The Snail House

Back in daydreamland, I did more detailed drawings of the "Snail House" that I posted about last month.

Follow me on a guided tour...

The first floor is dominated by bedrooms, including a couple of guest rooms forming a small suite.

Bathrooms are clustered around the central core. I envisage solar light tubes leading down from the roof to bring some natural light into those windowless spaces.

Ali asked me why I didn't give the kids' rooms separate en-suites. I could have, but with such a deep space to play with it would have made access a problem, and I like the idea of the hallway linking all the family rooms together. All the bedrooms have sliders opening out to a paved area running around that side of the house.

The big open space is a spacious garage with lots of room for bikes, storage, and a large work area for all those tree forts and pirate ships I need to build. This means we might have a fighting chance of getting actual cars in the garage!

The main entrance leads into a circular hall with stairs up either side to a balcony.

The second floor is extremely simple, and shows the spiral nature of the plan with a sweep of rooms running around the house.

I've added another staircase joining the playroom below with the family room above. I think this makes these informal family living spaces more self-contained and slightly separated from the entertainment areas.

This stairwell continues up to the eyrie at the top - strictly adults only :)

My dream house

Every once in a while, I daydream about what I would do if I were rich enough that money was not an obstacle.

Physical space is very important to me, so these flights of fancy often take the form of designs for houses.

Last night, I started sketching ideas around the "snail shell" concept. This is where the building spirals up to a central core. Here are my first crude sketches for a family dwelling. A floor plan, with lots of crossings-out where I played around to come up with the ideal configuration of rooms, and an aerial view looking over the spacious south-facing deck. I like decks!

I need to put some thought into proportions and styling because right now it looks a bit like a Martello tower. The idea is to have a low profile with lots of planting around the wider sections to soften the elevation.

I like putting bedrooms on the ground floor, with living rooms above. The central tower is topped off with a large office/studio with all-round views. Preferably of sea and mountains.

*Sigh* Dream on...