After buying a book of house plans and leafing through it, I'm beginning to think that about a third of thedesigns -- were done by people who liked straight lines and square boxes. No whimsy here, few curves, and precious little ingeniousness. An overlapping quarter were people who liked phrases such as 'keeping room', 'hearth room', and the ever popular 'great room' -- though I did see one 'grand room', which I assume was a great room with some extra gilt.
Not to say I didn't see any that I liked -- I did. Two, to be exact.
I'm beginning to have new appreciation for A Pattern Language.
1 comment:
I believe that the vast majority of plans and designs for homes available on the open market are very very bad. There is only one way to design a home and that is to sit down with a book of graph paper, and a wish list of rooms which you would like to have. A room devoted entirely to electric plug in modules for your cell phone, tooth brush, digital camera, re-chargeable battery charger, etc. Another room entirely devoted to storage of record albums. And so forth. For you, a pantry, a re-cycling room, a greenhouse herb garden off the kitchen...whatever. Design each "room" as if it made sense and don't consider what the neighbours might think This is YOUR space, not theirs. Here is a hint....most kitchens and bathrooms have already done that, but we are talking about YOUR space here. Me, I want space to be able to get to the back of my computer without pulling the desk away from the wall...grin!
Then design your traffic patterns into the pantry or greenhouse, your movements through the spaces you have created. Make enough space on your graph paper for you to do these tasks. Then cut every one of these little rooms out, and place them on a whole new piece of graph paper. Mirror them, flip them around, and so forth like a big tetris game. Do some common dog things like putting the bedrooms at the back of the house, and the living room on the shady side of the house, the kitchen and breakfast areas on the sunny side of the house, and perhaps take the site into account. If you absolutely have to follow some stupid bylaw like "ridgeline of the home MUST be parallel to the road, then at least put fewer windows on the north walls, and big windows on the west and south walls.
There may be places where a space can serve multiple functions....a recycling table may serve as a potting table for instance. Try to avoid gun barrel hallways (in my place the hallway is the biggest room in the house! A space mostly unused.) and perhaps try to keep the plumbing all in one wall both upstairs and downstairs.
First couple of times you do it, it seems wierd, but it IS customized, and will work better for you than any store bought floor plan. After several attempts, you will come up with a floor plan which is head and shoulders above anything you can imagine.
Post a Comment