Small House Bliss

Small house designs with big impact

Category Archives: Reverse Floor Plan

“Reverse floor plan” is a term used to describe a house with two or more floor levels that has its main living area on the upper floor and the bedrooms below. A reverse floor plan is most often used to provide access to views that are blocked at the lower floor level.


by 1 Comment

House On a Mountainside by Keiichi Hayashi

House On a Mountainside, a small house by Keiichi Hayashi

This small house rises above the trees on a forested hillside. To take full advantage of the available views, architect Keiichi Hayashi stacked the rooms vertically, creating a simple tall box of a house. Working with the slope, he opted for a split-level plan that divides the 96 m2 (1,033 ft2) of space over a total of six levels, each dedicated to a single function. Starting at the bottom, they are the entry foyer, children’s bedroom, bathroom, parent’s bedroom, living room, and kitchen/dining room at the top of the house. The six levels are connected by a switchback staircase in the middle of the small floor plan.

Continue Reading →


by Leave a comment

Two small houses by Architekturbüro Scheder

Zwei Kleine Häuser by Architekturbüro Scheder

This pair of identical small houses is located on the outskirts of Kaiserslautern, a historic city in western Germany. They stand out from their neighbors with minimalist black-stained wood exteriors embellished only by the crisp white window frames. The tall and narrow houses are placed at right angles to each other on the sloped lot, giving both views over the neighboring rooftops to a church and a historic castle. To take full advantage of those views, the architects at Architekturbüro Scheder opted for a reverse floor plan, placing the living areas on the highest of the three floors.

Continue Reading →


by Leave a comment

The perplexing House in Inokashira by Studio NOA

House in Inokashira by Studio NOA

This small house in Tokyo is wedged onto a thin strip of land between the street and a steep forested hillside. The narrow lot offered no real choice as to where to place the dwelling. The architects from Studio NOA dug the house into the toe of the hill, holding back the slope with a large retaining wall that also forms the back wall of the house. The footprint of the house tapers and has a slight bend as it conforms to the shape of the lot.

Continue Reading →


by 1 Comment

Alma Lane mews house in Dublin by Boyd Cody Architects

Alma Lane mews house by Boyd Cody Architects

A mews is a narrow street or lane that originally provided access to the stables and carriage houses of the well-to-do residential areas of cities. Over time, many of those former stables have been converted into homes, known as mews houses. Today’s small house is a newly built mews house, placed in the backyard of a large semi-detached Victorian home in Dublin, Ireland.

Continue Reading →


by Leave a comment

House in Kashiba by Naoko Horibe

small house in Kashiba by Horibe Naoko Architect

The clients for this small house in Japan had one key wish, a bath with an outside view. To meet that request on a small lot, architect Naoko Horibe designed a courtyard at the front of the house. The courtyard provides light and fresh air to both floors of the 85.6 m2 (921 ft2) house while maintaining the occupants’ privacy.

Continue Reading →


by 2 Comments

Small House On a Hillside by Vladimír Balda

This small shed-roofed house is at the edge of a suburban area in the Czech Republic. It sits on a steep slope facing to the north. Architect Vladimír Balda designed it with a “reverse floor plan”, putting the living area on the upper floor in order to give it a southern exposure. The lower floor was dug into the hillside so that there could be direct walk-out access from the upper floor living room via large glass doors leading to the south-side patio. The windows on the north side were kept relatively small for the sake of energy efficiency. From the photos in the gallery it appears that the best views are of the neighboring forest to the north-east. We would probably have taken better advantage of those views, but the homeowners placed a higher priority on minimizing energy use and keeping their expenses down.

Continue Reading →


by Leave a comment

47% House by Kochi Architect’s Studio

exterior

Architects often talk about integrating outdoor spaces with the inside, but rarely do they succeed to the degree that Kazuyasu Kochi has here. In this small house the boundary between inside and outside is blurred by walls of glass bordering on covered and sheltered outdoor spaces. The actual interior space is a simple two-storey rectangular box with one-storey extensions at either end. Kochi covered this inner house with an over-sized tent of roof and bounding walls that extend beyond the inner house to define outdoor rooms at the front and back. The name of the house supposedly refers to the proportions of indoor space and protected outdoor space.

Continue Reading →

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 353 other followers