will have a combined shower/tub, since it is much easier to use a tub when kids are young.

The laundry room will be upstairs, near the bedrooms, as that is the most convenient place to use it.  We will probably have space for both machine and hand wash (a large sink, for example), and machine and hand dry (racks and lines for drying).

There will be various storage upstairs — for linens, towels, clothes, kids toys, books, etc. Don’t tell the kids, but we also want to design a small “secret” storage place into each child’s room (different in each room, of course).

We will also have some space for pets upstairs.  Right now this is a pair of cats, and all their associated litter, water, food, toys, etc.  We would like a space that is semi-private for them to feel secure in; and that is easy to clean up messes (hairballs), food spills, litter, hair (i.e., not carpet!).

Our first region is the “public” region. Since we are designing a home in the community, it is worth pointing out that these are the “private public” regions of our home, not the shared community spaces. We will talk about those later.

We want the public region to be the heart of our home. This will be where we conduct many of our day-to-day activities and welcome and entertain our guests. These spaces include the entry way and areas for socializing, dining, cooking, and entertaining (i.e., media usage).

The entryway is the most public area of the home and the place where people enter and leave the building. It is rarely designed as its own room in contemporary homes. In fact, the area as a whole is often sorely neglected; in many homes it is little more than whatever space was leftover near the door with a closet thrown in for storage. However, the entry way is important both functionally and socially. It needs to pack a lot of functionality into a small space. It should connect well with the rest of the public area, both carefully revealing the home and welcoming visitors into it. We will likely have our entry open into the living area or some space between the kitchen and living area.

We want the social, dining, and cooking areas to be closely integrated, so we plan to have a fairly open plan that includes the kitchen, dining area, and living area. These areas will not have walls between them, but they will be differentiated by changes in flooring type or height, ceiling height, room shape, furniture clusters, and for the kitchen, the appliances and counters. We are inspired by the Farmhouse Kitchen pattern. This does not refer to the decor of the space but rather to the connection between the spaces.

The living area will be focused on socializing, not media usage, so there will be no display screen. The focal point will probably be a view through a window. The emphasis will be on interacting with other people — chit-chat, serious discussion, board games, etc. This area will hopefully be connected to a patio where we can move our socializing when the weather is nice.

The kitchen should accommodate the two of us cooking and baking together. It will have to handle prep, cooking, baking, clean-up, and serving — for simple dinners for the two of us; for nicer dinner parties; for our weekly potluck with friends; for parties where there is not much cooking or baking, but lots of food set out for snacking; and for special holiday gatherings with tons of food and people. It should be well-placed to serve both the dining area and living area.

The dining area should be able to hold a table big enough for a large group of people (at least a dozen), and it should be well-placed to serve or dish food from the kitchen. We do not feel the need for a formal dining room, and are happy to have it open to the kitchen and other areas.

We often entertain with the aid of digital media, but integrating a TV into a social area is difficult. Although these two activities are often combined in contemporary homes, they have different goals. For entertainment, you want everyone focused on a single point — the screen. For socializing, you want everyone focused on each other, which usually means some form of a circle or other convex shape. Additionally, when both activities might be happening at the same time, isolating the entertainment area (and its attendant noise) provides a benefit for everyone.

We plan to have a dedicated media room that can be better acoustically and visually controlled than a common room, and can have a more focused setup that helps optimize the number of people who can comfortably consume media together. This allows us to optimize the living area for socialization, in turn. Some ability to link the two would be nice — perhaps via french doors or a moveable wall, but that is still speculation at this point.

A guest room is a semi-public space. It does not quite belong in the private family spaces, but it should not be open to the rest of the public space. An office is also a semi-public space. It should allow isolation when needed, but we will often want to remain connected to the public areas of the home while we are using it. To address both these concerns, we plan to have an office that can be converted to a bedroom on the first floor. Having the guest room and a full bath on the first floor will also be useful as our relatives get older. It will give us the option of moving our own room downstairs as we age.

Finally, there must be some access for the stairs to the upper level. This will likely be towards the back, away from the entry and (at most) on the very edge of the public spaces. There is a balance needed here between being a dividing line to the private spaces that keeps away visitors, but also welcoming residents to the more private areas of the house.

Next we’ll move on to the upper floor and private spaces.

Designing a home can be an overwhelming process. The key thing for a home designer to remember is that you are designing a home for you. The best way to start the home design process is to think about your life and needs. What do you do? Consider both day-to-day and special activities. How are these activities related? Which ones naturally fall into groups? Think about how these activities are grouped in your life. This may differ from traditional groupings. How do these activities map onto rooms? Which things must/must not/could share space? We are going to skip the boring details of our activities (brush teeth, feed cats, host friends for games, etc.) and start at the end of this process. At this point we are still very far from a complete design, but we have an idea of the different regions our home will contain.

At the highest level, our home has four regions: public, private, vehicle, and common (i.e., community). These map roughly to the first floor of our home, the second floor of our home, the garage, and the outdoor areas and community house.

Obviously, these areas are not all within the physical bounds defined by our walls. One of the great things about this project is that we get to be involved in the community design process from the beginning. We will not have as much control over the common areas as over our own building, but we will be able to realize advantages that come from sharing amenities.

Over a few posts, we will describe our goals and nascent ideas for each region.