Small Apartment Floor Plan Project

I took last fall super exciting course about interior design. One of the tasks in the course was to make a new floorplan to a small 48m2 sized apartment. Before we started the work, we had to decide to whom will the apartment be made for, and what kind of people they are. I decided to make a plan for me and my boyfriend. 

 

This is the floorplan that we had to redesign

We have a dream of a apartment, which would have space for both a loom and e-drum set. We need also decent kitchen and a dining table, because we love to cook and eat slowly. We have also agreed on buying an L-shaped sofa with a function of transforming it to a guest bed. There should be space for storing lot of cds, LPs and tapes, as well as craft supplies. In this project, these requirements would be really hard to fulfill, because of the size of the apartment.

I had to consider all minimum measurements in the floorplan. The distance from sofa to the table, the distance between dining table and wall, space for paths to move in the apartment and enough space to open the drawer and so on. I had to think about the amount of space I need for storage. I measured and calculated the amount of meters that our music collection needs, and the sizes of the furniture we have. I had to consider the fixed places of windows. We were not allowed to move water points more than 1,5 meters from their original positions. I had to think carefully how to place doors the way that they open functionally. I didn’t want to have these sliding doors, because I prefer traditional ones.

I made huge amount of versions, because I got so excited about this project. I used scale changing ruler to make everything in right scale. I had papermodels for the furniture that was hardest to place, and moved them on top of the floorplan. I had to make some compromises. There would be space to get up from the bed only from the other side. I’m used to that, because that’s the situation in our current apartment. I also thought a lot of the style and decoration of the interiors. For example I placed some antique drawers there and planned a nice display for my spinning wheels in the living room. 

My final floorplan

 

Small sketch of the entry

A sketch of the interiors in the living room

In the lesson we finally rewieved all of the plans that each student had produced. I found interesting all the non-square plans. I had tried those myself too, but I didn’t get any of them work. Maybe the square shaped walls are easiest to attatch to a small apartment in generally. We found out that garment rooms take usually quite much space, because there must be space for kneeding in the room. Kitchen-living room combos were popular, as well as large multi-functional bathrooms. I got really good feedback, and my teatcher was comparing my solution to a floorplan that one professional interior designer had made from the same flat:

A floorplan to the same apartment made by a professional

 

Another floorplan to the same apartment made by a professional

I find it interesting, how the different functions are placed in the floorplans in generally. Kitchen – Living rooms are popular now maybe because people don’t really cook so often. The reason for some people to dislike this combo is that they think that the smell of food is spreading everywhere. I saw in one magazine a room, that worked as a bath room and bed room. I showed this to my class mates, and it really made them laugh. In the traditional houses there has often been one “main room” which served for all purposes: kitchen, sleeping, dining, and for work and crafts. Storage rooms were separated. It was energy efficient to heat up only one room. 

Main room in Seurasaari museum (Pertinotsa): Huge oven, bed in front of it, hand washing point in the right side of the door.