Reading floor programs is second nature for an architect. It is the product of an instruction that stresses representation both two- and – three-dimensional, as a means to understand buildings and a way to communicate ideas to other people.
Reading floor programs can be difficult at first for nonarchitects, but this is a very useful skill to have, particularly for those undertaking a job, be it an entire house or simply interior alterations. Floor plans are among several two-dimensional drawings architects use (including building sections, elevations and many details), but they are best for describing the size and scale of spaces, the relationships between spaces and also the motion across a home.
A fast definition for those not knowledgeable about reading programs: A floor plan is a diagram of a flat plane cut however a building, showing one floor. A strategy is typically cut about 4 ft over the floor, in order to include windows at the drawing.
Plans along with other two-dimensional architectural drawings are orthographic projections, meaning that all elements are to the exact same scale. Therefore, no distortion happens, as it can in outlook drawings, where objects dropped in the distance are drawn smaller. Simple example: A strategy of a cube would be a square.
Watch what can be learned by studying the subsequent floor plans. The first couple run through several fundamental concepts, also showing how strategies can be articulated to be understood simpler by architects and nonarchitects alike. These should help in deciphering the later examples. Hopefully greater understanding will cause more floor plans finding their way onto .
Hint: Click each of the images for the largest view.
Many architects will readily admit that Frank Lloyd Wright created some wonderful floor plans. The houses and other buildings he made can be seen as means of committing materiality to his floor programs, which have been spatially innovative. His fairly open floor plans seem mild by today’s standards, but they were several miles before the Victorian standard of the time.
This floor plan is one of Wright’s Usonian houses, which he created from the 1930s and ’40s. In the houses he used various shapes as modules; the Rosenbaum House is clearly according to a rectangle. By creating the grid in the plan (it would have been apparent from the floor pattern, but not as strong as in the plan) a couple things happen: How other elements (walls, doors, measures) relate to the grid is evident, and also the distinction between inside and outside is blurred.
In the case of the latter, the floor and terrace mix together; only a row of door swings at the massive living space signify the border between these realms.
Matthew Cunningham Landscape Design LLC
Before we delve into more floor plans, here is one variant: a site strategy. The home is drawn with its exterior walls, doors and windows but with no interior elements. The focus is on the landscape and how the grounds relate to the building, particularly the means of access.
In the bottom of the drawing we can see a path to the front doorway, a path that extends to the private garden and its own series of terraces. It’s also evident that you can descend a few steps in the rear patio to a boccie court on the face of the home.
2fORM Architecture
It’s simple to see how color boosts the legibility of the preceding drawing, but the exact same thinking applies to this floor plan, although the focus is around the home, not the landscape.
Here, three colours differentiate three conditions, from dark to light : outdoors, involving zones (terraces, covered patios) and interiors. By picking a contrasting color for your past, the form of the home — or more accurately the form of the house’s components — is very strong; it consists of 3 rectangles connected by thin pieces of flow.
DOWN to Earth Architects
Another means of helping legibility is to earn the floor plan a three-dimensional drawing. This case does it so nicely that it is very simple to see the flat plane which cuts through the home.
These 2-D/3-D hybrid drawings are simpler with Building Information Modeling (BIM) software, which uses a smart model in the computer environment instead of lines, as in traditional drafting, but they suffer from one major flaw: They distort the drawings, so walls and other elements cannot be quantified to scale. But they are helpful in imagining a layout and how furniture fits into specific rooms.
While this home is too large for my tastes, it’s a certain logic which produces the plan fairly simple to read, in spite of the 45-degree angle made by the garage. Directly over the left-right dimension (123′-10″) is your front door, behind which is a sizable foyer and an even larger great room outside.
Running left-right between both of these spaces is the hallway which organizes the home, a hallway that turns 45 degrees toward the garage. The central hallway makes this plan a double-loaded corridor, such that spaces line both sides of the backbone.
Further, perpendicular to the hallway — the right wall of the wonderful area — would be the division between personal (right) and public (left). The 45-degree kink might be derived from site limitations, but it can help to accommodate a very large master suite comprised of not just one but 2 master bedrooms.
Ignacio Salas-Humara Architect LLC
This home is aligned with my modern tastes, and it will help illustrate that a strategy is a significant determinant of a building’s style. The rectangular volumes of the garage, home, and lookout (from top to bottom) are connected through an outside corridor. This allows each volume exist because a platonic contour, as opposed to as a conglomeration of boxes, as in the previous case. The home volume here aligns the bathrooms and other service areas away in the water, allowing views from the living area and bedrooms to the vista.
Sarah Susanka, FAIA
Of course, not all houses can be limited to one floor, so in this instance it can help to see lower and upper floors together. By putting one over another, relationships between the floors can be grasped; the property line box in this example of one of Sarah Susanka’s “Not So Big Houses” is particularly beneficial.
Here, the first floor is on the top, and the second floor is below; the front of the home is on the right, or so the garage visible in the top left opens off an alley. I find a couple things rather interesting in these programs: The front door’s location on the face of the home splits the living-dining-kitchen space into 2, but in lieu of the living area situated up front, it is the kitchen, next to a covered front porch. Second is how in which the roof of the garage is employed as a deck.
Richard Bubnowski Design LLC
Here is another example with a reduced floor (top) and top floor (bottom) together. Once it looks like the second floor is much more compact compared to the first floor, they are both essentially a rectangle of the exact same dimensions; the first floor is drawn with comprehensive outdoor spaces (remember the Wright example earlier), which makes it look larger.
Yet because the site plan earlier also showed, it is important to articulate these exterior spaces, to design and understand how the exterior and interior lands relate. Compare this plan to the previous one, particularly in the allotment of the living-dining-kitchen spaces. This strategy is somewhat more traditional, placing the public living space toward the front and the more personal kitchen/dining distance in the rear.
Phil Kean Designs
This last example splits the first and second floor programs to two images — a small quiz, if you will. This might not be an ideal way to read programs, but it often contributes to information being shared on the Internet.
Yet, depending on the reading of earlier examples, a few items can assist with orientation: stairs, columns and important walls. The stairs are visible in the bottom centre, columns are found at a line extending upward from the entrance, which wall on top looks rather substantial. I’m most intrigued from the lanai — just one enters a covered outdoor space before moving in the home.
Phil Kean Designs
Those three elements — stairs, columns, wall — are obvious at the top plan … kinda. The stair is still found at the bottom centre, and also the sound wall around the top indicates that the gallery is a double-height space.
But some of the columns don’t extend past the second floor; they encourage balcony 1, whose border contrasts with the line of columns. Yet the amount of these plans should be clear: This is an introverted house, focused on its large pool and pool space.
Inform us : What do you wish you knew regarding floor plans?