This is Day 170 of the Slow Home Project and we need you to join us in our quest to evaluate the design quality of houses in nine North American cities in nine months.
For today’s “In Detail” segment we are analyzing study spaces in apartment/loft projects. All of our examples have been pulled from the Vancouver area. Many times, study spaces in apartment/ loft projects are falsely labeled. Be wary of rooms that are labeled as “study”, “den”, “tech center” or “office” because more often than not, they are actually dark closets and not appropriately designed as places to work!
In a Slow Home, a study has to have natural light, a logical place for a desk and have a good relationship to other principal rooms. More information about what makes a good study space in a Slow Home can be found in our “What’s Wrong With This House?” book – available for sale on the right hand side of our web site.
For today’s discussion, we need you to look through the apartment/ loft projects in the Vancouver area and find examples of what you think are both good and bad study spaces in apartment/ lofts, post them to the site along with your comments. We look forward to your feedback!
When you are ready, click on the player below to watch John and Matthew’s tutorial on study spaces and see both good and bad examples. Click on the examples below to learn more about these good and bad study spaces.
1. This is a good study space – if only they could all be like this! Take note of the natural light, the logical place for the desk and the clear relationship to the other principal rooms.
2. This is not really a study – the furniture layout places the desk in the corner of the dining room – making the buyer think there is a study when really it is shared space.
3. Be careful when the word “flex” is used on sales brochures – “flex” really means “not a great space for anything in particular”. Here, there is room for a desk, but the sliding doors to the bedroom reduce available wall space and the adjacent living room is small and too tight for furniture.
4. This is the classic falsely labeled “den”. This den is nothing more than a dark closet at the entry, not a place to work. This is the developer’s way of raising the listing price without adding any functional livability to the unit – buyer beware!
5. Again, be wary of words like “tech nook” – this is nothing more than a closet with the doors removed. Who wants to work in a hallway?
6. Here is another marketing trick to avoid – the study has its own room and has a window, but the window is not to the outside, but faces an interior hall. Again, this room will be dark, stuffy and unpleasant to work.
7.This example is when the idea of a “den” gets out of control – this is now just a larger storage closet with room for a sofa – there has been no improvement to the quality of the space – just more square footage added.
8. This is the extreme of a falsely labeled “study” space at the high end of the apartment/loft market. This unit is large and expensive, but there is still no natural light in this den – and it is still poorly located right next to the entry – it is just a super-sized version of our 4th example.
Make sure to visit the site tomorrow – we will be posting our review of your plans from the Design Project from yesterday as well as voting for the best apartment/ loft projects in Vancouver – and of course announcing the Slow Homer of the Week!
