SIZE OF HOUSES & VARIOUS FACILITIES

A very common occurrence with most of the people in Indian large cities- You buy a smaller apartment at first –within your budget for your modest size family. As your family grows & as you grow wealthier, you start looking for a larger apartment. The typical question then arises- When we want to move to a larger size house “What is that you are exactly looking for?”

Given below are general Comparative area ratios for various types of houses. If we consider a unit module for one bedroom flat, the area tends to grow in multiples for larger flats as seen.

A fairly common question which students of Architecture ask while learning to design Mass housing is “When the increase is just in the number of bedrooms (maybe an attached toilet with it), why do the areas taken for design multiply as double, triple, four or five times the area of the smaller unit?”

The answer to both the above questions does not lie only in the quantitative aspect but largely lies in the qualitative aspect of the apartments

Let us look sequentially what this ’extra’ area should mean to you:

A typical 1BHK house may have 3 rooms- Living, Kitchen & Bedroom & a separated WC, Bath area. The modestly sized Living room in this kind of apartment may support only one type of Seating arrangement. The Kitchen with a restrictive width to depth ratio may have a small designated dining area to accommodate a table for four people.  The bedroom size will be such that it can accommodate ‘Bare minimum’ furniture. 1BHK flat may not have a designated service area like a ‘dry balcony’ & washing machine & clothes line needs to be accommodated in the lobby or in the small size attached terrace depending upon the weather conditions. Working out a furniture layout & making facilities in this kind of apartments is  a real challenge . Every room should be designed to shift functions whenever required. Eg. The Living room for a larger family should turn into a sleeping area in the Night.  The Bedroom needs to also accommodate tables & chairs for children to study during their exams. Thus every furniture item you buy or make will need to be thought about in great detail in terms of its use. Care should be taken that, in the attempt to maximize the use & storage, we do not over clutter the house & make it look small that it is. 1BHK apartment is always related with ‘Affordability’ & ‘Multi functionality’. Strangely even though these type of flats are in great demand due to their small areas & costing, developers make them less in number as it is time consuming &  structurally costlier to make more number of smaller sized 1BHK apartments.

A typical 2BHK house may have 4 rooms- Living, Kitchen- dining, Bedroom & a Master bedroom. It will always have a common toilet & an additional attached toilet with the Master bedroom. There may be larger lobby spaces like entrance lobby & bedroom lobbies. There also may be designated service areas like a ‘Dry balcony’ for your clothes line & washing machine.  The additional area here is generally distributed in an increased size in almost every room. The Living room should be large enough to have multiple seating arrangements ( a virtue rarely seen). There should be a separate Dining table space which can house a dining table for at least six people.  The kitchen comes with a larger arrangement of kitchen platform & as the dining area gets separated out, more amount of kitchen storage like crockery units etc get accommodated.  The bedrooms are slightly larger in size to accommodate, even a small study area along with the double bed & wardrobes. The attached toilet  with the master bedroom  gives you the privacy within the family. Because there are two bedrooms, one bedroom can be treated as the Children’s bedroom which can accommodate their bed areas & study areas. The need for every room to perform multiple functions reduces here as there is an area designated for each function. So the Living room can have a ‘Sofa set ’ instead of a ‘Bed settee’.  As we get a ‘Dry balcony’ for clothes & services, the terrace of  this apartment can be used for seating & having even a small garden. Thus the Design tagline in a 2BHK house goes as “Exclusive area for each function”.  In India, we seldom enter our house with our shoes on. Hence an area with a cupboard to keep shoes in the entrance lobby means ‘a lot’ to us.

A typical 3BHK house may have 5 rooms- Living, Kitchen-dining, Master bedroom with attached toilet , Bedroom & and additional Bedroom with a toilet. There will be a common toilet near the kitchen. This house will have an exclusive entrance lobby, bedroom lobbies, a dry balcony area & a fairly large terrace. The Living room, Kitchen & bedroom areas will have similar characteristic as any other 2 Bedroom apartment. Except that the sizes may increase marginally to accommodate more seating areas, more storage areas.  Some houses even come with additional alcoves or separate rooms  to be used for Storage, or  ‘Pooja room’The 3BHK house comes in the ‘Luxurious’ segment of Mass housing . The finishes also come with this quality & taste. Every area can be designed to have an exclusive function.  Another quite common factor seen in 3BHK plans is that it will have bedrooms with at least two walls  as external walls & more windows to facilitate cross ventilation. This happens because a 3BHK house consumes larger floor space within the building. The Design tagline for a 3BHK apartment is “Design every function in style”. Thus Design goes beyond the aspect of basic necessity & each item can be a  design statement. A 3BHK house many a times becomes as ideal house type for Joint families as very couple may get their separate room.

A Row house & The Bungalow is a real ‘Luxury’ in larger cities with ever increasing real estate prices.  These are usually ‘The house with my own adjacent Car park’ & ‘The house with my own private garden’.  The Pent house or the Duplex  comes in the same category in terms of the area  with Large Living areas, Large open kitchen & Dining, Multiple bedrooms, Balconies, Terraces & Bi level arrangement of rooms with internal staircases. Here the Design tag line is ‘Beyond the function & Design in style’.  The function & facilities aspects is taken’ For Granted’ in this kind of Housing option as there is very less Space crunch felt due to room sizes & exclusive spaces for available every  use & function. Hence each room can be designed in style suiting to your requirements & liking.  Another interesting aspect in a ‘Row house’ is the availability of clear terrace areas on the roof top, which  could be creatively used beyond putting up ‘Solar panels’ & Water tanks.

In India, the house type ranges from ‘The Hut’ To the ‘Haveli’ (Villa) depending upon the factor of location & affordability. The basic needs of Human beings still remain the same. Hence the basic function what every family requires  i.e – Seating spaces , Sleeping spaces, Cooking spaces, Eating spaces & Toilets  need to be taken care of. If we look upon various types & sizes of houses as ‘Canvas’ to paint our Ideas to accommodate all the above functions, the ‘Size of our house Does not Matter’ !

Hrishikesh