Functional Living for Families with Children

This degree project is an inquiry in how plan layouts and functions should be designed to suit families with children. The project aim to, if possible, find good solutions and designed houses that satisfy the requirements a family have. Last spring we contacted Willa Nordic AB, a company that produce houses, and they had a suggestion to investigate living for families with children. Their motif were that they lacked in information and knowledge in how to design houses that correspond to a family's needs. We thought the idea was exiting and motivating. The autumn 2008 studies were made on earlier published reports, in the subject "living environment", to get a solid background. The earlier inquiries shows a clear development through the whole 1900's, from being without standards to have well defined norms. Though, there are still today no defined guidelines for how to design a house for a family. As a complement to the earlier published reports we have implemented one questionnaire and two interviews. Both the questionnaire and the interviews have shown us qualities that are important to provide houses made for families. We have also decided to clarify aspects as children's health and secure, and general, functional and open plan layouts. To get to a result we discuss a few different headlines; storage, spaces for children and youths, one or two storey, general layouts, bedrooms, open plan layout and a second entry. The discussion is made from a children and family life perspective. The result shows that it's impossible to design one solution that fits all families. Every family constellation and their habits looks different and there are no plan layout that satisfies all. Although we believe that there are some common points that should be considered when planning a house for families with children. It's important that the family answer questions to fulfill their needs. In the result we have illuminate some qualities that we assume positive for families with children