Programmatic Rules

Priority

Every activity wants to have its own room with good views and natural light but it is not possible. Generally, we prioritize public activities because we spend the most time there. The priority that we give to each activity is shown in how we arrange the house at different sizes. With a small house we might decide that we don’t need an office, or we can combine it with a guest room to save space.

As the building's size increases, activities develop into larger spaces, and new activities are added. In the tiny house, the master bedroom is a piece of furniture, whereas in the large house, the master bedroom is three rooms: a sleeping room, a dressing room, and a bathroom. The tiny house has a sofa that doubles as a bed, whereas the large house doesn’t need to share furniture or rooms. When the house is larger, the priority is to separate activities and to develop them. The bedroom might get its own sitting area.

Many complementary uses are not developed if there are equivalent uses nearby. A home office is not necessary if a work office is nearby and equivalent in use. Parents might want a sitting area in their bedroom to speak in private. If the parents can use the home office to talk in private, then that is equivalent in use and the bedroom does not need a sitting area.

Adjacency

Some activities are required to be next to each other. Certain complementary activities cannot be equivalent in use because they are not adjacent. A kitchen sink might be too far away from a home bar to be used as a bar sink. The kitchen sink is an equivalent use to a bar sink, but it has to be closer for it to work. An adjacency constraint requires that activities have direct access without another activity in between. For example, a kitchen needs to be adjacent to a dining room, or down the hall from a dining room, because we do not want to carry food through another room. It depends less on the distance than on the adjacency. 

There are many parameters that determine how space and objects should be configured:

• The kitchen work triangle is a constraint that requires the sink, refrigerator, and stove to be within a certain distance, and triangular to each other. 

• A TV should be across from a sofa, not too far away, and within a certain cone of vision. 

• A dining room table should have access from at least two sides so we do not feel boxed in.

Privacy

Privacy includes visual privacy, noise privacy, and access privacy. An open kitchen requires a visual connection to the dining room so we can see what's happening, and a noise connection so we can hear what's happening. A bathroom requires visual, noise, and access privacy. The visual and noise privacy is satisfied by enclosing it in a room, and the access privacy requires that it be out of the way so we don't see people accessing it. Access privacy is less practical in small houses, where most things are in view. Access privacy is different from visual privacy because we can enclose a room without enclosing its access.

User Groups

The question of access is simplified with user groups. A children’s wing means that access to and from the rooms within that wing is primarily for the children. User groups have their own area without others passing through. They "own" the circulation space by occupying the private spaces connected to it. Access to and from the private spaces is kept within the group, so other people don't disrupt the privacy of the user group. Occasionally a guest may need to use the shared bathroom, but it should feel like the children’s space. We should arrange space to maximize user groups. A master bedroom is not disrupted when a spouse accesses the master bath because it is the same user group. The following example splits the house into three main user groups: family, parents, and children.

E = entrance, K = kitchen, L = living room, D = dining room, B = bedroom, O = office, b = bath, h = hall, c = closet, s = storage