Horizontal and Vertical Organisation of Space

There are many ways to organise a floor plan and architectural devices we can use to come up with a layout. Similar to the parti, the best place to start is with a simple sketch, maybe as simple as creating two connected blocks and filling in the blanks. It is important to devise a strong parti and develop a deep understanding of site and site strategy before designing a floor plan – there is no one-size-fits-all solution, as discussed in our previous posts.

We work in tandem with our clients to discuss any requests or requirements they may have, and using the parti and site analysis we design unique floor plans for every project. There are a number of architectural techniques or devices which can be used to organise a plan – intersecting axes, Louis Kahn-esque division of “served and servant spaces”, a central living core with other spaces extending outwards – these are only a few of the possible combinations. We carefully interrogate the relationship of each room to the next and the exact order in which rooms should be arranged. Services such as plumbing or electrics can be clustered to maximise efficiency on site. The relationships between rooms such as kitchen and utility, bathroom and bedroom, living room and snug are examined, and eventually we will arrive at a thorough and considered floor plan.

When setting out a floor plan, the organisation of rooms and spaces is important, but we don’t live our lives on the ceilings looking down. You can have a layout that makes perfect sense in plan, spaces neatly organised to flow and relate well to one another – but a plan cannot truly show you things such as ceiling heights, window sizes, sill heights, how high your TV is mounted on the wall. These factors are just as important to the essence of a space as an efficient plan layout, so we must also design in section – using vertical slices through the building to consider all dimensions and aspects of a design. We design in both plan and section simultaneously to ensure neither one restricts or contradicts the other, achieving a well-balanced design while ensuring the smaller details don’t get overlooked.

Factors to consider when designing in section include ceiling heights, the depth of wall and floor structures, the quality of natural light in a given space, and opportunities for mezzanines, double-height ceilings, or clerestory windows. None of these can be truly developed in plan; they can be noted or annotated, but not envisioned as they will actually exist in relation to the rest of the building.