Blog 2: Bubble Diagrams and Floor Layouts

During the beginning of my project, my mentor introduced me to several ways of imagining the layout

of the house, the first of these being a bubble diagram. The bubble diagram is a way of detailing a

house by labeling each important room in the house with a bubble, and then arranging and sizing

those bubbles by how important they are and their relationships to the other rooms in the house.

You can also draw lines between the bubbles to demonstrate proximity, but that's really up to the

maker's preference. Lines between bubbles can also determine a different floor. For my project,

I made about five bubble diagrams all with different layouts depending on the rooms I wanted to

prioritize as well as how many floors I wanted to have. The drawings I did for them are below:

After discussing with my mentor, I decided the best concepts to follow were the three on the right.

All three of these prioritize a first floor which ad all three of the major social rooms which I wanted in

my design: the kitchen, dining room, and living room. I also thought it important to include at least

two bathrooms, a laundry room, and two bedrooms. These seven rooms were determined after

researching rooms in a house and which ones were most important. After today, I also thought it

important to include a garage, utilities closet, as well as other rooms. The next step in diagramming my

buildings was to create a more detailed layout that included the square footage of the rooms. 

 

All six of these designs are very conceptual, so there is definitely room for improvement in their layout.

A big flaw I see in at least one would be the bottom one in the second image. This design was made

with the idea of making a one-story home, with a hallway dividing the bedrooms from the other rooms.

However, this made a strange problem where the hallway was cutting the outside space into two.

Despite these flaws, all of these designs, serve the purpose of refining my ideas down to make a better

final design.

Comments

  1. Maria SteinerMay 24, 2022 at 7:04 AM

    These diagrams remind me of Robert Little's work. I can't find a link to the Life Magazine article describing his community on Pepper Ridge Road ( in Pepper Pike -- and my former neighbors) but I did find this article about one of his designs in Shaker Heights. He was a proponent of designing a house to fit a family's needs/priorities which it seems the bubble design captures well. He also valued bring nature in, incorporation many Frank Lloyd Wright concepts. You might find this interesting if you aren't already familiar with his work! https://shaker.life/great-shaker-homes/the-home-for-all-america/

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