Contest: Floor plan redesign
We are looking for creative ideas on floor design, circulation and furniture distribution options for our future flat! We are very experienced in doing actual renovation work, but not so familiar with planning and interior design. Therefore, we’d like to work with you to make our dream home come true. Please find the old floor plan, a descriptive plan and a plan where we labelled each room attached.
In this first step we want to focus on 2D concepts. If the collaboration works well and your ideas inspire us, we are happy to make a follow up project with you to work out the flat in more detail.
Background:
We want to renovate two small existing flats into one big family living space. The two flats are already connected today with an existing doorway within a wind load bearing wall, nethertheless the layout today still includes two bath rooms and two kitchens. The flat has two balconies and also two entrances today, but we only want to use one in the future. We already removed all the old flooring, heating elements, bathroom equipment, electric and plumbing.
Current status:
The current status is the plain shell construction. We already removed 2 walls and added a steel beam to support the opening in a load bearing wall.
Old setup of the flats:
11.1: Entrance
11.2: Bathroom
11.3: Toilet
11.4: Kitchen
11.5: Living Room
11.6: Bedroom 1
11.7: Bedroom 2
11.8: Balcony
12.1: Entrance
12.2: Bathroom + Toilet
12.3: Kitchen
12.4: Living Room
12.5: Bedroom
12.6: Balcony
Hard facts of the flat’s structure:
The bigger flat is number 11 (pink in the attached plan), the smaller flat is number 12 (blue in the attached plan).
Flat 11 has windows to the east and south; flat 12 has windows to the south and west.
There are currently 3 bedrooms and they should also remain:
11.6 should be the parents room,
11.7 should be the office/ guestroom (potentially becomes a kids room as well in the future) and
12.5 should be the kids bedroom (planned for 2 kids).
We prefer that the future kitchen and bathrooms stay close to the staircase area (due to main sewage pipe location)
Room 11.5 should be the new living room.
The future flat should have an extra toilet besides the main bathroom (as today room 11.3) with a hand wash basin (also suitable to brush your teeth and small toiletry items, if possible, also a small shower).
Entrance 11 should be used as the main entrance into the future flat
We want to make the room 11.4 to the new big bathroom, 11.1 as the new entrance, whereas 11.2 can be split between entrance and bathroom (depending on the layout and doorway into 11.3
We want to make room 12.2+12.3 to the new kitchen. It should be an open kitchen towards room 12.4, which should be the new dining room.
Room 12.1 should be a pantry/technical room, only accessible through a kitchen cabinet from 12.2. The flat door (entrance 12) will remain, but will not be used.
The position of the door to the balcony of flat 12 can be changed or the window front as a whole. (eg. zig-zag-window)
Family needs / Daily routines / Our preferences
The future flat should be able to host a family with parents and 2 to 3 kids
Big dining room table (standard sitting is 8 people, with the option to extend)
We enjoy cooking and like to host gatherings, we envision our kitchen/dining area to be the main zone for interaction as a family, bedrooms should be private/quiet zones. The living room should have an area to sit together for after dinner talks, have a book shelf (library), in one corner a fire place (see plan for possible position), TV (we don’t do gaming) to show holiday pictures or watch a movie, place for our old B&O record player, corner for a reading chair or breast feeding chair. Option for later: small desk for home office (in case the middle room - home office room / guestroom - will become a kids room)
We like to have storage space for clothing, personal belongings, equipment for hobbies (yoga equipment, material for crafting, reading books and magazines, doing puzzles)
We like plants and herbs. We need on each balcony a water outlet and electricity.
Bathroom
toilet, walk-in shower, if possible double basin, storage for hand towels and other bathroom equipment, cleaning equipment, small sitting bench, space to hang wet towels
if possible bathtub
Washing machine + dryer
Either in bathroom or in entrance area (hidden in cabinets)
Renovation work
For better layout and circulation, we are happy to move doors and break through walls!
Most of the work will be done by ourself
We are technically experienced in renovation work
Constructional Restrictions/ Layout constraints
Can’t be changed:
Flue (chimney) pipes in the walls (five groups)
Ventilation shafts in the walls (two groups)
Main sewage pipe location see plan, please note it’s required to have 2% descent per meter in any pipe leading to the main sewage pipe. This is an issue with increasing distances, because we can not realise an endlessly thick floor construction. => Toilets as close as possible to the main sewage pipe
Load bearing walls (can't be fully opened)
all thick walls running from east to west
one thick wall in the middle from north to south
Electrical cabinet
the main cabinets are in room 11.1 and 12.1 next to the entrance door. Each flat will use its own cabinets. They are connected in the cellar.
Desired technical solutions:
Floor heating
Each flat (11 and 12) will have its own floor heating distribution cabinet.
Warm water either via gas boiler or air-to-water heat pump
gas boiler must be close to a chimney group
active room ventilation system
Deliverables (your output):
A revised 2D floor plan (see below) that shows room distribution
design of the walls, which ones are removed, newly added, broken through or walled up
placement of doors accessing into all rooms (circulation)
distribution of main furniture (beds, closets, sofa, dining table, kitchen and bathroom setup, plants, etc.)
plumbing points in wet areas (basin, shower, toilet, etc.)
Generate a creative conceptual design of the entire living space as a whole
As a bonus: If you have more than one idea, we encourage you to hand these in as different entries.
As a bonus: Please write us a small essay about your idea, the main headaches / pain points you solved, the highlights / eye-catcher of your design.
File format
PDF/JPEG plan mandatory, editable source file (DWG, DXF, or IFC – exportable to FreeCAD) is a plus, but not a disqualifying criterion.
We work with FreeCAD. So we prefer to have files to work later in FreeCAD BIM / Architecture Workbench. Please advise us here, what works for you and us best.
Non goals of the contest:
We do not want to talk about 3D renderings, electrical elements, moodboards, colour themes, material recommendation in this contest! This will be part of the follow-up projects/contests.
We do not accept just a copy of the old layout plan redrawn in a newer style!
Basic Requirements:
All technical information in SI units.
Technical regulations based on Austrian building code.
No AI slop!
