Description

A floor plan idea represents the interpretation of a certain notion of living. It is expressed in the internal organization, in the opening and closing of the rooms, in the connection and grouping of rooms, in the connection or isolation of functions and, last but not least, in paths and sightlines. Some floor plans subordinate everything to the spatial idea (cf. dividing elements), while others emphasize the link between the spaces, and optimize or celebrate the internal path (cf. organic floor plan and floor plan with circular path). A floor plan may also thematize the apartment as a “space of social interactions”: in this case, the spaces are assessed on a scale from highly communicative (social) to extremely private, and the floor plan is arranged accordingly. The result can be a largely balanced mix (cf. zoning) or a type that gives priority to privacy (cf. corridor floor plan), or, conversely, a floor plan in which the communicative aspect of cohabitation dominates (cf. the living room as “circulation” center). These social interactions naturally influence how every floor plan is organized. However, since they cannot be assumed to be constant, new attempts are always being undertaken to render floor plans modifiable and expandable (cf. flexible floor plan). The following classification is an instrument for reading and designing floor plans, whereby it must be noted that the pure type should not be mistaken for the best type: for truly exciting solutions most often lie at the interface between these categories.

Corridor / Hall

The apartment is organized along an axis, with the rooms arranged in sequence on one or both sides (figs. 1, 2). The advantage of this classic corridor type lies in the opportunity for simultaneous use of the rooms; completely enclosed and independently accessed, they offer all manner of freedom and flexibility for all kinds of users (families, co-op, etc.). The apartment can be accessed either in the axis or orthogonally (figs. 1, 7). In both cases, the layout of the apartment is instantly visible; a pleasant clarity is achieved. The end point of the axis is important, which should be a common room in the best scenario (fig. 1): the corridor widens in the direction of the living room. With the balcony in the sightline, spatial quality, visual experience and light intensity increase for the visitor, walking along the corridor becomes a pleasure. The width of the corridor determines to a great degree whether it is also suitable for other uses, for example as a play area; natural light in a corridor, in particular, allows for a multitude of individual purposes (fig. 3). When corridors are no longer simply linear but widen into small bays or even entire rooms, for example into a wardrobe niche at the entrance door, an anteroom in front of bedrooms, or even a dining area (figs. 1, 4), the experience becomes enjoyable. The corridor is therefore wider and more generous in certain areas, but more importantly, it is structured and thus becomes interesting as a room in its own right. Given the linearity of the form, the corridor type quickly awakens a need for change in direction and widening of the space. The floor plans respond to this need in a variety of ways: with large, open living rooms oriented in all directions at the end of the corridor or sightlines and room-to-room relationships set at right angles within the corridor (figs. 1, 3, 6). In the classic type, encounters between inhabitants in the corridor are inevitable. A second corridor preceding the rooms and conceived as a loggia, for example, can alleviate this situation by affording a second access (fig. 5).

Similar to the corridor, a hall also provides access to all rooms simultaneously and the rooms are also individually usable. However, the hall is also distinguished by the fact that it welcomes the visitor in the form of a well-designed space that is often used to impress the visitor and allows for additional functions that the corridor cannot provide: one can set up a table, the space invites you to stay (fig. 7).

Living Room as Circulation Center / Floor Plan “Without Corridor”

The floor plan fans out from and around the living room, which is both the center of the apartment and the distribution zone (circulation center). Nearly all paths lead through this room. The living room gains in floor area since less corridor space is required; sometimes, individual rooms are reduced in size in exchange for a larger living room. The concept is exceptionally conducive to communication, but it does restrict opportunities for privacy. Hilberseimer refers to this type of design as a “cabin system,” Alvar Aalto called his all-purpose living room a “market square,” thus emphasizing the lively nature of such a room. The apartment benefits from having a clearly defined center, while the remaining rooms are kept neutral with regard to use (figs. 1, 2, 3). The living room can also be defined as a large continuous hall determined by the spatial boundaries of the rooms (fig. 4). The paths through the living room must be designed in a manner that the living quality is undiminished (fig. 5). Some cases feature separate corridors with bathroom leading to the bedrooms. There is, of course, no need to place the living room in the geometrical center of the apartment (fig. 6).

Zoning

This type of floor plan clearly separates the different functional areas within an apartment: it differentiates between the common living area including living room, kitchen, and dining area, on the one hand, and the bedroom area with individual rooms and bathroom on the other (fig. 1). Studies or home office rooms can form a separate, third zone. The goal is to achieve an uninterrupted course of the individual functions, which can occur simultaneously and side-by-side; the individual member of the family or co-op is given as much freedom and privacy as possible. Each area has its own hallway, and the hallways are either gathered together at the entrance or arranged in sequence. The kitchen often separates the different zones; sometimes a bathroom core, which should, if possible, be accessible separately from both the common area and the bedroom area, fulfills this separating function (figs. 2, 3, 4). However, the living area can also provide indirect access to the bedrooms by letting the living room hallway lead directly into the bedroom hallway (fig. 5). In order to achieve privacy even in the case of a direct link between living room and bedroom hallway, some plans offer a second path to the rooms, which may lead through the kitchen or even through the bathroom. The shape of the building can be chosen in a manner to ensure that a spatial separation of specific areas occurs naturally, for example, in L-shaped apartments, double rows (fig. 6), apartments arranged around an atrium (fig. 7), or, of course, maisonette apartments.

Examples from the 1990s often display a different type of zoning: the “service” spaces of an apartment (kitchen, bathroom, pantry, maisonette stairs) are bundled in a service core, with the living and bedrooms on the opposite side (fig. 8). This approach bundles the shafts and stacks the most noise-prone space one above the other. This zone is often employed as a buffer to the access area, especially when covered walkways or central corridors are used, and the rooms lie undisturbed. The latter – no longer squeezed between a variety of ancillary rooms – can therefore assume a clear, attractively designed form, frequently neutral (that is, flexible) in character.

Dividing Elements

Visually, the apartment reads like a large, open space with prefabricated dividing elements (for example, installation core, maisonette stairs, wall pieces). Since the sense of space is derived by the large open space rather than the dividing elements, these apartments appear generous and open despite their real dimensions. To ensure that the core (with kitchen, bath, pantry) is perceived as a freestanding autonomous body, it is often rotated away from the axis (fig. 1). It guides the movements of the inhabitants, divides the paths or allows for a circular route. A pantry or storage room, a bathroom, or an installation core can also separate the corridors leading to living or bedrooms (fig. 1) or separate the living room from the bedroom wing (fig. 2), while a core with galley kitchen and bathroom can structure the link between living room and dining room (figs. 3, 4). A loft (fig. 5) contains no walls at all, it only specifies possible wall placements around an installation core and can be used as a large one-room apartment.

Floor Plan with Circular Path / Emphasizing the Internal Path

This kind of floor plan thematizes the path through the apartment. It creates the greatest number of functional and spatial relationships between different rooms, which can be experienced and actively utilized. Each space, each room can be reached via two or more paths in this type of floor plan. The multitude of possible paths allows the user to experience the apartment from ever-new perspectives, it appears to be more varied than it actually is. The path often circles around a center, for example an atrium (figs. 1, 2). The visual contact with the other side ensures that the overall layout is clear at all times. The rooms can thus feel like “showcases” strung along the route. However, the circular path can also make the kitchen and sanitary zone into the center (fig. 3) or even the stairwell (fig. 4). The bedrooms can also lie at the center (fig. 5, one of many variations), in which case they form the internal quiet zone, while at the same time functioning as a pass-through zone and filter. They can open toward the intimate side of the house or the common areas as needed. The individual rooms absorb the traffic area (fig. 6). The rooms are arranged in such a manner that the openings in the center of the wall surface allow for the “circular path.” The downside of this arrangement is that it diminishes the floor area where furnishings can be placed and one can assume that these openings are left open or closed off by the users according to their individual needs. A circular route is also created by a (more or less) complex system of rooms and paths without a center, but instead with short cuts, that are all the more surprising (fig. 7).

Organic Floor Plan

This floor plan type is based on studying the paths users take as they move between different activities in an apartment. Walls are set up around the areas where movements are concentrated, and the rooms evolve from there (fig. 1). The paths should be short, the area covered by the corridor as small as possible, and the rooms can flow into one another. Right angles are but one solution. In fact, these floor plans have an organic feel – the walls frequently branch off from a spacious central hall as if from a source (fig. 2). The functional relationships between the different rooms are brought to the fore in this floor plan (fig. 3), which pays particular attention to the specific sequences of rooms: for example the relationships between kitchen and corridor-playroom, kitchen and entrance, master bedroom and infant bedroom. The resulting rooms assume an unusual shape; unfortunately they tend to allow for only one option of placing standard pieces of furniture that is predetermined by the architect. Since the patterns of movement (the desired spatial relationships), which define our lives, are in constant flux, these floor plans tend to “age” quickly; they are so “perfect” and specialized that they can prove to be inflexible.

Continuous Floor Plan

The continuous floor plan reduces room boundaries to a few walls, which are placed with great care in order to make the space dynamic and divide it into specific areas. The rooms are rarely separated from the traffic area and hardly at all from one another; they merge into each other, open up sightlines, extend an invitation to move forward (fig. 1). As a result, the apartments appear more generous and more open, the individual room always relates to the entire space. In examples with horizontal interconnectedness (figs. 2, 3), living room, dining area, and kitchen blend with the corridors leading to the master and children’s bedrooms; the rooms are set off from one another. In the case of vertical interconnectedness, this approach results in different room heights and room relationships, which increase the desire to move between spaces (fig. 4). The spatial flow is sometimes enhanced by the deliberate use of light, such as placing a source of light at the end of a path attracting the visitor to walk in that direction: the source of light is provided in the form of the glass door leading to the garden (fig. 2); or it is the skylight, around the column of light of which the entire house is arranged (fig. 4). Emblematic for the continuous floor plan is a promenade at its purest (fig. 5): here, a single, continuous space is structured through branches. Spatial relationships and sightlines are deliberately orchestrated through cleverly designed bends in the room branches; each branch ends in a quiet zone, even without a door as separation.

Flexible Floor Plan

The constantly changing user requirements for an apartment (number of users, live/work dynamic) and the increasing diversity of forms of living in general are in a relationship of tension to the idea of real estate as an “immovable property,” which – from an economic perspective – should be used by the same occupants for the longest possible time. In this case, the favoured solution is conversion within the existing floor plan rather than a move to another apartment. The approaches range from modifiable external walls to movable room dividers and rooms that can be additionally connected to different apartments as well as changing the shape and size of the rooms by means of moveable wall elements. The most radical idea is that of the “growing house” (as single-family house, fig. 1), in which gradual, occupant-realized expansion takes not only the financial possibilities of the occupants into consideration, but also reinforces their identification with their own home. The core of the house, from which it is developed horizontally and vertically, consists of an installation and access core that simulta­neously functions as a structural element. If the load-bearing outer walls and the installation areas are fixed, however, the occupants can still fulfill their individual needs with regard to floor plan design with the help of customized, removable interior walls (fig. 2). The shallow depth of the built volume creates good light conditions. Or the installations can be placed in a single axis along the partition walls, leaving the rest undetermined, as in this model development (fig. 3).

Until now, solving housing problems through flexible floor plans has met with little success. The problem of noise protection remained unsolved; the costs for suspended ceilings with flexible power and lighting supply paths or for floor heating failed to justify the advantages of a flexible floor plan design. Practice has shown that most occupants tend to shy away from the effort of repositioning walls and prefer the alternative of participating in the floor plan design during the construction phase. A case in point is this example (fig. 4): in a concrete skeleton structure the individual floor plan can be realized on each platform with lightweight wood-framed walls. Buildings and housing types are still perceived as static objects: one settles in and adapts. Aside from participatory planning, flexibility today is mostly limited to rooms and room groupings that can be added and adapted as needed – rooms with a neutral character (in apartment buildings, these are usually located across from the stairwell) can be added to individual apartments (fig. 5). Alternatively, the design is conceived to anticipate different room constellations for different living concepts in a house, so that several apartments can be easily connected or separated into individual units. Separate access to the various levels and segments is a prerequisite for this approach. Room sizes and forms can also be changed to a limited by means of movable built-in elements (figs. 6), 7).

Neutral or Ambiguous Spaces

In this concept, the use of the space is not predefined by the size, form and arrangement of the rooms, which increases the opportunities for different uses to come into play for one and the same floor plan (figs. 1), 2), 3). There is no need to modify the apartment in order to meet new requirements (as is the case with the flexible floor plan); the occupant can and indeed must invent his or her own form of living. Personal requirements can be met by rearranging the interior and occupants with different ideas on living can realize these ideas within the same floor plan model (greater mix of residents within one housing complex). To this end, the rooms need to be of a certain size and proportion and, ideally, with independent access. As a result, more floor area is required for corridors and rooms, and the best solutions for this type of floor plan are therefore found in more exclusive residential buildings. Rooms with a neutral character also often emerge from a design process that is schematic, even graphic: a (load-bearing) system or a floor plan area is divided into a number of equal or large and small fields to which a variety of functions are then assigned (kitchen, bathroom/pantry/closet, bedroom, living room, or open space). The arrangement and combination of these assigned functions can vary from apartment to apartment. Since the individual room fields are required to accommodate differing functional units, they are designed in an unspecified manner and hence neutral in terms of use (fig. 4).

It would be interesting to explore yet another design approach to creating neutral, ambiguous spaces: instead to creating identical rooms with little to no character for the purpose of ensuring that they can accommodate the widest range of uses, the rooms could also be deliberately designed with distinctively different characteristics (room size and form, light, etc.), thus inviting a very individual use – as is the case in many old buildings, which are once again popular.

Maisonette

The floor plan typology of a maisonette is characterized by the fact that the apartment stretches across several full floors. It is usual two stories high, rarely more. As a building type, the maisonette is above all dedicated to the idea of zoning: the two-story layout facilitates a spatial separation of specific functions. At the same time, two-story atria are often an impressive feature of maisonettes. The apartment with its connecting stairs, which can be designed with great flexibility, feels generous and spacious: one has a sense of being in a house of one’s own. The stairs and the internal path can be staged in the manner seen in this example (fig. 1), where the open stairs change direction on each floor and also serve as a room divider between living room and kitchen. Atria are also employed to merge the different levels: the clear height in the stairwell often widens so that the entrance area, kitchen, and dining area communicate with the bedroom wing (fig. 2). Conversely, this air well can also extend to the size of an entire room (fig. 3). But it can also be entirely separated from the stairs themselves (fig. 4), where a set back dining gallery overlooks the living room below. A generous sense of space can also be achieved by not simply stacking the living levels between two partitions, but by arranging them in a staggered form. In this case, the apartment extends not only across several floors but also across several structural units (fig. 5). This multiplies the views and suggests a larger floor area than the apartment actually offers. In multi-story buildings, the maisonette type is often found in combination with a central corridor or covered walkway, because it allows for undisturbed front-to-back interiors despite the orientation to one side only on the entrance level. The entrance is usually located at the level where the common rooms are; kitchen, living, and dining room then function as a filter and protect the private sphere, even the stairs can serve as a buffer to the access path (fig. 6). However, the entrance can also be located at the bedroom level. This is often the case in center-corridor types, where only half of the building width is available at the entrance level. In this scenario, the stairs are designed and placed in a manner that draws the visitor directly into the living space (fig. 7).

The scissor-shaped floor plan, a variation of the “back-to-back, crossover”-type, is a unique form (fig. 8). In it the functions are bundled and stacked: a central corridor divides the house into two halves, for example, a living area that is more prone to noise and a quiet bedroom area. On one side, the corridor then provides access to apartments with their living area at entrance level; on the other side it opens to apartments which have their sleeping area at this level; within each flat a set of internal stairs leads up to the next level and crosses the corridor to reach the other half of the house, where the second part of the apartment is located (with living room or bedroom respectively). Each apartment is thus identical in structure and orientation, profiting, so to speak, equally from the advantages of the different sides of the building (view, light).

Split-Level

Split-level is a floor plan type in which the apartment is usually distributed across at least three (often 5–6) levels, staggered in half level steps. The connecting stairs tend to be short, the levels small; what is at play here, is a constant progression upward, the pleasure of how the spaces flow into one another and the path winds through the apartment – the qualities of the continuous floor plan. In extreme cases each room, each function has its own level. Views into rooms and across spaces, sightlines of all kinds combined with a fine-tuned spatial separation characterize this type. Since one is constantly looking at the apartment from new positions, it can appear to be very diversified within a minimum of space. This type is often used when different functions must be accommodated in one apartment, for a room can be specifically designed in size and height for each of these functions and accordingly connected to a greater or lesser degree to the other activities in the home. Split-levels are most commonly used on narrow lots, for row housing, high-rises or in a building gap, and especially at hillsides where the topography can thus be utilized to best advantage. The internal stairs are centrally located, with landings of identical or different sizes for differing functions. The common rooms – following a sequence of entrance, kitchen, dining area, and living room – tend to transition seamlessly in a typical split-level plan. The spatial continuum is thus palpable and emphasized. At the same time, this generates a contradiction between deliberate openness and the need for withdrawing into a private sphere, to which each split-level floor plan must respond. One possibility is to place the stairs with oversized landings, which can serve for different work and living activities, apart from the main levels of the unit, separating them to a greater or lesser degree from these levels. The facing between the levels and the stairs becomes more and more closed with the increasing height of the building and the increasing need for intimacy called for by the uses (of the levels). Thus it is possible to optimize the degree of isolation provided (fig. 1). An atrium next to the stairs can further enhance the appeal of wandering through the apartment (fig. 2). Here, the atrium creates generous sightlines between the levels and the stairs all the way to the roof patio. The stairs, now merging with the main living areas, can also be closed off from these creating a separate stairwell thanks to the careful placement of the stairs within the layout. Thus, when the requirements for use change, new individual rooms with separate access can be easily created (this is contrary to the prejudice that split-level types offer no flexibility). The split-level type can also be employed strategically (fig. 3). Here, several different split-level apartments unfold across three levels around the stairwell core of the multifamily home, whereby all three levels have a private entrance, some from the floor landing and some from the mezzanine landing. This independent access opens up new possibilities for subdividing the apartment and for different uses such as subletting, flats for adult children, in-law apartments, housing for a caregiver, or a home office space.

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Originally published in: Oliver Heckmann, Friederike Schneider (eds.), Floor Plan Manual Housing, fourth revised and expanded edition, Birkhäuser, 2011.