Many people have considered building beneath and discarded the idea, due to the complexities involved. Do not despair too early! Complexities with this approach to your house addition are like any complexities in life - it works best to organize them into digestible pieces and prioritize.
Setting aside structural considerations for the moment, I'd like to get into two of the most important design decisions: Entries and Stairs. You know, structural considerations are very important and must be on the table at all times, just like cost considerations. But it is a mistake, to my way of thinking, to let either of these drive the design. A structure can be devised for any design. So also a budget. This is not to say that these should be off the table, and somehow they'll get back on the table later. They just need not be the driving force that dictates the design.
That said, I am writing about Stairs in this post and will tackle Entries another day.
The location for an interior stair is very important, because you ideally do not want to devote too much space to what is termed "circulation space" among architects. This is space for getting around the house - it can be a stairwell, a hall, a foyer, a bridge, even some portion of a room. Each has a distinct character. For instance, if your stair is part of a larger space, like an Atrium or a Great Room, its characteristics are very different from a stairwell.
The goal then would be to locate your new stair as close to the center of things as possible. This means as close to the center of your existing floorplan as well as to the center of the new floorplan below. Let's say you want to keep your existing floorplan pretty much intact. And let's say you have a short hallway with some storage closets near the center. You might be able to place a U-shape stair in that location, landing near the center below. Of course, you'll probably want to find some other places to regain at least some of the storage space lost.
O.K. That works ... but what if you don't like the idea of putting the Bedrooms on the ground floor, with the Kitchen, Dining Room and Living Room upstairs? Well, you then have quite a bit more flexibility! I'd rather not go down that road just yet - Let's stick with the subject of stairs while considering these two options.
Design 1 (Bedrooms downstairs) raises the "public spaces" to the second floor level. If you are excavating and not raising the house more than a foot, this is probably not a problem. In fact, it is nicer to have the good natural light in the "public spaces". Excavation often necessitates small windows or window wells for the lower floor rooms, unless your house is on a sloping lot. The stair will be best in the least disruptive, most central location you can utilize, even if that means you devote a whole room to it. (Often, devoting a whole room to a stairwell is a wonderful solution, because of the openness and light.)
If you raise the house (still with Design 1) and, say you put in your ground floor space as a slab-on-grade, the indoor entertainment spaces become a lot further separated from the outdoor ones. This is a huge consideration for anyone in a benign climate, such as we have in California. Stair-wise this also brings in the issue of exterior stairs and how their re-design affects the look of the existing house. Rear stairs merely become ungainly, but front stairs can be sure disasters, design-wise. Imagine a 1-story Crafstman Bungalow with, say, five steps up to a raised floor about four feet above the grade. Now imagine the same front facade with 15 or 16 steps ... does not compute!
This is why so many raised houses don't seem to fit right, and certainly do not look like they were originally designed this way. A good architect will attempt to make the overall exterior design of a building, whether it is a new building or a renovation, look well integrated.
Alternatively (Design 2), you can convert your LR, DR, and Kitchen into Bedrooms, Studios, Hobby Rooms and the like, making the ground floor more open - the type of design many people like for today's lifesyles. An Eat-In Kitchen with large contiguous space as "Great Room" is usually easier to configure under the house than within the existing (removing walls from the original plan).
In this kind of design the use of a larger space (such as a small room, or the corner of a large room) for the stair can add a dramatic touch, especially when combined with large windows and skylights. The stair becomes a visual focal point of architectural interest and can single-handedly integrate all interior spaces. Most people have probably experienced this in a commercial space. It can also happen in a residence.
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