Design Process
Requirements Questionnaire for Building an Eco-Friendly Home
When considering the needs of a new home, it is not only necessary to think about how we would like to live, but it is also essential to share these ideas and adapt to the other family members, both those who are present now and those who will come, as it is often necessary to consider future children or elderly people who will live in the home.
If this home is also going to be eco-friendly, the requirements are even more specific and must be carefully considered to achieve the goal of near-zero consumption. However, we would even suggest that you consider not only an eco-friendly home, but a healthy eco-friendly home. Our home should be a health sanctuary, and therefore, questions such as what type of heating we will use or what type of paint we will apply to the walls will be key to achieving a healthy, toxin-free indoor environment.
So let us proceed step by step. Today we bring you a very practical post in which we will break down each area of our home, examining what questions we should ask to ensure the design process of our home is successful.
Through a tour of each space in our home, we propose a requirements questionnaire for building a healthy eco-friendly home that you can also download at the end to print at home.
General Requirements for Each Space in Our Home
Family Planning
The first of the requirements for building an eco-friendly home is no different from building a traditional home, as we must ask ourselves how large our home will be based on how many people it will accommodate.
We must know how large our family and circle are now and in the future, as this will help us define the number of primary and auxiliary bedrooms.
A room that currently functions as an office in the present plan may serve as a children’s room or elderly person’s room in the near future.
Some questions that can help you organize your ideas would be:
How many children do I want to have?
Would I like to be able to accommodate guests?
In how many phases do I want to build my home?
Will elderly people come to live in the home in the future?
Kitchen / Dining Room
When we imagine what we want the kitchen of our future home to be like, we inevitably think of the dining room, as one of the main kitchen design strategies is based on the greater or lesser relationship they will have with the living and dining area.
In this case, it is very important to consider whether you feel more comfortable in an open or closed kitchen, depending on your lifestyle.
Some clients opt for more open kitchens as they like the activity of cooking to involve a common space for interaction for the whole family.
Other people, on the contrary, prefer a closed kitchen to prevent any clutter in the kitchen from being part of the dining room view or simply to prevent cooking odors from permeating furniture or fabrics in the living room.
In this case, there are many questions that can help you decide what type of kitchen you need:
How do I imagine the activity of cooking?
Do I prefer central islands or side bars?
What type of relationship do I seek between the kitchen and the dining room?
Will the pantry be part of the kitchen area or will it be separate?
What material will the kitchen cabinets be made of?
Will we use any filter such as reverse osmosis for tap water?
Living Room
Another requirement for building an eco-friendly home is to consider what we would like our living room to be like.
The living room is the space where we will likely spend the most time in our daily lives, especially sharing moments with our family.
It is important that the architect has a very clear idea of the type of relationship you seek between the living room and the outdoors, as well as the degree of privacy that makes you feel most comfortable with respect to the bedrooms.
Some questions about your own habits or the activities you enjoy doing will be very useful:
What do I like to do when I come home and meet my family?
Do I usually watch a lot of television?
Or do I prefer to sit by the fireplace and read?
What type of furniture will occupy the room?
What will the lighting be like?
Bedrooms
As we explained at the beginning of the post, choosing the appropriate number and type of bedrooms for your home is related to family planning and will involve a greater or lesser need to create flexible spaces in the home design.
To do this, you need to be clear about how many bedrooms you need, as well as their type: primary or auxiliary.
In this regard, it is important to ask yourself:
Do I want my children to have separate bedrooms?
Would I like to have a playroom?
What relationship do I seek between the master bedroom and those of the children or guests?
Bathrooms
Bathrooms are a service area but can play a fundamental role in the home design.
In terms of architectural design, they will involve many decisions at the installation level, so it is essential to be very clear about how many bathrooms we want for our home and what use we will give them.
Some questions that can make the task easier would be:
Do I want a private bathroom in the master bedroom?
How many auxiliary bathrooms do I need?
Do I need a service bathroom near the home entrance?
Storage
Our clients always tell us that their current home lacks storage, and storage space is one of the most important requirements of a home and often does not receive the necessary priority.
Therefore, here we include some specific questions regarding storage for you to reflect on the quantity of objects and other items we need to store at home.
Suitcases, sports equipment, Christmas decorations, seasonal clothing, chairs or other extra items for guests—everyone has their own habits and storage priorities.
Closets, pantries, or other storage spaces can play a very important role in the design as they represent a considerable space reserve, but sometimes these are not sufficient and separate storage rooms or garages must be considered.
For this reason, it is important to establish our storage needs from the very first moment of the project.
To be clear about how much storage space you need in your home, you can ask yourself:
Would I like to have a walk-in closet next to the master bedroom?
Do I need a pantry next to the kitchen?
What type of closets are most practical for me?
Do I have a lot of bulky items to store such as sports equipment or suitcases?
Outdoor Spaces
Whether patios, terraces, balconies, or gardens, outdoor space presents a wide variety of opportunities to multiply the surface area of our home during warm weather, and therefore it is important to be clear about the use we want to make of it.
It may help to ask yourself some of these questions:
Do I usually go out to eat on the terrace when the weather is nice?
Would I like to have a garden or vegetable garden?
Do I prefer a sunny outdoor space or one that is protected and shaded?
