Blog #4: Finalizing Site Plan

 After many iterations, I finally decided on a cohesive plan for my building. While small changes can still be made here and there, the overall layout I want to remain relatively the same moving forward. This is what I've got right now.

Starting from the left, the main driveway comes from the street to a one-car garage. This then connects to a concrete pathway that wraps around the house and to the main entrance. On this path there is a connecting patio that encompasses a tree that was already on the site. Along with this, there is an additional pathway that connects directly to the main patio area. Following this main patio north, you'll be greeted by the front doors, which lead to a hallway that leads to two different areas, the social space which includes the kitchen, dining room, and living room, and the private area, which has the bedrooms. These areas are around equal in square footage, but the usage of walls creates a much more closed-off group of separate spaces in the private area, while the lack of walls on the left side creates a wide-open space. Now this space didn't originally look like this. For instance, the closets featured throughout the building weren't a thing until I remembered that people might need them. This then caused me to go through different iterations of what the closets look like. This also occurred in places like the outside, as originally I was only going to have the pathway that led to the main patio. 

Now there are some deliberate decisions in this design to make it a more sustainable building. For one, the laundry room, utility room, and one of the bathrooms all sit next to each other to make plumbing and piping easy in that area. There are some limitations with that though, as the separation of the private and social areas across one floor makes it so the plumbing is not all centralized. Along with this, windows were deliberately placed throughout the building to allow as much sunlight as possible. This was decided after research into the Passivhaus project, which detailed different methods of creating sustainable housing. This placement of the windows facing south was designed like that is where the sun is the most since we are in the northern hemisphere. This makes it so natural light and heat from the sun is transmitted into the house throughout the seasons.