caliwag

My brother lived in a Victorian terrace house that was quite narrow. Over the years the wall that separated living room from hall had been up and down about three times. With it up the hall was too narrow. With it open plan the front door opens into the living room which just feels odd and lets heat out.

 

It's well worth thinking outside the box when it comes to the flow through a building. Our architect proposed a layout for our self build that means you walk through the dining room to get to the living room and kitchen. The dining room also has the stairs and a double height window. Works well.

Aye...hello again Temp...yes that squarely puts the Stair as part of the living area: I may say it's a major tenet of A Pattern Language. Chris Alexander and colleagues say "Place the main stair in a key position, central and visible. Treat the whole staircase as a room. Flare out the bottom of the stair, with open windows or balustrades and with wide steps so that the people coming down the stair become part of the action in the room while they are on the stair, and so that people below will naturally use the stairs for seats.' 

 

Thanks for your experience there Temp.

Hi caliwag,

 

Please don't interpret my questions as a dig - I genuinely want to understand the points made here with respect to a residential house only, as it is not too late to change our own design.

 

Is the above mainly applicable to thin houses? I mean, thinking about a square house with sufficiently spacious rooms, would it make sense to make a corridor 300mm wider only to use these 300mm for shelves? I do understand it is useful when the space against walls inside the rooms is limited. 

Also, having a choice, I would much rather sit in a room then in a corridor. Is the advice (seating etc.) directed at those who don't really have such luxury?

 

 

Hello, thanks for the question...Indeed it is more appropriate for thin houses on restricted sites and I mention B+Bs for example because we have all found ourselves in the bleak extension corridor. I guess I'm reminded of a few projects where people have asked me to advise or comment on proposals and invariably improvements can be made by relocating a front door/entrance to the side of the house therefore half way along a corridor, for example. Chris Alexander and team have plainly observed the lost opportunity. I think it comes from the fracturing of family life for a start where demand for a quiet spot for homework and the like can often be found away from TV watchers  in a cosy spot, with window to the garden and setting sun for example for 20 minutes. It is another way of creating useful spaces in circulation, though I do agree that if the budget is tight you really don't want to create apparent waste. Horses for courses and all that...and it depends on family size and hobbies etc. In the book I talk about Home office location. There tends to be a presumption that it can be fitted into the attic or above an garage. Now does everyone really want that...I recall visiting a house a while back where the good-lady was a personal travel agent...the one who spends hours planning and booking that lifetime trip of six weeks...her office was half way up the stairs on an enlarged landing...circulation still worked and she could leave 'office' work untouched from project to project, and if anything she felt part of home life...see 'bay windows and oriels' blog...well it's my personal take on such things, I guess based on experience, talking to clients about needs etc, the writings and examples from architects of the last century etc etc. Enjoy your planning. I wasn't going to mention my book for a while 'Self Build Home...the Last thing you need is an Architect' but it covers all this and more in different forms and with different reference. It's about thinking deeply, and trawling the memory, to make lists of must haves, desires and wants, and explore options long before the architect's fee clock starts ticking. I think it's about exploring the 'what ifs', 'just suppose', and do we really need' type of issues. Oh and get all the family involved!

Thank you for your reply. Yes, I can easily imagine (and vividly remember) a situation where one is trying to find a "hiding place". Hopefully in our case there is enough usable space.

 

The family is on board but there are too many questions where we look at each other and honestly say: "we don't know!" :-) We are looking for all help we can get but ultimately it will be either our often uninformed guesswork or our architect's professional advice.

We have an annexe which is rectangular with lounge at one end and bedroom at the other. In between are bathroom and kitchen.

 

We designed the kitchen as a galley and a connecting corridor, this works great in my view and maximises the space available - the corridor doubles as standing space for the kitchen.

 

Pattern language was a strong influence for our design. Timeless.

Interesting post. We've practically eliminated all corridors from our rebuild and created an atrium that everything revolves around. The thinking is that this double height space connects everything together a bit like a negative space oak tree up the centre of the house. The idea being that we can be in house doing our things and connected without being on top of each other.

1 hour ago, Lesgrandepotato said:

Interesting post. We've practically eliminated all corridors from our rebuild and created an atrium that everything revolves around. The thinking is that this double height space connects everything together a bit like a negative space oak tree up the centre of the house. The idea being that we can be in house doing our things and connected without being on top of each other.

 

So that s like a traditional central hallway / reception hall with doors to every room.

28 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

 

So that s like a traditional central hallway / reception hall with doors to every room.

 

Indeed. In fact we only have two doors that lead to other doors. The workshop thru the utility and the ensuite thru the guest bedroom. We had a I think 14 internal doors before we started and we now have something like 8. 

Excellent Lesgrandepotato, that's excellent. Exactly the sort of thinking I like...it is entirely about rethinking every aspect...'do we really want that', 'what if we worked around the problem of bleak corridors'. Puts me in mind of turn of the 19th/20th century houses be Baillie Scott, which are analysed by Diane Haig in the excellent 'The Artistic house'. Many Baillie Scott houses were designed without corridors, at least on the ground floor. Circulation achieved by large sets of sliding or folding doors, and dining, study and seating/fireplace spots (no central heating!) created in alcoves and bay windows. A few years ago I designed a house (capable of terracing) in Valencia, Spain based on early Moroccan, and other nations, use of internal courtyards ( cooling, filtered light, security, privacy). The layout was a series of rooms, spaces and stairs etc wrapped around the courtyard, but accessing it, the entrance area giving a glimpse to it all...all very Southern Spanish and all points North Africa! (Sadly the builder went bust before it could get out of the ground!) There is occasionally available on ABEbooks.co.uk a UK published research booklet by D MacIntosh called the Modern Courtyard House, which illustrates historic and modern (up to early 70s) courtyard houses...not cheap however.

Our last house we designed with a "wow factor" large entrance hall, and then upstairs a gallery landing that went round 3 sides of the stair well.  It all looked very nice, but even then I maintained it was inefficient use of space.

 

The new house we are building has been made much more compact and efficient. The entrance hall is a lot smaller, and the landing in particular is only as big as needed to accommodate the doors leading from it.

 

Having a staircase with a half landing, placed at the back of the house, dictates the hall and landing are "two staircases" wide, so although small, they are more square than rectangular so don't give the "long thin" impression.

6 minutes ago, ProDave said:

Our last house we designed with a "wow factor" large entrance hall, and then upstairs a gallery landing that went round 3 sides of the stair well.  It all looked very nice, but even then I maintained it was inefficient use of space.

It's an interesting argument. The double height space is about 3m * 6m so not far off the size of a small terraced house.. but it does eliminate all the corridors and in the old floor plan there was at least 30m of corridor on the two floors. Overall I think, and think is only as far as we have got to so far is it's a better use of space. 

 

Undoubtedly we could have got in a couple more bedrooms but to our minds we wanted an open 4 bed house as opposed to a cellular 6 bed house.