House Design

[nod]

We are kicking our heels waiting for the plots to complete and hoping the seller resists the counter offers 

 

Can anyone recommend any good house design sites After a quick browse on Google much of what I’m seeing are quite generic 

[SimonD]

What in particular are you looking for?

[nod]

10 minutes ago, SimonD said:

What in particular are you looking for?

Ideas mainly 

Something that will give us at least a starting point as to the style of house we want to build 

 

When we built the house that we are in now The design had already been submitted We may build an improved version of that  it would like to explore other designs 

[Russdl]

@nod are you talking the internal design/layout or the external appearance? 

[nod]

5 minutes ago, Russdl said:

@nod are you talking the internal design/layout or the external appearance? 

Probably a bit of both 

The house we have built 

Has a orangery While we like it 

Seeing our friends almost complete build would be preferable in parts 

 

We where tempted to build the first house again with a few tweaks 

[Russdl]

@nod you’ll obviously know best what you want from the interior layout and posting your thoughts here may well hone that.
 

As for internal and external style and appearance it’s got to be Google images/Pinterest/Personal preference/Local influences and vernacular I guess. 

[SimonD]

2 hours ago, nod said:

Ideas mainly 

Something that will give us at least a starting point as to the style of house we want to build 

 

When we built the house that we are in now The design had already been submitted We may build an improved version of that  it would like to explore other designs 

Okay, this probably isn't a direct answer to you question but if it's any help, our architect took us through what we thought was a good process to generate ideas and find out what we liked when we designed our place. Given that we've got something we really like in terms of design and looking at other projects he's done, he's pretty good at this part of his work.

 

First he got us to to go around and have good look at properties wherever we went. When looking at those properties we were under instructions to note down the elements we liked about the houses and what we didn't.

 

Then, once we knew what we liked or didn't we looked at different architectural design styles. A good start is, for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_architectural_styles

 

We spent a whole load of time looking at the styles we liked, and then again whittling those style down to elements we liked of those styles and what we didn't.

 

So for example, we both like Georgian style but what we particularly like about Georgian architecture is high ceilings and big high windows (we've got this upstairs). We wanted easy acces to the garden from the kitchen/dining area, which, because our house is on a hill, meant turning the house upside down and building bridge to the flatest part of the garden.

 

This whittling also brought us to a couple of architects, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright where again we found some elements of their design we liked, and some we didn't (some Le Corbusier stuff I loved some I absolutely hated). This influenced the design of our house.

 

So for us it was finding general styles we warmed to and refining from there.

 

I was also lucky in that I was working with a client in London and would regularly walk past the RIBA offices and would pop into the bookshop to browse books on my way to the train home!

[Bonner]

Our architect designed from the inside out, starting with internal layout, location and size of doors and windows for views, access to garden etc. This is one of the principles of Le Corbusier. Then the external envelope was designed around the space, to fit in with the local vernacular with a modern twist.