I cannot tell you how many sheets of drafting paper I have gone through or how many files I have saved in SketchUp working on various dream home floor plans. Through this design journey, several commonalities emerged, most notably my love of a bungalow plan. Perhaps it has been the fact that I have more or less lived in a bungalow for the past twenty-odd years.
Another commonality is a courtyard-like space. This comes from my obsession with traditional Greek and Roman architecture, which has beautiful open courtyards at the centre of the home.
With this specific floor plan, I focused on using the home and creating public and private spaces. As the initial post about my dream home notes, I am inspired by three different styles. All of these styles really centre around the connectivity of the home's interior spaces with the outside spaces. The home is intended to be a dreamy, tropical vacation home—one that works for daily life and one that serves to entertain out-of-town guests. The dream is that the property has an additional bedroom ala casita. I love to entertain and cook for my guests so the heart of the home is truly the large kitchen that opens with sliding doors to the courtyard. An outdoor kitchen with a large BBQ and prep space will also be outside in the courtyard.
The interior space is reasonably proportioned at approximately 1,600 sqft. The practicality of the floorplan is a main public space that runs the length of the home, centred around the kitchen and opening to the courtyard. The two identical bedroom suites are located on either side of the courtyard, each with its own private patio. The use of the house is important to me with the layout. The most important things that I love to do are reading, cooking, working, sleeping, and nature - those are cues I used to develop the spaces.
I wanted to work with perfect geometry when laying out the home's masses. Using the Golden Ratio as a guide, you can see how the main kitchen space and adjacent courtyard are sized using a smaller rectangle, and then the wings of the home on either side are larger rectangles.
The house is going to be FILLED with colour and texture for memory sake the colour palette is included below:
As an ever-practical person, I wanted to focus on the constructibility and cost-effectiveness of the construction with the overall design. In addition to using the Golden Ratio I also considered the dimensions for use of construction materials. This extended to the size and shape of the windows to maintain two main shapes/sizes throughout the home. This is broken up with four large panels of glass block/brick that are intended to provide connectivity of the interior spaces to the outside but in a more dappled light sort of way. Specifically for the glass block panel in the library and the curved banquette in the kitchen.
There was much internal consternation about the open bathroom to the bedroom. The intention is to have the flooring flow as the closet does. The bathrooms within the bedrooms are to be flooded with light from the glass block panel within the water closet and the two large windows at the vanity and within the shower. My ultimate dream is to have a large glass door in the show so it can be an indoor/outdoor experience.
More to come as the design process continues! I would love to hear what you think about the floor plan.
Disclaimer: THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS
-G
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