Architecture – House models designed by me

Filed under ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN WORK

Here I shows my best designs made between 2008 and 2016 from personal interest (artistic hobby / training) as well as for various customers. New: in November 2019 I added buttons to purchase DWG files of my past projects.

Too few paying customers and customers wasting too much time for the money paid made me to retire from architecture in 2016, I no longer offer architectural design services myself, but few partner architects can help you if you need new projects.

We are busy with PAYING customers, DO NOT disturb us with emails or chat messages if you are looking for free floor plans or cannot afford our prices!

Philippines house for JUN

Do you dream a 4 bedroom house but you own just 70 sqm land? No problem at Teoalida Design! My client’s property was 4.7 × 15.2 meters north-facing in a rural area and I designed in AutoCAD a masterpiece in terms of space efficiency, 88 sqm floor area, plus car park and roof terrace. The client wanted a minimalist modern style without decorations, the 3D design is ugly in my opinion, but he was happy. Made in December 2013.

About me

Most projects shown on this page are designed in AutoCAD for 3D artistic hobby. They intended to showcase my skills especially in designing efficient layouts. Simplified to be understood by people with zero architecture knowledge, they are NOT intended to be submitted to government for building permit or used in construction.

In 2012 I stopped the hobby, to concentrate on designing for customers, most of them were building houses and not apartments.

House & apartment design statistics (Excel file with all my house and apartment designs, one per row, showing room size of each room for calculating gross floor area and compare different apartment models).

2008-2013 projects use black floor plans and 3D design at 2048×1536.
2014-present projects use colorful floor plans at lower resolution, and 3D design at 1920×1080 or 1440×1080.
I started in 2015 to redesign older floor plans into colorful style, but in 2016 my other business forced me to leave architecture, leaving several projects unfinished.

For pre-2013 works, apartment size indicated in floor plan is net floor area (not including walls and balconies).

Due to low number of clicks/downloads on 3D model images compared with clicks on floor plan images, I decided to NOT make any more 3D models, unless I am paid for this job.

News: after 3 years since last building designed, 3 years in which several people contacted me to buy DWG files, which I emailed manually, I decided in November 2019 to put BUY buttons at my past projects. Pay with PayPal or Credit Card and receive editable DWG file automatically in your email, similar with like how I am selling databases for last 7 years.

In case of building designs, selling is experimental, because I do not know what expectations will have each customer, and if a floor plan not made for YOU (made for a previous customer or from personal interest) will suit YOUR needs. If you want to purchase multiple floor plans, contact me for a discount.

Nigeria narrow house 5-bedroom 300 sqm

My client had a narrow lot 8.6 m at front, 7.4 m at back, 36 meters depth, facing east, which posed a challenge in designing a nice house measuring 6 x 28 meters. Bedrooms facing front and sides but not to rear to avoid afternoon sun. There is a fashion in Nigeria to build houses made from a mix of cubes in vibrant colors, upper floor in overhang to create a more interesting shape. Contacted me in March 2016, final project designed in June 2016.

African modernity 5-bedroom 270 sqm

My client from Uganda wanted an extravagant house different than what is common in his country (houses with pitched roof). A modern house with large balconies and roof terrace, he insisted the house to be rectangular (I initially disagreed with this, modern houses should have complex shapes).

Lot size 20x30m, main road on west side and minor road on south side, the house had to be beautiful on west side but in the same time the afternoon sun had to be avoided, so I designed the small bedrooms to be facing north and south and added balcony on west side to cover the sun, master bedroom is again facing south but also have windows on east side to get morning sun. The actual project will have metal balcony rail instead of glass. CAD design in April 2015.

House with bedrooms in basement

Over 95% of houses built around the world that have multiple floors have living room on ground floor (or next floor if ground floor is a shop) and bedrooms on upper floors, but there are some cases (such as downhill land) in which is better to have bedrooms on lower floor and living room on upper floor).

House design for north-facing lot in Europe

In temperate countries from Northern Europe, people try to get as much sun heat is possible, thus south-facing lots are sold at a premium price. However my customer lot was facing north, but this did not turned into a problem in making a beautiful floor plan in AutoCAD. Requirements: 3-bedroom + garage in about 180 sqm gross floor area.

Terrace Modern 300+ sqm

Luxury house design in 6-meter frontage, 4-storey terraced house, which works also as semi-detached house. 5 bedrooms, 4 with en-suite bathroom and walk-in wardrobe, big family room on fourth floor and a smaller one on third floor, roof terrace, private lift and swimming pool. Do you want more luxury features? With 144 and 192 sqm land plots, max possible density is 52 houses / hectare.

Designed in February 2011 for artistic purpose (no customer). Inspired from Singapore! (here even rich families own just one car). Notice how I mixed each 3-color group (red-green-blue / yellow-cyan-magenta)?

Buy DWG files

Home for Shwan (Iraq)

Shwan from Iraq was one of my first paying customers. I provided a high-detailed, fully-dimensioned architecture drawings, elevation and cross section, and as he wanted, I “delivered” in PDF format 6 sheets for printing on A4 paper.

Credits to customer for the idea of Arab-style floor plan, very different compared with the styles that I was familiarized with (he provided me a scanned paper with a shitty sketch and I converted it into a beautiful by-law drawing). Designed in June 2013.

Photo of his home from May 2014. He slightly deviated from my project, to make the facade more massive.

Terrace Classic 250+ sqm

Luxury multi family housing complex, 3-storey terraced houses with basement parking and neoclassic facade, which works also as semi-detached houses. 4 spacious bedrooms, all with attached bathroom and walk-in wardrobe, family room in basement and private lift.

This, together with Semi-Detached Mixed, were first houses from 2010 era, designed in AutoCAD for artistic purpose (no specific customer).

One year later I decided to continue the project, by arranging the houses in a Condo-style with 80 houses and shared pool. Complex size: 100 x 135 metres, density 59.26 houses per hectare. House design inspired from Singapore!

Buy DWG files

Shotgun house, narrow semi-detached house

Shotgun house is originating from New Orleans and common in south states from 1830s to 1920s, single-story, 3-4 meters wide and 20+ meters long, having 3-5 rooms in row, entrances in the endmost rooms and no hallways. They can be found both detached and semi-detached (double barrel shotgun house).

In August 2014 a customer in Nigeria wanted to build 2 units of semi-detached in a 60 x 120 feet land… I designed a sketch inspired from American shotgun homes, improved with hallways. Customer said that will come back in a week and pay for complete project… but this never happened.

Got a personal interest for this type of house, so I improved the sketch with a 4th bedroom added in front, making it 5 meters wide and 26 meters long. 2-bedroom version made in 2015 after someone else’s sketch. 3D model designed in 2016, moment in which I lengthened floor plan with 2 meters, adding laundry room.

Buy DWG files

Split-level house 150 sqm

Example of split-level home with 3 bedroom, 2 bath, garage, and minimum of hallways, being 7 meters wide is probably a good home plan for narrow lots with 10 meters frontage.

I made this house model in AutoCAD for a friend from Romania in 2011, it was inspired by a real house that I visited several years ago, for my customer I improved it by adding en-suite bath and balcony.

Split-level home with 3 bedrooms and garage

Philippines Townhouse Series – 30-80 sqm

In December 2012 I made a sketch for a filipino customer intending to build 4 rowhouses on 24 x 14 meters plot. For publishing on website I redesigned his sketch into smaller houses to show you how is possible to build 3-bedroom townhouse with carport in only 60 sqm land (5 x 12 m).

NOT suitable as single family home on 5-meter wide plots, a column will be needed in other side of carport too, reducing carport width to 250 cm, cars are growing and even compact cars like Toyota Corolla are now 180 cm wide, so you could not open doors. Houses built in pairs will have 5.4 meter wide carport, leaving 120 cm between cars and 30 cm between each car and wall.

Buy DWG files

Feb 2013 I also tried a single-storey version, inspired from this house, smallest and shittest house plan I ever saw!

In November 2013 I designed a 4-bedroom house for JUN supposedly having a 5x14m land. Then he realized that his land size is 4.7m wide and we had to try a different layout. I turned the original sketch into a 3D artistic project, beside that I designed 3 additional floor plans in various sizes… and compiled all 5 plans in a single image!

Buy DWG files

A common problem in Philippines is that many cheap houses use back-to-back typology, suffer from poor ventilation and lacks a washing area. The townhouses designed by me (still back-to-back) feature washing area (lanai) at rear, so cross-ventilation is possible.

Terrace Airwells 250 sqm

Medium-luxury 3-storey terrace housing development with 4/5 bedrooms plus family room and an extra maid room / guest room at first floor, postmodernist facades, gabled roof with 1:2 pitch, gross floor area 230-250 sqm, balcony above car porch (I do not know why, but this good feature is a rarely seen) and swimming pool. Arranged in clusters of 32 houses, they form a perfect rectangle 120 by 60 metres between street axis.

Inspired from Singapore and Malaysia! Designed in AutoCAD for artistic purpose in November 2010.

Buy DWG files

House for my own family

This is a modern remade of the house proposed by me when I was 12 years old, for my family of 5 (me, parents and grandparents), when decided to go living on land, this is why it feature a “granny flat” on the ground floor and 3-bedroom unit at upper floors (space for one more child), with separate entrances joined in an entry hall, plus garage.

Original design had the floor plan partially flipped to reduce costs, garage under bedrooms and bathroom near kitchens, so a single vertical pipe served all 5, and it did not included furniture planning. During my childhood I liked making symmetrical houses with central balconies and place as many rooms is possible facing street.

The dream never came true… high land prices forced us to continue living in our two apartments.

European Houses 90-200+ sqm

In March 2012 I redesigned in AutoCAD 2 of my 2010 house designs, Semi-Detached and Quadruplex-Terraced (can be seen in Housing Archive). At same time I designed European Apartments.

2/3-bedroom Terraced Mixed Housing, 2 floors, 21x10m buildings containing 4 dwelling units and one common parking per a row of 4 buildings to provide 1 parking lot per house. Having 40 meters between alleys and 120 meters between parking lanes, results a typical density of 66.67 houses per hectare.

3-bedroom Terraced Housing, 2 floors, 6x10m, 48 meters minimal distance between streets, to give a minimal 4 meters backyard (3D design shows 6 meters backyard, most houses of Europe have much longer, 10-20 meters backyards, I hate such waste of land!), max possible density 69.44 houses per hectare.

4-bedroom Semi-Detached Housing, 2 floors, 6×12 m (8m lot frontage), let’s say 6 meters backyard, results a max density of 44.64 houses per hectare.

6-bedroom Semi-Detached Housing, 3 floors 6x14m…

At least the first two are common especially in United Kingdom and Ireland but also in Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, etc.
Further research revealed that most of terraced houses in Europe have living room at rear, kitchen at front and entrance in a hallway beside kitchen. Maybe some day I will redesign them again

Malaysia single-storey houses

Floor plans designed in AutoCAD in early 2014, posted in May 2014. Such house layouts with central living room and no hallways are popular all around South Asia (India, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, etc).

3D model designed in 2016 based on 3-bedroom semi-detached (91 sqm)

Buy DWG files

Malaysia bungalows

Additional single-storey house floor plans, some inspired from houses built around Malaysia, some not inspired from there, they are suitable for any low-income country with large plots of land.

Buy DWG files

Malaysia two-storey houses

In early 2012 I started being fascinated by Malaysian houses, and I designed few floor plans in AutoCAD for fun, of which 2 I published in March 2012. I redesigned them in metric system in May 2014 and republished 4 terraced house styles.

Terraced houses with 4 bedrooms plus family room are most common house typology in Malaysia, houses with airwells are also common, typical frontages 6000 mm (almost 20 feet) and 6700 mm (22 feet).

Buy DWG files

Malaysia / Singapore three-storey houses

The biggest house in my portfolio was Terrace Modern, which was weird since terrace houses are usually for lower-class people, so I designed a new house in Semi-Detached form in mid-2011 which was almost 400 sqm, 5 en-suite bedrooms and private lift.

I made a poll so people can vote for their favorite 3D design and in 2013 I decided to make them in 2 versions, a highly-decorated neoclassic design and an ultramodern design, each one would require about 1 week of full-time work. Did not had time for hobbies due to designing houses for customers.

Maybe in 2016 if I return in designing AutoCAD 3D models for artistic purposes, I will make 3D for these houses.

I also attempted to design bungalows bigger than semi-detached houses. I re-made one in 2017 and published here. A nearly 500 sqm luxury house, but still a compact design that requite a land plot of minimum 18 x 30 meters (60 x 100 feet). I hardly could design such big house without exaggerating in number of rooms, so I put 7 bedrooms + maid room, and 9 bathrooms. House feature a pool, private lift, and roof terrace.

Buy DWG files

Philippines single-storey houses 38-56 sqm

AutoCAD floor plans designed in early 2014, following the minimum room size allowed by Philippines laws: bedroom 2 m wide / 6 sqm area, bathroom 1.2 m wide (although the law allow 0.9 m wide but using toilet would be uncomfortable). If you’re lucky and able to afford a bigger lot, I can enlarge these houses or design bigger houses for individual cases.

In this country, the term Bungalow define a single-storey house, NOT a detached house with any number of floors, like in the rest of Asia.

Buy DWG files

Philippines double-storey houses 55-80 sqm

Many lots in Philippines are 8 meter wide, and setbacks are 1.5 m in front and side and 2 m at rear. So if you want a single detached house, you can build 5 meters wide house, like these samples for 80 and 100 sqm plots. However for lots smaller than 120 sqm people choose to build attached houses (with firewall). Designed in AutoCAD early 2013, redesigned and colored in February 2015.

Buy DWG files

Philippines squarish houses 73-104 sqm

During 2013 I have been contacted by at least 5 people looking for ideas for their squarish land plots, sized like 10×10, 10×12, 12×12, 12×14 meters, etc. I designed 5 slightly similar sketches for various people and now I am publishing here the best two of them… plus an ultra compact home (73 sqm) done for fun (no specific customer) in March 2014.

Buy DWG files

Low-cost High-Density Housing 60-100 sqm

These AutoCAD house drawings and 3D models are inspired from Latin America, more exactly from the Mexico social housing (casas de interes social), which are probably the densest legally-built (no slums) houses in the world, reaching up to 150 houses per hectare. Most of their houses are built with 2 bedrooms (or fewer) to be cheap, but many owners consider them too small and expanded them in front and upwards, sometimes reaching 4 floors. I designed in 2010 4 styles of High-Density housing, however my designs are bigger than original Mexico ones, in which the bedrooms are just 3 by 3 meters.

Terraced houses, 3 meters narrow frontage and 12 meters depth, 72 sqm floor area, very similar with Mexico ones which are 60 sqm. The U-shaped stair allows easy upwards extension.

Quarter-Detached houses, 5 meters width and 10 meters depth, 69.5 sqm floor area, very similar with Mexico ones which are 55 sqm. The U-shaped stair allows easy upwards extension.

Back-to-Back Terraced houses with courtyards, 6 meters frontage and 10 meters depth, 96 sqm floor area, this layout is an own version never seen in Mexico, it have better land coverage, also bathroom as well as stairwell have window! So it is the best version in my opinion. The U-shaped stair allows easy upwards extension.

Cluster Terraced housing, an upscale version, 4 meters width and 10 meters depth, 80 sqm, and 6 meters width 120 sqm on endings. Somewhat similar with Mexico ones which are usually 65 sqm and have parking either in front of house or at end of street. This one hardly allows upwards extension.

Detached housing, further research revealed that the attached houses that are common in Asia are disappreciated in Mexico. They want “totally individual houses” even if are less than 1 meter apart. Such houses have usually 1 bedroom in front and 2 on back. I made my own version, L-shaped house, 100 sqm 3 bedrooms of which 2 enjoy privacy by facing to front! SMART? Semi-detached possible!

Also see: High-Density Apartments, posted in the Apartment Design page.

American home 240 sqm / 360 sqm land

I do not enjoy United States architecture very much or the american lifestyle, but I still wanted to complete my collection of house designs with an american-inspired home. Typical home in America is 3 to 5 bedroom, 2000 square feet in average, don’t know if this figure include garage, but is common to have 2/3-car garage per house. The housing density is low as 10- max 15 homes per hectare, but because many homes are single-story, 12 m wide or even wider, numerous rooms are facing side walls, invading privacy of neighbors as the homes are only 3 meters apart.

I improved the typical american McMansion by making a home plan only 8 meters frontage and still… I succeeded to put 4 bedrooms facing either front of back of home, no more privacy problems, also all baths have windows!

3D design… maybe after an american will review my floorplan, I think that living-dining area should be reconfigured better.

Arabian house

This is the finished and colored version of the sketches proposed to a customer from Iraq in April 2014.

India & Pakistan terraced houses

Most common house type in India is the house covering whole plot of land, leaving just small airwells to ventilate inner rooms. Only rich people live in bungalows (detached houses) surrounded by open space on all sides (minimum 1.5m setback).

Compared with the business success in Philippines and rest of world, in India I had numerous BAD experiences with idiots wasting my time designing dozens of “30-min sketches” that did not wanted to proceed to detailed drawings (or wanted but refused to PAY for service), or not even replying after emailing the sketch, not even a “thank you” for the FREE help offered (most likely because they asked multiple designers and no longer needed my service). I selected 3 of these sketches, with one, two and three floors, improved and colored them, and published here:

In late 2012 an owner of a 22 x 50 feet land, appreciated the layout of ”A different terraced house”, and asked me to resize and design with imperial system. I publish here the 3BHK house shortened with 5 feet. Notice how I made windows for every bathroom, lower floor toilet being ventilated through garage? 5-foot road reserve space, 4-foot corridors, 1-meter wide staircase, to comply with India building code.

In 2014 another client had 13 feet wide land, this time from Pakistan, I turned the apparently impossible project into a spacious 3BHK house spreading on 3 floors. By removing carport and moving drawing room on ground floor, it can be a 4BHK house.

Common in India are the houses for multi-generation families, terraced-styled houses having each floor belonging to another branch of family, or even worse, each family branch having just one room. Here is an example of two-family house floor plan designed in early 2015 for a client, with AutoCAD 3D model made from personal interest in December 2015.

Some clients want their home to be at ground floor and multiple rental flats on first floor, designing different floor plan each floor is very difficult.

Of the many houses designed for clients. Here are 2 more sketches which I feel them interesting.

128 comments

Architecture – Apartment models designed by me

Filed under ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN WORK

We are busy with PAYING customers, DO NOT disturb us with emails or chat messages if you are looking for free floor plans or cannot afford our prices!

CentralLiving

2011 design

An original concept “Made by Teoalida” with no inspiration from any existing building, named for centrally-placed living room (but also for central courtyards, circular corridor and perimeter apartments). 4-Room (126 sqm) and 5siingapore s-Room (156 sqm) apartment plans, arranged to form a beautiful continuous facade with paired bedroom windows, also featuring an entrance hallway not seen in my previous projects.

Idea came in November 2010 when I designed Rectangle floor plan, 3D design added in 2011, a Triangle floor plan was also designed but never published, then giving by the positive comments from friends, in 2015 I redesigned both Rectangle and Triangle versions, both floor plan and 3D, in a more beautiful mix of neoclassic and postmodernism.

Other floorplans are possible, such as U-shaped with 6 or 8 units per floor.

2015 redesign

“making of” video

Buy DWG files

About me

I started studying architecture in 2008 by designing in AutoCAD a virtual city with high-quality apartments, imagining being president of a country or manager of a housing corporation, to offer quality housing for at least half of population… like a public housing. Apartments are designed with mind to high-density, average 100 square meters apartment size and 30 sq m per person (virtual city – because I am not a developer, I do not have capital to build them).

Most projects shown on this page are designed in AutoCAD for 3D artistic hobby in 2008-2012. They intended to showcase my skills especially in designing efficient layouts. Simplified to be understood by people with zero architecture knowledge, they are NOT intended to be submitted to government for building permit or used in construction.

In 2012 I stopped the hobby, to concentrate on designing for customers, most of them were building houses and not apartments.

For pre-2013 works, apartment size indicated in floor plan is net floor area (not including walls and balconies).

Due to low number of clicks/downloads on 3D model images compared with clicks on floor plan images, I decided to NOT make any more 3D models, unless I am paid for this job.

Small apartment block in Nigeria

4-unit apartment block designed in AutoCAD at full details, architectural design service for a customer rather than as hobby. On a plot size of 18 x 36 meters in Lagos, he originally built a single-storey semi-detached house at back and now is building a two-storey block with four 2-bedroom apartments measuring 16 x 10 meters. To save space I designed an one-flight staircase with different position of apartment doors on each floor.

Apartment blocks for small lots

I designed 3D models of BIG buildings but I missed the SMALL ones that most real estate investors may be looking for! The blocks with 2 apartments per floor, but unlike the segmented blocks composed by multiple staircases, they are designed to be individual buildings so windows can be placed on side walls.

The 14 x 10 m I designed in 2013 for a customer desperate to build a walk-up block with 10 apartments on a plot intended for one-family house. Same for 16 x 10 m one.

In same 2013 I designed from personal interest, a block 18 x 15 m with 4-room, a masterpiece in apartment planning efficiency, offering privacy for bedrooms despite of minimal hallways (you can invite guests in living room and they cannot see through bedroom doors). In June 2015 I improved floor plan and also designed a 3D model in Art Deco architectural style.

Buy DWG files

The narrowest apartment block

In 2014 a Indian left this comment looking to build an apartment block on 5 x 12 m lot, including lift. Impossible! In 2016 another Indian asked me to design an apartment for a 4.8 m wide lot, with kitchen in front for Vastu reasons, which turned impossible. This time I am also publish there a drawing to show you what is minimum land required to build a block having on each floor a 2-bedroom apartment: 5 x 15 meters.

Comparison of different layouts from my apartment block models

2015 compilation (published January 2016)
All floor plans redesigned in metric system, with 10, 20, 30 cm thick walls

2011 compilation (published January 2012)
All floor plans designed in binary metric system, 12.5 cm internal walls and 31.25 cm thick external walls

Extremely small apartments from / for Philippines

These floor plans are based on sketches done for real customers. They were not interested in a complete project but I got personally interested in these designs, modified according my own rules and posted here for references.

Philippines have the smallest apartments in the world. Room sizes are comparable with Hong Kong, but instead of 2/3-bedroom apartments, in Philippines you can see huge condos dominated by studios and 1-room, for example http://www.smresidencescondo.com/myplace-plan.html with units ranging from 16 sqm studio to 40 sqm 2-bedroom.

European apartments I

Compared with Asia and America, European apartment design include hallways, usually you enter in a hallway leading to living room and bedrooms. In some apartments, usually smaller ones, you pass through living room to get in bedrooms. Day and night areas are well separated. Window for bathroom is not required. En-suite bathrooms are uncommon in Europe, usually 3-room apartments have one full bathroom and a WC, 4-room apartments have one bathroom and one WC with shower, but there is no exact rule. The bathroom is always placed in night area, while the WC is usually in day area. Most important rooms are facing south, stairwell can be on both south and north facades, depending by where is street located.

In 2009 I was criticized by a British architect, saying that my “ideal city” looks outdated like 1960s social housing. Well, now I really wanted to design something in style of 1960s-1980s European public housing, both capitalist and stalinist-communist. Concept started in 2010 with lack of knowledge. 3D design done later and published in March 2012 together with European Landed Houses that have up to 6 bedrooms.

Architectural design inspired from North Europe (Sweden, Norway, Finland), Germany boost a ratio of 42 sqm per person and only 2.2 persons per dwelling unit, but in case of apartments I assume that ratio is smaller. I could not find exact info regarding average apartment size, many families own both houses and apartments. Apartments usually range from 2 to 4 rooms although 5-room may also exist.

The apartment complex shown in 3D design contains low-rise blocks with 40 apartments and high-rise blocks again with 40 apartments, an infinite pattern based on 120×56 meters grid, having 2 low-rise and 1 high-rise block, containing 24 2-room, 64 3-room, 32 4-room. Average apartment size 80 sqm. 179 apartments per hectare.

European apartments II

I redesigned European series in 2016, making walls 20 cm and 10 cm thick instead of 12.5 cm, the linear walk-up blocks are almost unchanged, Short Tower was changed into walk-up block with balconies pushed inside and smaller rooms, Long Tower received larger balconies and smaller rooms, also I added few additional block types.

Linear Small

Linear Small is the cheaper pair of Linear Large, livingroom is facing to common corridor, which made me to call it a Class C project. Designed in 2009.

Short version, 64 meters length, 8 units per floor of 2-, 3- and 4-room. Long version, 76 meters length, 8 units per floor of 3- and 4-room. And of course, other versions. The floor plan and 3D model made in AutoCAD shows half of short version and half of long version.

Buy DWG files

Linear Large

Linear Large (formerly called New Generation) is the pair and opposite of Linear Small (formerly called Old Generation), all livingrooms and (almost) all bedrooms are facing opposite common corridor. 8 standard types of apartments ranging from 84 to 133 sqm, plus other custom types for non 90° joints, placed along a common corridor, can form various shapes. The 104 sqm 4-Room Middle is “base”, most common apartment, made me to classify as Class B block, even if the 3-Room Angled apartment is bigger, due to big livingroom caused by block regulated facade. Designed in 2009.

Shape examples: 61 by 48 meters L-shape with 8 units per floor, 4- and 5-Room; 88 by 48 meters S-shape with 16 units per floor, 4- and 5-Room; 64-meter diameter Octagon with 16 units per floor, only 3-Room, etc.

Buy DWG files

Linear Maisonette

Linear Maisonette is a Class B project, 14-meter width block with flat facades. Floor plan shows 8 units variant, 60 meters length, the 3D model have 2 blocks with 12 units per floor, 88 meters length, at 28 meters apart. 140 sqm apartments of 7 meters width, 4 bedrooms, 3 baths, walk-in wardrobe for master bedroom. Maisonette (sometimes misspelled Mansionette) is almost a worldwide term which means two-storey apartments. Designed in 2009.

Buy DWG files

Singapore Corridor 3/4-Room

Formerly called Sharpback Small, Class C project inspired by the most common apartment blocks built in Singapore between 1975 and 1990: New Generation with 3-Room (67 / 82 sqm) and 4-Room on endings (92 sqm). Model A with 3-Room (75 sqm) and 4-Room on endings (105 sqm).

I improved Singapore design by inverting kitchen with master bedroom and made living room widerthan bedroom, to make a 3:2 ratio between size of livingroom and master bedroom, and a smaller kitchen (Singapore original design have livingroom and kitchen approximately same size).

The block is 14 meters wide and variable length, allowing high land usage efficiency, the size of apartments and windows created beautiful rectangles on facade, BUT… what do you think about the floorplan?

2010 design

2015 minor redesign

Buy DWG files

Singapore Corridor 4/5-Room

Formerly called Sharpback Large, Class C project inspired by the blocks built Singapore between 1985 and 2000, but due to combination of different floorplans, like this, this and this and many modifications, it is barely similar with any Singapore block. Can be built in many shapes, I, U, L, also the corner units of this block can be combined with the 3-room units from Sharpback Small. BUT… what do you think about the floorplan?

2010 design

2015 minor redesign, apartments shortened by 50 cm

Buy DWG files

Singapore Segmented 3/4-Room

Combination between Sharpback Small and Sharpback Large apartments in Segmented style block. Sharpback is a nickname invented by me for the Singapore blocks having slits on the back facade for kitchens or bedrooms. Designed originally in 2011, redesigned in 2015 and colored.

Buy DWG files

Zig-Zag / Linear-H

Simple and most common block plan found on all continents. Originally designed in 2008 as Class A project with 84 sqm 3-Room apartments same used in Trapeze Tower, was redesigned in 2011 as a Class C block with 70 sqm 3-Room and 93 sqm 4-Room apartments.

2015 minor redesign

Buy DWG files

Segmented Mixed

Class A project with only 2 apartments per floor, inspired from the 5-Room Improved slab blocks built in Singapore between 1975 and 1985, having living + dining + 3 bedrooms, around 120 sqm. I improved the design by pushing master bath inside, formed a bigger L-shaped master bedroom with walk-in wardrobe, added kitchen yard. Then I derived the 5-Room End and 4-Room Angled. The 3D model shows the version with 6 of 4-Room and 2 of 5-Room at endings, 96 metres length.

2009 design

2015 redesign, dimensions reduced a bit

Buy DWG files

New Segmented

New layout inspired from… hmm, can’t decide! Staircase-style block are very common in South Korea, but with a different layout, longer and thinner. Some day I will make 3D design too.

2011 design vs 2015 minor redesign

Buy DWG files

Triangular blocks

Early 2009 architectural design, two buildings based on 4 meters grid, 10 meters width, all living rooms and bedrooms are facing to outer facade and all kitchens are facing to inner courtyard.

Small version with 9 units per floor, 44 meters facades @ 18 meters from centre, 3D design not adapted to the new rules yet.

Large version with 12 units per floor, 48 meters facades @ 22 meters from centre and 8 meters facades @ 30 meters from centre.

The small version have advantage of bigger apartments and disadvantage of centrally-placed livingroom, but this disadvantage allowed me to design a symmetrical block with odd number of apartments per floor.

Buy DWG files

Freestyle

Formerly called Freedom Generation, this is my most complex architectural design I made in AutoCAD, started in late 2009. Inspired from 2000s housing projects built in various Asian cities, a variety of apartment plans from 1-bedroom to 4-bedroom units, 50 sq m / 550 sq ft to 130 sq m / 1400 sq ft, with kitchens facing inside, are paired in wings, linked with a central core (staircase and lifts) by bridge-corridors. The freedom of shape variations is nearly unlimited.

U-shaped 472

After designing numerous individual blocks during my first year, I planned to design a condo-like project in November 2009. I choose a U-shape composed by 7 blocks each with 3 wings of 2 apartments.

The multi-storey carpark is just illustrative because it is not connected with residential blocks. Unhappy of the results, especially because when viewed from other side, the condo like an ugly wall, I decided to abandon this project and start the…

Linear 1024

…the Linear 2014 came from my idea to design a modern condo with exactly 2^10 apartments, and uniform design dominated by long linear blocks with facades with continuous horizontal lines, in contrast with the U-shaped condo made a year earlier. I choose to arrange six pairs (100-meter long) and four pairs (60-meter long), reahing a nice mix of 384/320/320 units of 3/4/5-room apartments. Five room have best views, but some three and four room units also get direct pool view.

Distance between blocks: 30 meters between main facades, 20 meters between side facades, and 60 meters across pool. Land size: 6.45 hectares (288 by 224 meters). Density: 158.7 dwelling units per hectare.

This project is suitable for equatorial countries like Singapore and Malaysia, having linear blocks oriented east-west (with rooms on north and south facades) to minimize sun inside apartments, while the oversized olympic pool is oriented north-south to get sunshine between blocks. There are 4 spaces between outer blocks, usable for more pools, tennis courts oriented north-south (as they should be), barbecue pit and other facilities. Clubhouse rooftop is used as basketball court. The single-storey basement carpark cover whole complex and provide space to park about 1040 cars, and is covered with green roof. Drop-off porch and covered walkways are not necessary, you can drive through carpark and stop at just 16 meters from each lift.

For all curious students who ask how much time I spent drawing, I can say that designing spread over one year, starting in early 2011, I cannot estimate actual hours of work, because I worked with breaks until new ideas came in my mind and redesigned numerous times, for example I changed to full-height windows in late 2011.

3D model is still not finished, it lack guardhouse, children playground and other details, but I decided to publish it in August 2012 because I no longer have TIME to continue it, and because DWG file became so heavy that is crashing AutoCAD, it is closing suddenly when I try to do certain commands..

Below photo show whole complex using default render. Using Raytrace Render AutoCAD always crashed until I deleted 12 of the 20 blocks (this is the reason for which above 3D photorealistic renders shows only central area).

In late 2011 I made plans for a third condominium design, composed by 8 or 10 zig-zag shaped blocks arranged in 4 lines, varying height from 8 to 16 floors, probably 708 apartments… but, because since 2012 I concentrate time on PAID work, I abandoned non-paid projects purely artistic.

Squares Tower

Tower block design in AutoCAD inspired from the point blocks built in Singapore between 1970 and 1985, which are 26×26 metres and have 117-125 sqm 5-room flats (living room, dining-family room, plus three bedrooms). See floor plan + photo of actual building.

Designed in December 2008, enlarged to 28×28 metres and, like all my 2008 projects, its floor plans is based on a 4-metre grid. I added study at end of dining room, allowing versatile renovation ideas, the study room can become walk-in-wardrobe for master bedroom, or can be enlarged to a full bedroom if the other bedroom is merged with dining room to create a big 8×6 metres piano concert room.

In 2011 I designed a second version closer to original HDB floor plan, redesigned in 2015 in colorful floor plan.

Buy DWG files

Rectangle Small Tower

Class A project mainly based on 4-meter grid. 4-Room plus 5-Room duplex penthouses. Original floor plan, not inspired from any real building. Can have 2 versions: 32 by 20 meters (shown in floor plan) and 28 by 24 meters, the single difference is position of core with staircase and lifts, the size of apartments and of core is the same. The 3D models shows both versions.

Designed originally in December 2008, redesigned 2010.

Buy DWG files

Rectangle Large Tower

6-room apartments inspired from Executive Apartments built in Singapore, the 1988-1992 with 4 bedrooms and separate living and dining room.

Image to be added

Buy DWG files

Square Towers

Class B projects, original floor plans not inspired from any real building.

Small version, 26 by 24 meters, 100 sqm 4-room apartments, concurrent for Rectangle Small Tower.

Large version, 28 by 28 meters, 135 sqm 5-room apartments and potential for 200+ sqm 6/7-room penthouse, concurrent for Squares Tower.

Designed in May 2009. Are they better than Rectangle Small and Squares Tower, or not?

Trapezoid Tower

Like all my 2008 projects, this is another Class A block based on 4-meter grid, original floor plan not inspired from any real building. Two 24 meters wide wings @ 14 meters from center (3-Room apartment) and one 28 meters wide wing @ 20 meters from center (4-Room apartment).

Buy DWG files

Triangle Tower

One of the most beautiful projects I made in AutoCAD within first year of architecture, with 4-Room apartments and 5-Room duplex penthouses, classified as Class B due to size of common bedrooms. The wide floorplan and enormous staircase core with space for 4 lifts allow building up to 32 storey skyscraper.

Designed in May 2009, redesigned 2010. It eliminate a previous project named Hexagon Tower. There are a lot of triangular towers around the world that are less or more similar with my design, including Bishan Loft.

Buy DWG files

Low-cost housing complex

This is the FIRST apartment block designed at someone’s request, in early 2012. An Indian developer asked me to design 20-30 sq m low-cost studio unite that will be provided for slums dwellers.

I designed 3 proposals and emailed him, asking to choose with which one to proceed further, he replied that will come with a detailed answer next week, but this never happened.

Because other people asked me for studio apartment, in 2013 I published one of 3 proposals designed for him, the corridor inspired from Singapore SIT and HDB rental blocks built in 1950-1960s but also since 2008 to present, with 1/2-room units, kitchen separated from living room, and toilet in kitchen is a tradition in Singapore.

In 2015 I made additional designs inspired from 1950s segmented blocks built by SIT in Singapore. I intended to design as a low-cost housing complex with 1-room to 4-room apartments, suitable for third-world countries of Asia and Africa, I was planning to make also a 3D design, but never found enough time for this.

Linear 2/3-Room

Formerly called Linear Studios, designed in 2011, this is a Class B project similar with Singapore all-Studio blocks built after 2000, which have 35/45 sqm 2-Room Studio flat, but for my project I added 3-Room flats for corners, then the floorplan have some inspiration from Japan, with open kitchen. Can be designed in many shapes, I chosen a U-shape with 12 units per floor.

2011 original design vs 2015 major redesign, apartments downsized.

Buy DWG files

Hong Kong series I

Hong Kong architects are masters in space optimizing and crowding people in small apartments. So I spent 3 months studying it (January-March 2011), to create my own 6 projects inspired from it, but finally I realized 8 projects in AutoCAD.

Who the fuck needs a 100 square meters apartment? Now I prove that with a good design, a family of 4 can live comfortable in a 60 sqm apartment. With this occasion, I also fully designed the structural elements and I added dimensions on floor plans, as requested by my fans (website visitors).

The Harmony, inspired from the public housing blocks with same name, with 16 units per floor, mixed 2-room to 4-room, designed to be the cheapest of all projects, so is similar in size with the real block, But was improved with curved facades and a very nice color scheme.

The Concord, barely similar with the public housing blocks with same name, because I mixed it with ideas from Flexi blocks, thus I eliminated the windows facing each other in 90-degree angle (unless you arrange them in L-shape, like in 3D photo), more than that, I also added balconies and bay windows with dark glass to make it looking like private housing. Apartments are 10% larger than real block.

Another 2 projects inspired from public housing, with 8 and 10 apartments per floor, these have exaggerated apartment sizes 10-25% larger than original ones. I am not planning any 3D design for them… yet.

The next 4 projects are inspired from most common private housing design, with 8 units per floor. The Elegance is similar for example with Sunshine City and Yee Fung Garden. The Grandeur allows various combinations of its 5 apartment types. 40, 50, 60, 70 sqm… I am working at 3D designs.

Sick of the apartment sizes?
You did not saw yet The Miminalist… my attempt to create the smallest possible apartments, this one is the truly similar with Hong Kong birdcage apartments. I hope that NO developer will build such 30 sqm shoeboxes again!

Thinking that you saw the smallest possible apartments?
You are wrong, check the dedicated page for Hong Kong real apartments, especially the Garden Rivera where 3-room apartments are only 242 sq ft / 23 sqm, including wall thickness (it inspired my The Minimalist). How people are living in such pigeon holes? Look on gohome.com.hk for floor plans and interior photos of Garden Rivera apartments, and imagine yourself.

Hong Kong series II

I halted designing of all Hong Kong-inspired architectural designs until I will take a decision to design them more for fun/artistic or more authentic.

The Series I apartments were too big and not properly optimized. In January 2012 I redesigned 5 of them, now based on metric system, to match Hong Kong laws, gross floor area calculated from wall face rather than wall axis, unit gross areas include full thickness of external walls and half thickness of shared walls. Walls are 10 cm thick walls instead of than 12.5 cm, bedrooms are 2×2.5 m instead of 2.375×2.625 m.

In 2015 I slightly improved the floor plans and redesigned in colorful style.

Buy DWG files

Hong Kong Series with International-sized apartments

In October 2011 I redesigned 3 architectural designs inspired from Hong Kong but using my own international standard of apartments sizes, similar with Singapore and rest of world (bedrooms 3×4 m, living room 4×6 – 4×7 m, etc).

Floor plans redesigned in January 2016 in colorful format and metric system with 10 cm thick walls instead of 12.5 cm. 3D models remains as designed in 2011.

Buy DWG files

Low cost & High-density housing

This is the apartment version from the same family with the High-Density landed housing. Inspired from Mexico and designed based on 3-meter grid. I improved them by enlarging room sizes and placing a lot of green space. Block size: 42×18 meters. Site plan can be designed in 2 versions: 60×32 meters, with side parking and 14 m between block facades, and 48×40 meters with front parking, 22 meters between front facades. Both will have same density, 166.67 apartments / hectare. Designed in August 2011.

Split-level apartment block, one of most common block types in Brazil public housing. I slightly enlarged the apartments to 50 sqm and 64 sqm and placed the blocks in Zig-Zag pattern to provide privacy and comfort, avoiding bedrooms facing each other on airwells, yet maintaining high density. The 16-apartments blocks have 17 meters width and 40 meters between street axles, resulting a density up to 235.30 apartments per hectare. Designed in January 2012.

Other block types inspired from same Brazil, with 46, 60 and 80 sqm. Designed in January 2012.

Sick of apartment sizes?
Real Mexico apartments have only 3-rm apartments (50 sqm) and the bedrooms are small as 3×3 meters, while in Brazil there is some variations in apartment sizes but most bedrooms are 2.5×3.25 meters. In both countries space between buildings can be only 4 meters and green space does not exist in public housing estates.

Low cost & High-density housing II

New floor plans inspired from Latin America, designed using 3.5 x 2.5 m bedrooms, 2.5 x 1.5 m bathrooms, and 1 m wide hallways, all dimensions are divisible by 50 cm, making a nice layout from artistic point of view. They were designed in 2014 and colored later to publish on website.

Buy DWG files

Luxury apartment tower

This luxury apartment design showcase ability to offer multiple layout options within same apartment, 190 sqm standard apartments composed by 4 bedrooms of which 2 suites, 3 bedroom suites + study, 3 bedroom suites + enlarged living room, as well as 350 sqm duplex penthouses with rooftop jacuzzi. Completed with private lifts and maid rooms. Design inspired from high-end real estate developments of Brazil.

Designed originally in 2012 for hobby when I decided to post on website after making 3D model, but never found time for 3D. Colored in 2016 and published for first time.

Buy DWG files

89 comments

Architecture – Terms of service and prices

Filed under ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN WORK

If you are looking for FREE ideas, feel free to browse my past designs in House plans and Apartment plans pages, use Google Images Search and find yourself ideas. DO NOT disturb me unnecessarily except if you need few minutes of consultation about my past designs. DO NOT ask me to make new designs for free! If you want one of my past designs in editable DWG format, to customize a floor plan or to design a new floor plan according your requirements, I have the right to charge money.

If you are PAYING, ~~I can~~ my partners can make a new design according your requirements. Specify if you need only a schematic floor plan, or a complete set of architectural drawings (detailed floor plans, elevations, sections, foundation, plumbing, electrical drawings, structural engineering, plus 3D model).

Update: I (Teoalida) will NOT make any more architectural designs. I lost interest to architecture thanks to these IDIOTS who wasted too much time per project, paid too little or not paid at all.

I have partner architects in India, Nigeria, Philippines, Romania and United States. It is for benefits or both ME and YOU, to have your project done by my partner architects. They have university (I don’t have) and offered to work for me if I am too busy but seeing their high experience and cheap prices I decided to pass them ALL architectural projects, to free my time so I can focus on data providing industry where I get paid 10x higher than in architecture.

I do NOT post their contact info here to protect them from being spammed by people looking for free services. You need to confirm your budget with me then I will put you in contact with the most suitable architect, you discuss project details and negotiate price with them instead of me. You can pay me and I pay him or you can pay him directly.

I am sorry for the FEW serious paying customers, but I no longer have time to answer 10 chats and emails, discuss and understand project requirements to quote a price, if only 1 does pay while other 9 disrespect me asking free consultation, free sketches, in some cases even complete set of drawings for free, or paying but too little (especially from India).

If you do not agree to have project done by an architect from my team, go find yourself an architect, DO NOT contact me and ask to design your house myself. I will NOT waste my time designing new houses no matter how many million dollars are you paying.

If you are architect and want to work for me, you are welcome, even students. But I cannot guarantee that all leads I send you, will pay.

leaving architecture business.

Procedure of architectural design service

First, email me your lot plan so I can see exact dimensions and orientation, or at least tell me length and width of your land.

Describe project requirements: in case of single family houses how many floors and rooms do you require, in case of apartment blocks, number of floors, apartments per floor and rooms per apartment. If you have other requirements, tell them all. I will show you several samples to understand your tastes in terms in floor plan and external design, and may ask you other requirements.

Alternatively you can choose one of my designs shown on website and suggest changes, or provide your own sketch (even a pencil drawing) and I will convert it into a professional drawing, or provide photos of local houses taken yourself.

I will show you few designs made in the past and ask you which one do you like more, in some cases I quickly edit a design to show you a conceptual idea as PNG screenshot (please do not judge the quality of service by “first sketch”, it usually have furniture but lack windows and other details).

Now you need to make first payment, BEFORE starting drawing the custom design according your requirements. During design you can suggest changes in dimensions of each room, I will add windows and correct furniture, and I send you final error-free design in PDF format.

You are advised to show the final floor plan to your family or colleagues and make sure everyone will like it, before proceeding to detailed construction drawings. When you are ready, we need to discuss a lot of other details to make sure that the building will be livable and will follow the building code of your country. Including ceiling height, windows size and position, etc. I will make a draft 3D design and show you, you can again suggest changes, and when everything is decided I make final 3D design and final PDF files containing floor plan, elevations and sections. In some cases I send also DWG file that you can edit yourself.

You can pay in stages, 30% for floorplan 30% for draft 3D design, 40% when final 3D design and elevations are completed. Even after full payment I can still revise the drawings free of charge until you are 100% satisfied.

Had customers willing to pay in advance, some customers do not trust me and want to have project finished before paying and “pay only if like it”, which is risky for me because I waste time designing something that customer may not like and don’t pay. If you are along these people, feel free to go to someone else, I am no longer making free drawings hoping to convince you to pay for complete project.

Occasionally (10% of cases) even if you don’t pay, I get personally interested in the layout you you require and I redesign it with greater care, sometimes at different dimensions, to publish it on website as sample for future customers. Example: Pakistan 20x60ft sketch vs final floor plan.

Price of architectural design service

I calculate price based on number of rooms (we count as rooms: bedrooms, living room, family room, study room, but not kitchen and smaller rooms) and the location where it is going to be built.

Single-family houses:

$20 per room for concept floor plan (example PNG / example PDF).

This job takes 1-2 hours when designing according my own rules, but when designing for customers, it can take few hours or days depending by how many revisions do you ask.

$100 per room for detailed architectural drawings (floor plan, elevations, sections, example PNG) + 3D design.

This job take 10-20 hours if your requirements are clear, this job involve a lot of communication to decide every detail, it can stretch on days / weeks if you ask many revisions and slow communication via email.

Designing a 3D model like JUN’s house takes 3-4 hours, high-detail geometry like Trianon Palace took about 100 hours.

Multi-family houses: for 2 or more identical houses, price will rise with 25% of the price of initial house.

Apartment blocks: gross floor area up to 400 sqm = $400, up to 800 sqm = $600, up to 1600 sqm = $800, up to 3200 sqm = $1000, and so on.

Above prices are valid for third-world countries (India, Pakistan, Burma, Indonesia, Philippines, rest of Africa, etc).
Middle-income countries (Malaysia, Thailand, Latin America, Middle East to Maroc, South Africa, etc) need to pay 1.5x more.
High-income countries (Europe, United States, Canada, Australia, Singapore, etc) need to pay 2x more.

Above prices are valid as 2016 for historical reference only. I decided to NOT make new designs for customers at request (except in special cases, if you come with an interesting project and I am not too busy, I will do concept floor plan only).

I do not have a specific number of revisions, because I can show you drawing progress and you can suggest changes before finishing it. But I had paying customers who asked changes back and forth, disturbing my schedule, delaying me from doing my “other business”. While may be logical to charge extra fees from customers asking excessive revisions, the inability to know in advance how much time will take each project discourage me to engage in new architectural projects.

For new customers: I will connect you with my partner architect teams, here are prices of Indian and Philippines partners for single family houses or small apartment blocks (<20 units):

Preliminary design – $300-600
– Floor plan and elevation in PDF and AutoCAD format
– 3D Model and 2 Computer Generated Images taken from the model. 3D Studio Max file and PNG

Submission drawings – $1000-2000
– Architectural Plans and details (done by Architect)
– Structural Analysis Report (done by a Structural Engineer)
– Structural Plans and Details (based on the Structural Analysis, integrated into plans by Architect)
– Electrical Plans and Details (advised and drafted by an Electrical Engineer but drawn by Architect for integration into the plan)
– Sanitary Plans and Details (advised and prepared by a Sanitary Engineer and done by me for compilation)
– Bill of Quantities done by Architect

Personally I use only AutoCAD, my partners use also ArchiCAD, Blender, Revit, 3D Studio Max

Purchase ready-made AutoCAD DWG files

If you are NOT interested to design a custom floor plan for you, you can buy ready-made AutoCAD DWG files of my past projects and edit them yourself.

Price: $20 starting fee + $20 for each house plan, $20, $30, $40 for apartment blocks. The price formula is made to give discount for bulk purchase. If you want one house DWG file you pay $40, if you want 5 DWG files you pay $120.

3D designs are also AutoCAD DWG files and can be sold at negotiable prices.

How to purchase: contact me and specify what drawings you want to purchase, for purchasing 1 drawing you can click PAY button below, for purchasing multiple drawings I will make them a ZIP archive and put it on server, create a product in Store so you can pay with PayPal or credit card and receive the files automatically in your email.

Around 2015 I was thinking to turn website into an online shop with BUY buttons at every project so you can buy each drawing individually automatically without contacting me, but doing so I was not able to offer discounts for bulk purchases. Also, by contacting me BEFORE paying we can make sure that you are not wasting money buying floor plans that do not fit your requirements.

Do not ask for free DWG files because I do not give my projects for free! If you are student and want free drawings, go on BiblioCAD.com and download what other people have uploaded there. Most drawings on BiblioCAD are made by students so quality is not comparable with mine, and you cannot contact designers to make modifications, which I do, this is why I charge money for my service.

Notes

If you want a fast reply you are advised to contact me via LIVE CHAT in bottom-left corner of screen. If you contact me via email or comments, you NEED to reply at email and confirm that you are interested, before making any sketch for you. So far 50% of people sending emails or offline messages never reply after my reply (up to 90% in case of Indians, which probably request house designs on multiple websites and by the time I reply them. they are no longer interested in my service).

I get contacted by many non-serious people, some looking for consultation and not interested in my full service. People who are just dreaming for a house, not ready to build it, undecided, etc. Such people do not deserve attention and can be forgotten, but they makes me difficult to identify the serious people interested in my services, to pay attention to their projects.

If you are really interested in my services, and I accidentally forgotten you, just contact me again. I do not enjoy re-emailing every one to ask if you are ready / still interested in my services.

If you like my concept but have another architect/designer to do final project, I can sell you any of floor plans displayed on website, in editable .DWG file. This may save some time of your designer. But don’t forget that I can also offer a personalized floor plan for your requirements!

If you pay your designer but do not want to pay me too, DO NOT ask a free sketch from me, go from start to your designer.

Funny case: I do a FREE 20-min sketch, the customer likes it, then when we negotiate price for the construction drawings, he say that cannot pay because he have no money and is just helping his mom / brother / cousin / boss, to find a good concept plan. But hey, you do not need to pay for first sketch! Instead, you should tell about me to your family, so when they are ready to build their home, to come at me for the final drawings.

Should reorganize website?

Some people may suggest to organize the website in separate posts for every house plan, and tag them like India-style, 2-storey, 3-bedroom, 100-200 sqm, modern house, etc, so we can filter them, like in a Blog. However, I DISAGREE, this system can be used only if I have large number of projects finalized including 3D design, and will encourage people to serve themselves and steal my works, then where the “services and prices” should be shown? Showing on a single page few houses in different architectural styles plus prices may encourage people to contact me and eventually turn into customers. Probably there are already too many houses on website and would be better to delete few of them and keep only the BEST 10.

Statistics: most downloaded house plans (as 2014).
House & apartment design statistics (Excel file with all my house and apartment designs, one per row, showing room size of each room for calculating gross floor area and compare different housing models).

38 comments

Furniture & interior design

Filed under ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN WORK

Here are some examples of furniture and interior design made by me. People who contacted me over years made me to pursue my career in architecture rather than interior design. Whenever I will do furniture design again, we will see… I am using AutoCAD so my drawings are more technical instead of photo realistic, like the ones made by professional interior designers in 3D Studio Max.

The following image is an attempt to make a 3D design of fully furnished apartment, floor area 143 sqm gross / 133.60 sqm internal. Designed in 2011 for fun / artistic hobby (no customer).

I design furniture since ~14 years old (~2003), around 15 years old my mom employed in a furniture factory so we refurnished my room using my pre-made drawings. My furniture were designed in an own unit system that I was fascinated at that age, and due to arguing with parents, I cut bookcase at top, because my design was 3 cm taller than the height to the structural beam, instead of making it shorter (bad idea). Sorry for photo quality, we sold that apartment without taking a proper photo of furniture, all what I have is a photo with myself and some of my artwork hanged near ceiling.

The following kitchen interior design and a multi-purpose bedroom furniture probably useful for Hong Kong tiny apartments (sadly we may need such things in the future of Singapore), were designed in 2011.

Several people asked me if I can do interior design too, I showed them some of above images privately, they praised me, so I decided to make them public on website in March 2013, despite that I am still not confident that my experience would allow me to compete with professional interior designers. My design service is useful for example if you sell houses and think that a 3D furnished model will help sales.

Later, I noticed that (at least) in Singapore, interior designers make very detailed “working drawings” for contractors to renovate apartments, charging 4-digit sum in $. I do not have enough experience to do this, but you can help me!

21 comments

Architecture – Housing Design history

Filed under ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN WORK

From a child play in AutoCAD to architecture business!

I started designing buildings in 2008, “Teoalida’s Virtual City”, originally a hobby of graphic design and 3D modeling in AutoCAD, but a fully functional housing system (virtual city – because I do not have capital to build what I design). Dozens apartment block models, constantly improved, imagining being president of a country or manager of a housing corporation, with mission to offer quality housing for at least half of population, like what does HDB in Singapore (I am fascinated especially by public housing around the world). Since 2010 I also landed housing complexes and single family homes.

The “Virtual City” has impressed many people, from random individuals dreaming to have a home, to architects and housing developers, turning my hobby into business in 2012. I started learning architecture, to make construction drawings similar with professional architects, but I never enjoyed working for customers as much I enjoyed drawing for hobby. I has been contacted by few hundreds customers, but 9 of 10 were not willing to pay my services, and the paying customers wasted me too much time for little payments. My other hobby of making databases, which also turned into business in 2012, hit my target of $1000/month in 2015, making me to retire from architecture.

Having a job under an established architecture company could have turned my life into a different direction, but did not had such chance until it was… TOO LATE.

This page shows my early career, archive and scraped ideas, useful for students and friends to see how my hobby-business began. These projects may contain errors.

If you want to view my latest and BEST projects, look in House Design and Apartment Design instead, because the errors may be already repaired in newer projects. Do not say that these drawings are a piece of shit! I already know, these are shits compared with newer projects! You know… I never could design high quality housing if I not started with crappy housing!

Highlights

May 2008, I imagined a virtual city with oversized apartments such as 105 and 115 sqm for 4-room (internal floor areas, excluding walls and balconies), 25 cm load-bearing walls (other walls 12.5 cm), 4×4 m bedrooms.

Late 2008, I decided to use Singapore’s HDB as main source of inspiration (notice that, like HDB downsize in late 1990s, I have downsized my apartments in the following years).

March 2009, I finalized first set of rules, switched to 12.5 cm walls, 3×5 m bedrooms, 3 classes (approximately 115, 105, 95 sqm for 4-room, similar with Singapore sizes) because I realized that my past projects had oversized rooms, and introduced 5-room apartments to keep average apartment size around 100 sqm.

August 2010, I designed first landed houses, beside apartment blocks. Inspired from Singapore, Malaysia, Europe and Mexico.

March 2011, I studied Hong Kong for 3 months and realized that people can live in apartments smaller than my ones. I designed few tiny apartments, for the first time I used decimal metric system instead of binary metric divisions.

Late 2011, I realized that my normal apartments are again oversized as the Singapore apartments are measured with walls and balconies too. Most of new apartments followed Class C size (95 sqm internal for 4-room, 3x4m bedrooms) but better than older bigger Class A / B apartments.

January 2012, I found software to chat with website visitors and this helped website visitors to contact me to ask for consultation or design services. Too bad that 90% of these people want free plans and are not interested in a full architecture drawing (and pay for it).

March 2012, I added a series of even smaller, low-cost apartments, inspired from Latin America (Mexico and Brazil).

August 2012, first paying customer… another hobby turned into a business! I lost the interest for the “Virtual City” so now I concentrate on working for customers. Most of customers are from Philippines, so during 2013 I designed many houses inspired from this country (first houses in decimal metric system and imperial system, instead of my binary metric system).

Late 2013, I decided to use decimal metric system for all projects including hobby ones, I remade all rules, 4-room being 90-100 sqm for normal projects, 60 sqm for low-cost ones suitable for Latin America, India or other third-world countries, now I will specify both gross and net floor areas to align with what most developers are doing.

2015, after 3 years of business, architecture still did not turned profitable, while my other hobbies did. So I decided to leave architecture and do new projects just occasionally.

The childhood

How architecture popped in my life… remains a mystery even for me.

My dad was working in AutoCAD since long time ago, I learned myself AutoCAD since I was 9 years old, he did not taught me, I learned by watching him doing engineering drawings. Nobody in my family or friends is working in architecture or construction.

I started designing own buildings in 2001, when I was just 12 years old, without having internet connection or any help from friends, I had limited access to information.

In 2001-2003 my concept was to make buildings without concrete, with standardized metallic pieces like LEGO bricks, joined with screws and other things, building an apartment block in several days and change internal layout everyday, also allows to disassemble a house and move to another location. I designed concepts of both landed houses and high-rise apartment blocks, but all was simple and monotonous and drawings themselves were simple with just wall axis and door placement. Example: a 7-bedroom house designed in 2002 (photo).

Between 2005 and 2007 I gained some interest to study housing in my country (Romania), I explored nearby cities in real life, by walking around, also explored other cities from former communist countries via internet, I gained some architectural knowledge, I designed city maps and floor plans of many existing blocks. Most blocks in my country are rectangular with 2 to 6 units per floor. Still, no interest for design my own housing models.

In 2007-2008 I practiced my urban planning talent in The Sims 2, where I built 3 cities with nice-looking but non-functional blocks.

In early 2008 I had a dream to design myself a functional city using AutoCAD, with 4 and 9 storeys blocks. I made several floor plans in Paint, most still inspired by Eastern European architecture, and several 3D experiments in AutoCAD. No finished project.

The early 2008 architectural designs

In mid-2008 I started to explore the world using Google Earth, studying architecture of various cities, and make random searches on Google Images like “apartment floorplan“. I became fascinated by Asia where I found apartment buildings with one row of identical apartments placed along a balcony-corridor. Or crazy-shaped buildings with identical apartments mounted on a variable-shaped core.

I noticed the advantages of corridor-style: can create blocks in various shapes with variable number of units per floor without risking to have rooms stuck in middle of block, without ventilation. No more limit to max 4 units per floor due to central staircase like in the previous european-communist designs.

The New Generation in Teoalida’s Housing Design begins! Modern apartments with entry directly in a large living room, semi-open kitchen, one large common bath and one small bath for master bedroom, for the first time I include furnishing layout in my drawings. A concept totally different from my past projects inspired from Eastern Europe.

The floor plan is based on a 4×4 meters grid, so overall it is nicely proportioned and versatile. Identical types of 2-Room Middle, 3-Room Corner, and 4-Room Corner End, placed in a row along a common access balcony, can form various block shapes that are 10 meters wide. All living rooms and bedrooms have windows on outer facade. A 4 roomer have a built area of 128 square meters, exactly double than a 2 roomer. The internal area is in fact more than double, because the balcony eats same amount of space regardless of the apartment size. The usable space is built area minus 4 sq m (balcony) minus 12% (walls area). Let’s try a 72 by 32 meters S-shape with 16 units per floor on one single staircase…

Other projects included a square tower block with 4 units per floor, with 3 and 4 rooms, had advantage of windows for all bathrooms. Later was derived in a trapezoidal block. I also wanted a triangular tower block with 6 units per floor, but I not succeeded a good floor plan.

Maisonette Alternate – WEIRDEST block designed by me

In August 2008 combined three ideas: double-storey 5-Room apartments inspired from Singapore maisonettes, external access corridors, and alternating (mirroring) the floorplan every two floors, to create the weirdest project in my career. Despite of crazy-looking with weird layout of windows, is fully functional, on each floor 2 apartments shares a single pipe column for kitchens and bathrooms, but the layout is not efficient (much space is wasted). Later called Maisonette Alternate and redesigned in Trident shape for a surplus of craziness.

Tritrapeze

In September 2008 I tried again to design a triangular block, but with 12 units per floor and 3 staircases. In fact, I merged three Trapeze-like blocks around a central courtyard, to create another weird shaped building. Two different types of 3-Room, closed kitchens with blocked views, service balconies at kitchens (for the first time), but no windows for bathrooms.

Little & Simple

Meantime, I concentrated on improving my first project, I criticized myself for incorrect flat size proportions, 2-room being smaller than half of the 4-room. I tried to design other versions with increased block width to 12 meters.

So in September 2008 I launched the successor, called Little & Simple. Three standard versions: I-4 (32 by 12 meters), L-6 (36×26 meters), U-8 (40 by 26 meters), can be joined to form various shapes, for example a S-36 (36 units per floor) in 132 by 52 meters, pictured here. Due the block layout, the two-room units always represented 50% of total number of units.

Designed as walk-up block, staircase integrated inside, open kitchen design and better relation between flat sizes: 2-Room Middle (70/72 sq m), 3-Room End (96 sq m), 4-Room Corner (120 sq m), gross floor area.

Regulated facades for enhanced aesthetics

Everything was careful calculated to create nice visual proportions in facade design in AutoCAD 3D renderings. Floor plan follow a 4-meter grid, and by having 4 meters frontage for each room and 3-meters floor-to-floor, a nice 4:3 ratio was created. Windows are tall like half of floor height, and width 1.5 meters for kitchens, 2.5 meters for bedrooms, and 3.5 meters for livingroom-balcony. Bedroom windows are grouped two with two, and are separated by a 0.5 meters column, 0.5 meters beams are also placed on basement and roof, so will remain 1.5 meters of vertical wall between windows, 1 meters of horizontal wall between windows and columns, and also between first and last storey window to horizontal beam.

The colors were not randomly chosen, but to provide maximum contrast rather than realism. For windows I choose cyan because reflects the sky, the small elements like windows sills or balcony frame and glass were cyan-blue, while balcony backwall be yellow to be in contrast, the walls used the remaining light color: green, while for columns and beams I choose magenta to be in contrast with green. Later I eliminated balcony backwall color, all external walls became yellow.

Other projects

I had more projects, at least sketched (wall axes). Some did not followed the 4-meter grid rule and dimensions with decimals. Some were influenced by Eastern European apartments, with entry to a central hallway rather than to living room (what a waste of space!), some were influenced by Japanese apartments, with one bath per apartment but separate toilet and shower, some were influenced by South Korea, China, or Hong Kong… But the 4-meter grid-based designs proved that are still the best!

The late 2008 development boom

After researching architecture from countries like Singapore, Japan, South Korea, China, and Hong Kong, I recognized Singapore as the best city of the world, mainly because of the HDB public housing programme and urban planning. So I choose to follow Singapore typologies and lifestyle of HDB flats.

The average apartment size should be around 100 square meters, 4-Room should be dominant, hallways must be reduced at the minimum, even eliminated, the living room may be placed centrally, and every bath should have window for ventilation. Also I decided to make all bathrooms with bathtub (stupid rule). This caused a boom of new projects for the next 3 months.

New Generation

My first modern project was again improved and re-launched on October 2008 as New Generation, 12 meters width, now 3-Room and 4-Room were dominant, staircase is well integrated inside block, external glass lifts. Bigger apartments with closed (but easily to open) kitchens, opposite to previous versions. In the first version bathrooms still not had windows. In November 2008 I adapted it to the new rule with bathroom windows, but the 4-Room Corner (105 sqm), became badly shaped, so I tried several reshaping until in December when I decided to use for Corner same apartment type 4-Room End (115 sqm).

On the first version I created a new, linear facade design with full-width windows (left photo). I had a dream several days before with a block with horizontally continuous windows that made me to love this design for a moment. Later proved that was the ugliest block, so I switched to more regular design like the one seen in Little & Simple (as in lower photos). In December I experimented a new facade design (right photo), inspired by some 1990s blocks from Singapore (Taman Jurong blocks).

Beside the standard versions (I-4, L-6, U-8), in November 2008 was also designed a crazy version with 26 units per floor on 4 staircases (lower photos). The 3D design is not finished, missing ground floor and lifts.

In fact, this was first block named New Generation, and with it I created the naming system: Model – Shape – Number of units per floor. Previous, all projects were considered “The New Generation of Housing” and were named only by shape and dimensions, for example U-block 64×24, S-block 72×32, Square block 24×24.

Other projects November 2008

Square Small – 4 adapted easily to the new rules, can have 2 versions, one with four 3-Room and one with two 4-Room on one half.

Little & Simple cannot be adapted to the new rules, so I returned to its own predecessor, now called New Generation Narrow, only 10 meters width, improved with windows at all bathrooms.

Trapeze – 6, a tower block with non-equal wings, 3- and 4-Room apartments developed by mixing the horrible Trapeze – 4 with the never-finished Triangle – 6 that will had only 4-Room apartments.

Other projects December 2008

Old Generation, designed in classic asian style with living room facing common corridor, block width 14 meters, 8-meter width 3-Room apartments, bathrooms on airwells, and 4-Room apartments on endings. Was simple, very ugly monotonous facades, and had a lot of problems. But the land usage efficiency was good.

Polygons where somewhat circular blocks with internal courtyard and unfortunately had only 4-Room apartments.

Zig-Zag Large – 4 and Rectangle Small – 4, tower blocks with only 4-Room apartments but one room is smaller than a regular bedroom, like a study room.

Square Large – 4, was inspired by the 25-storey point blocks built in Singapore between 1970 and 1985, I designed it as soon as I saw a floor plan of these blocks, it was my first block with real 5-Room (4 bedrooms) regular apartments (non-penthouse). .

Other projects January 2009

Rectangle Large – 4 had the biggest apartments, separate living and dining plus three bedrooms.

Triangle Small – 9, my first symmetrical block with odd number of apartments per floor.

Later I derived it into a Triangle Small – 12 and a Triangle Large – 12.

A new Maisonette Generation was designed.

Polygons and Square Small

Rectangle Large

The era was closed with this AutoCAD 3D masterpiece (February 2009)

The 2009 high quality housing design

Because of deeply research of Singapore housing, I realized that my projects are badly designed. Walls are too thick, apartments are too big and will be even bigger with thinner walls. I need to design new apartments with smaller but more rooms. I imagine families with 2 parents and 1 children could not afford a New Generation 87 sqm 3-Room apartment (including walls would be 96 sqm, which is average size for 4-room in Singapore), some 3-person families wants 4 rooms, one extra room for study.

I started to review every rule, and in March 2009 I finalized a full set of new basic rules for ideal housing. The biggest changes were: walls must be 1/8 meters thick, 4-meter grid is eliminated so the rooms can have more variable sizes, master bedroom must “grow” like living room, depending of number of rooms, common bedrooms will be better to be 3 by 5 meters rather than 4 by 4 meters, to reduce space used on facade, the 3-Room apartments can have common bathroom with shower.

I created a new AutoCAD color scheme in January 2009, used also on late 2008 projects, and with constant improvements, on all 2009 projects. The color scheme was inspired by Singapore 1990s designs: red, orange or yellow brick walls, with white horizontal stripes. Again, colors create contrast with the blue sky and windows.

I made my first personal website www.teoalida.webs.com in April 2009 and published my works for first time.

Old Generation and New Generation series

I started thinking how inefficient is if even the smaller 3-Room apartments in New Generation Narrow use 12 meters frontage on both sides, because of the stupid 4-meter grid. I really need to design new blocks, wider blocks with shorter apartments, with narrow rooms! Also I found that apartments with rooms facing to common corridor are not so undesirable in Singapore as I thought.

So… in March 2009 I started development of 2 new projects, both 12-meter width:

Old Generation, living rooms facing to access corridor, is based on the 9-meter length 76.70 sqm 3-Room, with 4-Room on the endings. 6-meter length 46.70 sqm 2-Room were also designed (right photo, facade design partially inspired by Tampines block 497).

New Generation, living rooms facing opposite to access corridor, is based on the 12-meters length 104.20 sqm 4-Room, but can have many apartments types, ranging from 84 sqm 3-Room to 133 sqm 5-Room, slanted apartments for non-90 degree blocks.

Both are mainly my designs, not based on any existing block in the world.

The original Old Generation from November 2008 was redesigned in a more nice shape, block narrowed to shrink apartments sizes, airwells eliminated and bathroom moved to facades, but I still did not liked it.

Sharpback series

Old Generation Sharpback was designed in June 2009, 14 meter block width, 7-meter length 3-Room apartments. Based on the mst common block type in Singapore’s 1970s and 1980s. The previous Old Generation was scraped because have no advantages compared with Old Generation Sharpback. A larger version with 4-Room 11-meters length apartments was also designed, but quickly scraped because of many disadvantages compared with 4-Room 12-meters length apartments in New Generation, in 2010 I added it back in lineup.

Hexagon Concave Tower

Designed in March 2009, with 6 apartments per floor which had some similarity with Rectangle Small, this block may be my WORST design. Problems: too small staircase/lift lobby, no ventilation, unaligned walls which do not allow a solid core, and odd living room shape.

Triangle Tower

After almost 1 year from original idea, I finally designed Triangle Tower in May 2009. The key of success was reducing bedrooms size to 3 by 4.5 meters and pushing bathrooms towards living room. The photo on right shows the original design before July facelift (current design in Apartment Design page). Hexagon Concave was trashed.

Rest of projects

Rectangle Small, Square Large, Trapeze, Triangle Small / Large, were more or less redesigned and adapted to the new rules.

Squares Tower which dates back from December 2008 was redesigned, it is also based on Singapore old blocks.

Polygons, Rectangle Large, Zig-Zag Large were completely scraped.

Zig-Zag Small was developed by mixing 3-Room apartments from Trapeze Tower with the shape of Rectangle Small. Is similar with the previous Square Small which was scraped.

Two new towers, Square Small and Square Large were designed in May 2009, based on my New Generation.

Segmented Generation was designed in June 2009, based on Singapore’s 1970s blocks.

The high appreciation of Triangle Tower within my circle of friends, leaded to development of a new project called Freedom Generation in late 2009.

New naming system

I had 14 finished block models, of which 7 contains Generation (I named in this manner all blocks with variable (non-fixed) shape. Clearly too many and confusing! New names proposed:

Old Generation > Linear Small
New Generation > Linear Large
Maisonette Generation > Linear Maisonette
Unnamed Generation > Linear Studios
Old Generation Sharpback > Sharpback Small
Segmented Generation > Segmented
Freedom Generation > Freestyle
Sharpback Large and Sharpback Maisonette were also designed but not published considering them bad designs.

As being closer to perfection, the evolution inevitable slowed down. I was also busy with my family and other things and I take little time and attention to design 3D apartment buildings in AutoCAD for fun.

I have in plan to design a BIG CITY of about 1 square kilometre, with streets and some landscape, streets based on a REAL city, but this is a hard mission and takes a lot of time, and no time right now. Until I do it, enjoy rectangular symmetrical neighborhoods such as these ones made in late 2009:

The 2010-2011 diversity, source of inspiration spread to other countries

During 2010 I paid little attention in designing new apartment buildings, but in the second half of year I started to design landed houses. I studied many other cities from different parts of world, to make diversity both in floorplan and facade design.

An iconic project, CentralLiving was designed in November 2010, own concept with no inspiration from anywhere.

I spent first 3 months of 2011 studying Hong Kong tiny apartments, to create my own series of 6 Hong Kong-inspired projects, but finally I designed 8 projects. Who the fuck needs a 100 sqm apartment? Now I prove that with a good design, a family of 4 can live comfortable in a 60 sqm 4-room apartment.

Google launched StreetView in Brazil in late 2010 and this leaded to a high interest to study Brazil real estate, I had interest for Brazil before too, I love how floorplans are made with dimensions, apartments itself are quite small but living in an apartment is seen as progress.

But I will never stop loving and studying Singapore! It remain the best city in the world!

During 2011 I designed numerous new projects, I realized that my apartments are still too big so the 2011 ones were again downsized, common sizes now are 70 sqm 3-room, 95 sqm 4-room, 120 sqm 5-room. Such sizes are not new, I had designed 95 sqm 4-room since 2009 (check Linear Small), but not so often.

New rules: 3×4 m bedrooms (rather than 3×5 m or 3×4.5 m), while for master bedroom the minimal size is 3×5 m for 3-room and 3.5×5 m for 4-room (rather than 4×5 m), because these are common sizes in developed countries (I saw some cases of bedrooms small as 2.5×3 m in Western Europe, but I decided to not downsize further my international series).

Beside international series, I designed also a series of low-cost apartment blocks, inspired from Latin America, with sizes suitable for developing countries.

CentralLiving, original design from November 2010, and The Harmony, one of the 8 projects inspired from Hong Kong, designed in March 2011

The 2010-2011 expansion to Landed Housing design

Since 2009 I planned to design landed houses in the future. But I was self-trained to design only apartments.

In 2010 I started studying landed houses of Singapore (previously I paid attention only to HDB blocks) and I designed my first project, Terrace Housing, having 6 m width and 14 m depth for first 2 floors and a 3rd attic-style floor. 5 bedrooms, three en-suite bathrooms and one common bathroom which lacked window.

Then I realized that if I eliminate one bedroom I can have windows for all bathrooms, even more, I can provide all bedrooms with walk-in wardrobe and en-suite bathroom. The floorplan was reduced to 13 m depth, 3 full floors plus basement parking, it was to became the Terrace Classic project.

The original 14-meter depth Terrace became the Semi-Detached project, with 5 bedrooms, shown here:

Soon I feel the need of diversity, and I studied the opportunity to add a lift. I had 2 floorplans, one 12 m depth space-optimized and one 13 m depth which allows lift, and 2 possible design themes, the already-made Neoclassic one with 3 floors and sloped roof, and I also wanted a Modern one with roof terrace on 4th floor.

Dilemma: which 3D theme to use for each of these floorplans? Theoretically the 4-floor design should have the floorplan with lift, but that floorplan did not allowed any room on 4th floor due to lift, being placed on opposite side of stairs, I did not like to have the lift serving only 3 floors.

Solution: I lengthen the house depth with 2 m (to 15 m) and I placed the lift on same side with stairs. The floorplan was finalized, but the Modern 3D theme was very ugly in my opinion, since I love classic styles (I insisted to design something against my tastes), I played a lot with color schemes and textures until… I finally published Terrace Modern on february 2011, and surprisingly, it became most appreciated project made by me.

Terrace Classic was improved with lift too, while the 3D design was totally redesigned, now in a condo-style complex of 80 houses and shared pool.

Terrace Classic vs Terrace Modern housing, two projects inspired from Singapore

After this, I designed few additional landed housing complexes inspired from other countries of the world.

The order of landed housing projects

July 2010 – Semi-Detached, inspired from nowhere; Terrace Classic, luxury housing inspired from Singapore.
August 2010 – Quadruplex-Terraced, inspired from Europe / United Kingdom.
November 2010 – Terrace Airwells, another medium-luxury housing, typical in Malaysia but using Singapore rules.
December 2010 – High-Density, low cost housing inspired from Mexico.
February 2011 – Terrace Modern, luxury housing inspired from Singapore.
Quarter-Detached, was planned for March 2011 but abandoned due to ugliness.
And the list continue in 2012…

All the above projects were deleted from my current lineup
Continue reading and see 2012 projects in Apartment Design and House Design pages!

Possible revival of “Virtual City” 3D graphic design artistic hobby

A flow of customers started coming in 2012 so I concentrate on architecture services for customers (house builders) who are paying me, plus other money-making projects, such as car database in Excel!

I done a lot of changes in graphic design rules, although I may not have time to any 3D architectural design as hobby anymore.

– Late 2013, I decided to use decimal metric system for all projects including hobby ones, I remade all rules, bedrooms 3×4 m, 4-room being 90-100 sqm for normal projects, 60 sqm for low-cost ones suitable for Latin America, India or other third-world -countries, now I will specify both gross and net floor areas to align with what most developers are doing.

– April 2014, I changed floor plan drawing style, making each room in different color (living room yellow, bedrooms orange, bathroom blue, etc). Also new floor plans are rendered at 20 pixels per meter instead of 40 and 32 pixels per meter. All 2-pixel wide lines are now 1-pixel wide, so the proportion is similar, but lower resolution would discourage people to print floor plans and use them without my approval.

– May 2014, I bought a bigger monitor and after this I studied screen resolutions, realizing that most screen resolution are multiply of 320 and only 1024×768 and 1366×768 are the exception, surprisingly these two were most common screen resolutions. For a period I wanted to continue doing 3D render at 2048×1536 which is displayed at 50% size on the mainstream 1366×768 laptops, but in late 2014 I decided to do 3D renders in 1920×1080 and 1440×1080 because most of my architectural 3D images do not require widescreen.

Whenever I will have time to redesign my old projects or make new projects for artistic purposes, we will see…

2012 – architecture hobby turned into business

In 2011 one of my friends asked me a house design, you can see it posted in House Design page as Split-Level house. So I announced that I offer design services to everyone.

The real SUCCESS came after I found chat software in January 2012. I started being contacted by people from various countries. Initially I did not know how to deal with them to turn into customers, but this opened a new reason to learn more.

I found that the lack of customers in 2008-2011 was unclear introduction of website. I got comments like “Thank, great collection of plans” or questions like “Do you also design houses?” and “Wow these houses are designed by you?“. Conclusion: people confused my PERSONAL website with the numerous architecture websites who just collect photos and house plans found on internet and do not offer services, example ArchDaily.

Even worse, contact info and service offered were on Home page, but people landed from Google in House Design page which did not clearly stated that I can design houses for people.

In early 2012 I was not confident that I can make customers happy, thus did not charged money for designing a floor plan in 1 hour, I was planning to ask a payment for 3D design which would take few hours. Everyone were thankful for floor plan, and nobody was interested in 3D design. I did not complain for not earning money, because I earned knowledge about foreign countries, that will be helpful to offer better services.

Some customers told me that real architects do not even say a word without getting paid first. So, after several happy customers, I started charging money for floor plans too. Most people said “thanks, I have no money”. Later I realized that most people contacting me were actually STUDENTS, NOT profit-making house builders. Sadly, beside these students, been contacted also by a builder of terraced houses, he could be my first real customer but I treat him like students and did not charged him money.

First collaboration offer

In June 2012, an American architect said that my house designs are impressive for my age, offered me to promote my services on his website, a directory of architects. I accepted thinking that this will start a professional career in architecture. But actually he was an idiot and put me on wrong track, into a career that I NEVER enjoyed.

What I was doing, was a hobby, 3D art in AutoCAD, concept drawings NOT made for submission to government for building permit or contractors. I was aware that, to build a house you will need higher-detailed “construction drawings” but I did not know how to draw them, as I had NO intention to provide “construction drawings”.

At that moment, I was charging $20 for 1-hour floor plan. The architect suggested me to charge 5% of home value, meaning $5000+ per project, without informing me what drawings need to be included in this price. Having no degree in architecture, I was promoting myself as “graphic design & 3D rendering services“, but he suggested to change into “architecture design services“. The idiot misleaded me thinking that the concept floor plans done in 1 hour are enough to build a house. Read full story.

Meeting more architects and choose my business strategy

In late 2012, I meet more architects from Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines and India, telling me to price concept drawings (sketches) and construction drawings accordingly. I started learning how to make “construction drawings” to be able to offer real “architecture services“.

I returned to the strategy used before meeting that idiot architect: offer the first sketch for FREE in PNG format to show that I have imagination of making nice floor plans, then negotiate price for construction drawings, or sell the sketch in PDF / DWG format. Price for construction drawings: $2 per sqm which raised complaints from Indians who build big but cheap houses, so in 2013 changed to $50 × number of rooms. First paying customer came in late 2012.

Moving from teoalida.webs.com to teoalida.com in December 2012 and further improvements in website design promoted trust and seriousness, more and more people looking for architecture started contacting me, not just students looking for free concept plans. I met also architects to collaborate with, in case my customers wants drawing signed by a licensed architect. However most customers choose to find themselves an architect in their country to sign the designs got online from me, or just build without permit (being in third-world countries).

The chat software also helped me to understand business potential of another hobby, the Car Database, so In mid-2012 I decided to stop designing the “Virtual City” for hobby / artistic purposes, and concentrate on designing buildings for customers, as well as transforming my hobby of researching car industry into a product usable for companies.

2015 – retire from architecture

Between 2012 and 2015 I made HAPPY hundreds of customers. Mostly families building their own home, mostly in third-world countries. I had few partner architects, but they were not needed, my drawings were professional-looking enough to get building permit (in third-world countries authorities approve any drawing). Even if I never been to university, my imagination was impressive, several university-graduated architects asked me for advices or concept plans as they did not had imagination to make themselves.

But one person was NOT HAPPY… that was ME! Because of the difficulties convincing customers to pay. Half of people contacting me were asking for free advices and ready-made plans, for other half I designed 20-minute sketches hoping to impress them, and only 1 of 10 paid afterwards for complete project. And most of paying customers had headache projects, asking numerous revisions, I never enjoyed this job, I worked just trying to make money being mislead by other people saying that I can get rich from architecture.

I had paying customers because I designed “first sketch” for free, some customers served with free sketches returned even after 1-2 months to pay for complete project, but these paying customers were a surprise rather than a rule. Some people were not needing a professional PDF while others wanted but for free, I never gave PDF for free so this usually resulted in time wasted for both me and customer. I was making a free sketch, they asked for revisions, if I revised for free, once satisfied they said “thanks” and going away, if I tried to charge money before revising they refused to pay, several people insulting me for “wasting his time and not sending final drawing” like that I am obligated to serve everyone for free. Some people admitted that need just a free sketch from me and pay someone else for complete project (they should have paid both, or don’t waste my time!). An architect told me to not provide any free sketches, get paid first and provide only professional PDF, but this strategy was not successful either.

I had 2 options: work for free or don’t work at all. Until 2015 I choose first option (free only first sketch) and after 2015 second option, unless someone agreed to pay in advance.

In 2014 I was sometimes contacted by so many people that I was making sketches almost daily and did not had time to serve everyone. Large ratio of people refusing to pay made me to no longer pay attention to potentially paying customers too, some of them informing me that paid (twice of my price) to someone else that done his project in 2 days.

I was thinking to employ someone, but the large number of non-paying idiots posed a problem in paying my employee.

If you have a store, you cannot force every one who enter in store, to buy a product. Same at me, I cannot force every website visitor to pay for my services, but I tried to discourage non-paying people from wasting my time sending emails and chat messages.

Problems in my personal life that started in February 2015, psychological trauma and uncertainty about my future forced me to abandon all works. I de-optimized architecture pages and disabled chat pop-up greeting, reducing number of visitors to half and reducing by 5 times number of people contacting me.

Since 2014, sales volume of car databases driven up by SEO convinced me that making databases is more profitable than architecture. Typing data in Excel sounds boring for most people, but I find it more pleasurable than architectural projects requiring revisions. An Excel database may require dozens to hundreds hours initial investment, but can be sold to multiple people, generating a passive income with a small investment of keeping up-to-date. A house project require about 20 hours and generate in best case one-time payment, nobody else would buy a project made for someone else.

I returned in business in late 2015, and database business broke my target of $1000 per month after finishing 2 Excel projects started in late 2014. Learning web scraping in August 2015 allowed me to create new databases with far less effort than typing manually and reach $2000 per month in 2016.

I doubled my design rates and should double again, but will be stupid to charge higher than professional architects given by my lack of university, and raising prices does not solve the main problem: non-paying customers.

I did not made more sketches to impress customers and convince them to pay, unless they insisted to pay in advance. Taking payment in advance gave me obligation to satisfy customer, and some customers were so exigent asking many revisions and wasting me too much time for the money we initially agreed, one project took 2 months instead of usual 1 week. Yes, TWO fucking months for ONE family house!

Typical IT customers asking me to make databases, took me 1 hour to write a scraping script and leave it running overnight for 10 hours, and get paid $200, then I can sell same database to other people too. For comparison, customers asking me to design houses made me to sit at computer for 20-50 hours to get paid $500, with no potential of reselling. In conclusion: offering architecture services is pointless, database business is 10x more profitable.

Happy customers referred me to friends, contacting me for more unwanted projects. Instead of appreciating more customers, I wanted to escape, assuming that they are wasting my time and will never pay. Since 2016 every time someone paid me for an architectural project, I was so UNHAPPY for the time wasted that I was saying that is the LAST architecture project I am doing and told him to NOT recommend me to any more customers. I rejected many projects even if they were willing to pay me in advance, telling them to find another architect.

2017 – outsourcing to other architects

Several architects offered to work for me “if I am too busy” but their high experience and cheap prices made me even more shamed to continue my career, I decided to outsource ALL architectural projects.

When someone visit my website and architectural design services, I confirm his ability to pay, ask for his contact info, then I pass lead to most suitable architect to contact him discuss project details and negotiate price, he get paid and pay me 10-20% referral fee, or customer pay me and I pay architect 80-90%.

This was NOT successful either, 75% customers do not reply when architects contact them, some insisted to have project done by myself and not third-party architects (even if they can do better job than me), and when customer reply, architect wants to get paid before making a sketch, customer wants to see a sketch before paying, they just waste time exchanging emails. Only FEW deals were completed successfully.

I contacted other architects who promote their services online, and figured out that all of them face same situation like me. They do not make any drawing for free, waste a lot of time replying emails and phone calls, quoting prices, to have 1 paying customer out of 10 people contacting them. Only architects who have a local office have higher conversion rate, and is normal to spend more than 1 month for a project, their earnings barely exceeding 2000 USD per month even after being in business for 10-20 years. I am glad that I did NOT went to architecture university, I would have been a poor architect.

Conclusion: serious people who are PAYING usually engage a local architect who can meet face to face, to make official drawings, submit them to authorities, and also supervise construction (which I cannot do), while the people browsing internet and contacting me are usually people needing free ideas and unofficial drawings, and only few of them are willing to pay for this, paying very little.

If this is NATURE of architecture, then this job does NOT suit me,

I will NOT do any more projects!

Some people suggested me to get employed under an established architect. But again, do I am the right person for such job? If I haven’t done this in 2012-2015 I am NOT going to do today. The number of databases projects I started and responsibility to update them regularly prevent me from having another full-time job. But I am curious how stressful or profitable would have been such job, and how it does work in case employer do not let me in direct contact with customer and what happens if the customer request revisions?

21 comments

Architecture – Rules for an ideal city

Filed under ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN WORK

My biggest passion, started in 2008, designing buildings for “Teoalida’s Virtual City”, since 2009 I wrote this page with the rules of an utopian IDEAL CITY. These rules apply for projects designed for myself as hobby. When I design for customers, I follow the laws of their country.

I love collecting BUILDING CODES of various countries
If you have more, please send me (link to website, or email me if is .DOC or .PDF)

Singapore: www.bca.gov.sg
Malaysia: https://www.scribd.com/doc/30457115/13282147-Uniform-Building-by-Laws
Philippines: http://www.chanrobles.com/republicactno6541.htm
Indonesia: https://leumburkuring.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/sni-03-1733-2004-tata-cara-perencanaan-lingkungan.pdf
http://jdih.pu.go.id/peraturan-download.html?id=1935
India: http://www.slideshare.net/SivaSankar8/national-building-code-2005
Brazil: do a search “codigo de obras“, they have different building code for each state.
South Africa: http://sans10400.co.za/
Nigeria: http://sdngnet.com/Files/Lectures/FUTA-ARC-807-Professional_Practice_and_Procedure/CD%202013-2014/National%20Building%20Code%20of%20Nigeria%202006.pdf
United Kingdom with comparison with the rest of Europe: http://www.hatc.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/GLA_Space_Standards_Report.pdf

Comparison of Building Codes

In most countries in the world, the room sizes are regulated by minimum width and minimum area.

Room	Teoalida’s Housing		Singapore	Malaysia	South Korea	India	Philippines	Brazil
Room	Minimum	Ideal	Singapore	Malaysia	South Korea	India	Philippines	Brazil
Living room	2.9 m 16 sqm	3.4 m 20 sqm	–	2.0 m 11 sqm	usually 3.6×3.6 m	–	–	2.4 m 8 sqm
Kitchen	1.9 m 6 sqm	2.4 m 8 sqm	–	1.5 m 4.5 sqm	–	1.8 m 5 sqm	1.5 m 3 sqm	1.5 m 4 sqm
Master bedroom	2.9 m 11 sqm	3.4 m 14 sqm	–	2.0 m 9.3 sqm	usually 3.6×3.6 m	2.4 m 9.5 sqm	2 m 6 sqm	2.4 m 8 sqm
Other bedrooms	2.4 m 8 sqm	2.9 m 11 sqm	–	2.0 m 6.5 sqm	usually 2.7×3.6 m	2.1m 7.5 sqm	2 m 6 sqm	2.4 m 6 sqm
Bath	1.2 m 3 sqm	1.5 m 4 sqm	–	0.75 m 2.0 sqm	usually 1.8×2.4 m	1.2 m 2.8 sqm *	0.9 m 1.2sqm	1.2 m ? Sqm
Toilet	undecided	undecided	–	0.75 m 1.5 sqm	usually 1.5×1.8 m	0.9 m 1.1 sqm	–	–
Washing room	–	–	–	–	–	–	–	1.2 m 2.4 sqm
Store room	–	–	–	–	–	3 sqm	–	–
Ceiling height	2.6 m	2.8 m	2.6 m	2.5 m	probably 2.7 m	2.75 m	2.4 m *	2.4 m
Hallway public	1.5 m	1.5 m	1.5 m	?	usually 1.5 m	1.5 m ?	?	1.2 m
Hallway private	0.9 m	1.2 m	1 m	?	usually 1.5 m	1.2 m	0.9 m	0.8 m
Staircase public	1.4 m	1.4 m	1 m	?	usually 1.2 m	1.5 m ?	?	1.1 m
Staircase private	0.9 m	1 m	1 m	?	?	1 m	0.75 m	0.8 m

* Notes:
Brazil: each state have own laws, in some states, the laws are minimum 2.5 or 2.8 m / 10 sqm for living room, 9 sqm for master bedroom, 7 sqm for other bedroom
India: bathroom without WC 1.2 m / 1.8 sqm, bathroom with WC 1.2 m / 2.8 sqm.
Philippines: the law says 2.7 m ceiling height for ground floor, but most homes are built with 2.4 m ceiling for all floors.
South Korea: I never saw building code. But I love their apartments and I studied a lot, the “usually” dimensions are taken from floor plans of 4-room and bigger apartments, there are a small number of apartments having rooms smaller than usual sizes.

The concept of Teoalida’s Housing

I imagine being president of a country or manager of a housing corporation and my goal is to provide housing for at least half of population. So is a kind of public housing… I love doing myself what others are doing, sometimes doing better than them. It’s like replicating the housing system of HDB in Singapore.

I design apartments since 2008, these are inspired mostly from Singapore and rest of East Asia. So are pretty standardized.
I design landed houses since 2010, these are inspired from many different parts of world so are much less standardized.

These rules were originally created for apartments, denotes the “perfect” apartments, some of them applies for landed houses too. I studied many residential projects around the world, and also aftermarket renovations, and I designed my own “ideal housing” to suit for most customers around the world, rather to best suit my personal needs. If you have suggestions or requests… tell me.

An ideal city should offer about 30 sqm per person. For comparison, developed countries of Europe and Japan have an average of 35-40 sqm per person but this is due to average household size of only 2.1-2.5 people, probably due to people owning multiple properties such as city apartment and countryside house, and rent them to singles. Inside cities the average is probably under 30 sqm per person. Singapore household size is 3.5 and Malaysia 4.3.

Originally I designed apartments for 30 sqm per person, one room per person, and an average family size of 3.5 persons, which should lead to an average apartment size a little over 100 sqm. A perfect distribution in a mature city is 10% of 50 sqm 2-Room, 30% of 80 sqm 3-Room, 40% of 110 sqm 4-Room, 20% of 140 sqm 5-Room, this means an average size of 101 sqm.

Currently I design apartments for minimum 20 sqm per person thinking that the real sqm per person will vary a lot due to income and living style.

Floor plan drawing styles

1. Wall axis and binary metric dimensions: I make wall axis at integer number of meters or half, then offset wall face 1/16 meters, and external wall with 1/4 meters, thus most room dimensions x375 or x875 mm and overall building dimension x500 mm (used since 2008 to 2013 for projects designed for hobby / artistic).

2. Wall axis and decimal metric dimensions: I make wall axis at integer number of meters or half, then offset wall face 5 cm, thus most room dimensions are x400 or x900 mm and external building dimension x300 mm or x500 mm (planned in 2012 to replace binary metric system).

3. No wall axis and metric / imperial dimensions: I make exterior of building at a integer number of meters, then most important rooms dimensions in integer meters, internal walls 10, 15, 20 cm and external walls 20 cm (used first time in 2011 for Hong Kong-inspired apartments (artistic) and since 2012 for landed houses designed for customers).

Guidelines in Teoalida’s housing (OLD rules used in 2008-2011)

Typical apartment sizes, net (usable) area, excluding balconies or walls
2-Room: Class C 45 sqm, Class B 50 sqm, Class A 55 sqm
3-Room: Class C 72 sqm, Class B 78 sqm, Class A 87 sqm
4-Room: Class C 96 sqm, Class B 104 sqm, Class A 116 sqm
5-Room: Class C 120 sqm, Clas B 130 sqm, Class A 145 sqm
The designated class depends of many other things. Apartments with livingroom facing to common corridor are always Class C. Well… I not defined a clear distinction between Class B and A. It may be master bedroom of min 18 sqm and other bedrooms min 14 sqm, if the apartments are too good designed and have big enough rooms, I consider them Class A despite of smaller overall size.

Apartment / house layout rules

Living room, master bedroom and kitchen sizes depends by the apartment size, other rooms have more regularized areas.

Living room: 4 m wide, usually 30-40% of the total apartment area and is in relationship with the master bedroom area: minimum 4:3 for 2-Room, minimum 3:2 for 3-Room, minimum 8:5 for 4-Room, minimum 2:1 for 5-Room, enough big to allow eating and watching TV simultaneously. Some apartments have somewhat separated living and dining zones.

Bedrooms: I have used 4 × 4 m for my early projects in 2008, then 3 x 5 m in 2009, then since 2011 I introduced smaller bedrooms at 4 × 3 meters. The smallest bedroom in 4- and 5-Room is good to be placed near master bedroom to allow master bedroom extension, study area or walk-in wardrobe.

Bathrooms: usually 2.5×2 meters or 3×2 meters, the 3-Room apartments can have the secondary bathroom 2 x 2 meters, with just a shower.

Kitchen: size vary, usually a little smaller than a common bedroom, I placed it in a manner that allows easy merging with livingroom, for people that loves open-concept kitchens. In some houses the dining area is attached to kitchen rather than to living room.

Balcony: almost all my apartments have balconies, at livingroom or at the kitchen, or both. Even if in today world most people do not need any balcony, if it exists, most are closed and doors removed.

Guidelines in Teoalida’s housing (NEW rules used since 2012)

Further study of various countries revealed that my rules of apartment sizes were unrealistically BIG, most countries are dominated by smaller apartments.

An ideal city will have apartment sizes regulated too, not just individual room sizes.
So, developers would have some freedom to make some apartments with bigger living room and other apartments with bigger bedrooms, to make all rooms accessible from living room, or to add hallways.

Apartment sizes:
Minimal floor area (internal net area, excluding walls and balconies)
1-bedroom 1-bath = 40 sqm
2-bedroom 1-bath = 60 sqm
2-bedroom 2-bath = 70 sqm
3-bedroom 2-bath = 90 sqm
4-bedroom 2-bath = 120 sqm

For comparison, the apartments currently built by HDB in Singapore have gross floor area 3-room 65 sqm and 4-room 90 sqm, but these include wall thickness too, as well as an useless “household shelter”, so the internal size is about 10-15% lower, making them unlivable in my opinion. The HDB apartments built in 1980s and 1990s are slightly above the minimal floor area in my ideal city.

The following regulations were intended for the system with wall axis and 10 cm walls.

Living room: minimum width 2.9 m for 2-room and 3.4m for 3-room and bigger. Recommended floor area including dining area is 20 sqm for 3-room, 25 sqm for 4-room, 30 sqm for 5-room.

Dining room: 3-room apartments should provide space for dining table for 4 people while 4-room apartments should provide space for a dining table for 6 people, if it is a separate room, its size should be at least 3 x 3 m. In low-cost apartments people can eat in front of TV on a folding table with folding chairs.

Bedrooms: recommended size 2.9 x 3.9 m or 3.4 x 3.4 m (11 sqm). This size easily accommodate a wardrobe and one double bed or two single beds (or wardrobe, bed, desk).
For comparison, Philippines minimum is 2 m / 6 sqm bedrooms, Brazil 2.4 m / 8 sqm first bedroom and 2.4 m / 6 sqm other bedrooms.

Master bedroom: for 3-room apartments, one bedroom is recommended to be 2.9 x 4.9 m or 3.5 x 3.9 m (13 sqm) and for 4-room and bigger 3.4 x 4.9 m (16 sqm). Bigger apartment means richer owner so need a bigger room.

Kitchen: in my opinion should have minimum 1.9 m width for one side cabinets, 2.4 m for cabinets on both sides. Total kitchen area should vary depending by apartment size.

Bathrooms: recommended size 2.4×1.6 m to fit toilet bowl, sink and bathtub. In 2-room apartments I can use 2.4 x 1.4 m with shower.
Typical bathtub size is 150-160 cm long and 75-80 cm wide (60 x 30 in).

Hallways: recommended width 1.20 m, which together with bathroom width of 1.60m and two walls 10 cm thick, makes a rounded value of 3 meters.

Staircases: minimal width 90 cm, recommended width 1 m.

Guidelines for low-cost housing

Beside the “normal” housing, I also designed several low-cost housing projects inspired from Latin America where room sizes are smaller. My low-cost housing have all rooms dimensions rounded to 50 cm, making floor plans nice also from artistic point of view. Wall thickness is again 10 cm.

Total apartment size: 45 sqm for 3-room and 60 sqm for 4-room.

Living room: minimum 3 meters width, floor area vary depending by number of rooms.

Bedrooms: minimum 2.4 x 3.4 m, this is the minimum size that allow a wardrobe and 2 single beds, or 1 single bed and desk.

Bathrooms: minimum 1.4 x 2.4 m.

Hallways: minimum 90 cm wide, this is the minimum width in most countries.

For comparison in Brazil typical sizes are like this: master bedroom 2.6 x 3.2 m, common bedrooms 2.4 x 3.2 m (allowing 60cm clearance between furniture), bathrooms 1.2 x 2.2 m or 1.5 x 1.5 m with corner shower. Living room can be as small like a bedroom. Each state have own laws about minimum room sizes. Once time ago I saw a 33 sqm 2-bedroom apartment (link to floor plan broken).

Guidelines for the houses designed for Philippines and Hong Kong

Hong Kong, due to scarcity of land and high population density, built the smallest apartments in the world, with bedrooms 2 x 2 m just to fit a single or bunk bed. Apartments commonly have 2 and 3 bedrooms.

Philippines, due to culture to keep things at minimum, built the smallest houses in the world, most houses having 2 bedrooms and most apartments being studio and 1-room.

Philippines building code also is one of most permissive in the world, allowing bedrooms small as 6 sqm, but personally I saw even smaller bedrooms. I set my own guidelines for projects that I design for this country (for people who own bigger lands I can design bigger rooms similar with my international guidelines).

Living room: min 2.5 m wide and 10 sqm (building code do not specify size for living room, it can be same size like a bedroom, but isn’t logical to be bigger?).

Bedroom: 2 x 3 m or 2.4 x 2.5 m (min 6 sqm, same like building code).

Bathroom: 1.2 x 2 m should be the minimum size in my opinion (building code specify minimum bathroom width 0.9 m, leaving just 20 cm between front of toilet bowl and wall, I can’t imagine how you can USE that toilet, too crammed).

Guidelines for car parks

Street parking: an international recommendation is to have 80 cm space between cars. Most open parking lots are designed 2.5 m wide because cars were traditionally 1.6-1.7 m wide. This is getting a problem as since 1990s cars are getting fatter, today most of cars being over 1.8 m wide. American parking lots are 2.7-3.0 m wide, in Japan and Brazil I saw 2.2-2.3 m wide.

Basement parking: perpendicular lots should be wider if there are columns around, clearance between columns should be at least 3 meters to allow space to steer.

Public parking lots should be 5 meters length.

Private garages should be depending by what car you own, usually minimum 2.9 m width and 5-6 m long. Except the American cars, 90% of world cars are up to 5 meters length. Europe is dominated by cars 4-5 meters long, but other countries are dominated by smaller cars.

A house is designed to last at least 50 years, you should make provision for owning bigger cars in the future. Take a look how much cars grown past 50 years: Car Length Evolution.

Other dimensions used in 3D design

In 3D design I use a floor-to-floor height of 3 meters, for being a round number. This means ceiling height 2.75 meters, enough to can put false ceiling, spotlights, or ceiling fan, the 25 cm floor slab may include floor heating. Most apartment buildings around the world have 2.60 – 2.80 meters floor-to-floor (ceiling height 2.40 – 2.60 meters).

Windows have 1.5 meters height above the 1 meter parapet wall.

Doors have 2 meters height, and 75 cm, 1 meter or 1.5 meters width.

Stairs: there is some controversy, I found that my older projects contains wrong, oversized stairs. Since 2010 I use stairs with 5/16 m (31.25 cm) tread and 1/6 m (16.67 cm) riser, 18 steps per floor, giving at pitch of 28%, this is close that what says Wikipedia to be ergonomic. Since 2013 I use for normal houses 300 mm tread and 187.5 mm riser, pitch 32% (3000 mm floor-to-floor, 16 steps). For the low-cost landed houses with space constraint I use 250 mm tread and 200 mm riser, pitch 39% (2600 mm floor to floor, 13 steps).

Efficient apartment town layout for high density

I design apartment blocks for highest density without affecting standards of living.

The classic European-communist style, long segmented blocks with 4 units per floor and kitchen on facade, is efficient only for small, 2-room apartments, because for 3-room, this will create too long apartments with waste of space in a long hallway, plus the bathrooms will be stuck without ventilation in the middle of block. But high efficiency can be reached with 3-room and 4-room apartments if I increase block width, move kitchens to middle, add airwells for kitchens and bathrooms, and place segments in zig-zag to open airwells.
The classic East Asian corridor-style, with a single row of apartments, is efficient for small and middle size apartments and it also allows both sides view and cross-ventilation. Rooms must be narrow at facade and depth to inside, to make widest blocks possible, with narrowest apartments. 12-meter width is most common in my projects, 14-meter is apparently the maximum possible.

Corridor-style blocks are land usage efficient for all types of apartments, but if I make L-shaped, U-shaped, circular-like with a courtyard in the middle, or other crazy-shaped block,, and place the common access balcony on the back or inside, the efficiency goes even higher.

Staircase-style blocks with segments of only 2 units per floor, is also land usage efficient but only for big apartments (over 100 sqm).

Tower (point) blocks with 4 to 6 units per floor and rooms facing to all sides, add some beauty to the city skyline, but their efficiencies is always 20-30% lower than other blocks.

Rules for the public housing-inspired neighborhoods that I designed in 2009-2011

I usually design the 3D image using 8 and 16 storey blocks, for best proportions. However most blocks’ floor plans can be built taller because there are enough lifts. Is recommended to make minimum 2 lifts per block, this makes inefficient to design blocks with less than 4 apartments per floor.

The number of tower blocks should be max 25% of total number of blocks. Minimal distance between frontal facades is 32 meters, between two back facades is 24 meters, between one facade and a side wall (without windows) is 16 meters. Near heavy traffic roads, the distances should be greater.

According these rules, a typical housing estate, will have 140-160 apartments per hectare, the maximum land usage (sum of all apartments area from one floor, divided by the land area) is about 20%.

For parking, the ground space between 8-storey blocks, if is used at maximum, is enough parking space for a ratio of one car one parking lot per apartment. However, in high-density estates the public transport becomes very efficient so the number of cars will be lower. Is recommended to cover the basement parking with a roof with green space, also to protect cars from sun. In case of taller blocks multi-storey car parks are necessary.

Efficient landed housing layout for high density

For landed houses I have same principle: highest density without affecting standards of living. The houses should be narrow, depth and tall. I am against single-storey houses.

Terraced houses are my favorite concept. Courtyard is minimum, since it is a waste of land, is common for my houses to be bigger than the land where they sits. Everywhere in the world houses are very close each other, since you have few neighbors there is no rules about minimal distance. I usually design 4 meters of space between houses. Semi-detached housing is usually 40-60 dwellings per hectare while Terraced housing reaches 50-80 dwellings per hectare. For comparison, USA detached houses are usually 10-15 houses per hectare, Japan detached houses are usually 30-50 houses per hectare (Japan residential roads are 5-meter width, sidewalks are nonexistent, and houses can be 50 cm each other, usually 2 meters. Singapore and Malaysia terraced houses are 50-60 dwellings per hectare.

New rules:

Setbacks: front 6 meters (will allow space for parking a car), back 4 meters, sides 2 meters. Developers will be encouraged to put the important rooms facing front and back.

Minimal lot width: terraced 6 m, corner-terrace and semi-detached 8 meters, detached 12 meters.

Minimal lot depth: 20 meters, so the houses will be minimum 10 m deep. I recommend 24 meters deep, if you think that is not possible houses so deep without having windows to sides, take a look in House Plans as I have designed terraced houses 14-16 meters deep.

By considering that streets are 12 meter wide (6 m road plus sidewalk and green space), max possible density will be 64 houses / hectare for terraced, 48 for semi-detached, 32 for detached.

Efficient apartment layout and good views

Personally I love to have wide views from my apartment, so all my early projects had at least 180-degree views from all apartments. Later I realized that most people are not interested in wide view range, but more in straight unblocked view as long is possible. Is important to have windows on 2 different facades (front-back, front-side, or front-side-back), for cross-ventilation to minimize air conditioned usage.

The apartments must be square-ish as possible, with all rooms arranged around a central point, I try to minimize comfort problems like couch-TV placed in the passing zone. The hallways area must be reduced to minimum possible, some apartments uses the dining area as hallway, to create smallest apartments without affecting room spaciousness.

Sliding doors and windows

This was an idea from my childhood, probably a little science-fiction and was underappreciated. Since 2011 I switched to casement doors.

No more conventional casement doors and windows, no more accidental closings in wind, no more worries about kicking someone besides the door. Sliding doors and windows can be opened with minimal effort, so is easily to equipped with electric motors, remote control, and rain sensors, and also are friendly with the people in wheelchairs. No more worries if you forget to close windows when you leave your home and the rain starts to fall!

The sliding doors have just one disadvantage: reduces the freedom of apartment’s layout designing. You need at least 2 meters of wall to can put a sliding door, regardless if the door slides inside wall or along wall. Is better to slide along walls to not make the walls too tick.

Efficient furniture design: http://www.cawspi.org/Furniture%20Design.pdf

9 comments

Cars 3D design

Filed under ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN WORK

Before moving into architecture design in 2008, I also modeled few cars in AutoCAD.
Interested to download AutoCAD .DWG 3D model file? Contact me and make a price offer!

You may say that these are Very Old Looking Vehicular Objects (VOLVO). Making curvy surfaces in AutoCAD is difficult, a lot or vertexes were manually calculated at the joints of curvy surfaces, the software do not allows to trim a 3D surface with another 3D surface, like how it allows trimming 2D objects. Or maybe… I also like VOLVO cars?

I did NOT wanted to design the ultimate sport car, instead I designed an average classic family car, with many details as possible, to show my skill as graphic designer, and to use many of AutoCAD photorealistic effects as possible, to show the performance of AutoCAD render. Do you though that AutoCAD is only for 2D drawings?

1990s-styled European Sedan (2006 design)

I started designing 3D car models in AutoCAD in 2000, when I was 11 year old, but the first ones were boxy and really bad, does not worth to publish them on website.

I enjoy making perfect drawings, and because in replicating a real car, a perfect accuracy is impossible, I choose to design own car models to calculate myself optimal dimensions for each part of the car.

The car presented here was started in March 2006, when I decided to improve my 2004 square-ish car, being grown up I got more skilled, so I redesigned the lower half of exterior body. It was intended to be an early 1990s European average family car.

In July-August 2006 I worked hard and I redesigned all parts of the 2004 car, even the parts designed 4 months ago were redesigned.
I had a dream to have my own range of models designed by me, so started design more cars: one roadster, one microbus, one Japanese small hatchback, and one American 1970s muscle car over 5 meters long.

But this would waste my life, so I abandoned all except the first car model, now in 2 variants: sedan and station wagon, and during late 2006 and 2007 I added more and more improvements and details, for example the curved windows where made in November 2006 and dashboard in 2007.

Some little parts are still missing, maybe the dashboard must be further improved and mirrors should be added, even if I prefer video cameras.

1990s-styled European Sedan & Estate (2007 redesign)
Added more curved surfaces in upper half and interior, front end redesigned.

Dimensions: the car was designed using pixel system and binary proportions rather than metric system. The length is set to be equal with 16384 (2^14) pixels at 96 per inch, then every piece of car is sized as proportions with the length. Length 4335 mm (1 unit), width 1897 mm (7/16 units), body height 1219 mm (9/32 units) plus ground clearance 203 mm (3/64 units), wheelbase 2709 mm (5/8 units), bonnet 1335 mm (10/32), front door 1084 mm (8/32), rear door 948 mm (7/32), trunk 948 mm (7/32), roof width 1287 mm (19/64), wheels diameter 542 mm (1/8), tire width 203 mm (3/64), tire height 68 mm (1/64) so the closest tires may be 205/35 R 16.

Unfinished 1970s-style American car (2007 design)

I love the style of the European family cars launched late 1980s and early 1990s, medium class, especially for Volkswagen Passat Mk 3, but also Alfa Romeo 155 and 164, Citroen XM, Fiat Tempra, Ford Escort Mark V, Peugeot 405 and 605, Renault 19 and 21, Volvo 850, probably because these models (used cars) populated my country in early 2000s when my passion for cars started.

But in case if I need to buy a car, I will take more attention to technical part rather to aesthetics, so I will buy a BMW.

I designed many more AutoCAD cars in the past, but all were simple and cubish, maybe the situation could be better now if I had a chance to learn 3D Studio Max from childhood, from same age when I learned AutoCAD, because AutoCAD is definitely NOT a software suitable for designing cars!

From 2008 I am focused to architecture… 3D buildings can be designed much faster (in one day) due to square shapes and repetitive objects, and the renderings are more impressive than these cars (drew in about 2 months).

7 comments

City maps designed by me

Filed under ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN WORK

The hobby for designing maps have a long history. Starting from 6 years old I was drawing random roads on paper and coloured them in various colors (example). The first time I designed a map of a real city was at age of 14, in 2003 I made on paper a map of my city downtown (Ploiesti) with a special attention given to historical buildings.

I had a book from 1981, a guide of Ploiesti with street directory, points of interest, etc, including one citywide map with streets only and separate maps for each neighborhood that included also apartment blocks and their numbers.

Ploiesti city maps (2005-2007)

In October 2004 we connected to neighborhood LAN, allowing me to communicate freely with people for first time, in February 2005 we also added internet connection. While chatting on LAN I noticed many people who do not know block numbers and saying “3rd block from bus station”. That times Google and Yahoo Maps in case of Romania did not had any streets inside cities but only national roads. There was no digital map available that included block numbers.

I had free time and realized that I have a chance to do something helpful for my city. In November 2004 I made a map of my neighborhood, and it was so appreciated in our LAN that I decided to extend project for whole city in 2005, I designed voluntarily 18 separate maps for each neighborhood at resolution of 2 pixels per meter, plus a map with entire city at 0.5 pixels per meter having all streets and names for major streets (inspired from the 1981 book).

Example: one of the 18 neighborhood maps made in 2007

Procedure of map design was a bit too complex: I was drawing street and buildings outlines in AutoCAD based on 1981 book, export to Paint and make a draft map which I printed and go around city to add more details and correct mistakes, return home, improve map in AutoCAD, export again in Paint. Colors, block numbers and house symbols were not part of DWG file, they were added in Paint.

I distributed maps freely in PNG format via my LAN DC++ hub used for file sharing and chat. Did not shared DWG files with anyone.

The results: I wasted FEW MONTHS making this digital artwork that could be also used to navigate through city, find specific blocks, etc. But that was all, the map had limited use and couldn’t be used for more professional things such as making measurements or GPS navigation systems. Customizing for individual customers was difficult.

In 2007 I released a new versions of Ploiesti neighborhood maps with some corrections, after this I designed maps for 10 small towns around Ploiesti, one for each town including the areas with apartment buildings, but without block numbers, these maps had no practical use but just artistic value.

In 2008 I made a new citywide map with streets only, first time using satellite photo as reference, reaching an accuracy level never seen before.

Beside maps I also made floor plans of common apartment blocks, and an Excel table that does estimate number of blocks and of apartments, extended this project to several more cities from Romania without making maps for, including Bucharest.

This hobby evolved in 2008 into studying worldwide architecture, designing my own building concepts and dream to move to Singapore.

In 2006 I got a job offer from www.romaniadigitala.ro impressed by my knowledge about city maps and offered to employ me to make GPS maps. Being underage, getting employed was a bit difficult, they also offered paying me for the right to use of maps already done, but although I could meet people (strangers) under parents’ supervision and get paid, my parents would not let the money in my hands, so I had no reason to charge money.

I made my website in 2009 and added the maps too in 2010. Now I was an idiot, I put the maps for free download without being aware that there might be companies able to pay for maps, such as taxi drivers, pizza deliveries, door-to-door services, etc. Even if I could make paid download, the smartphones and free online maps appeared (Google Maps and OpenStreetMap), reducing my potential earnings.

Map of Singapore in AutoCAD (2009-2010)

In 2009 I started researching Singapore, making the Database of HDB blocks with estimated number of units, and also a map of Singapore in AutoCAD over Google Maps satellite photos. I was drawing street axis as well as planning area borders and coastal outline.

I did not intended to distribute or commercialize the map or database, it was a voluntary project for personal research of measuring area of various land parcels in HDB estates to estimate housing density and use the results in designing own apartment models.

I ended my research in 2011, leaving the map at the state seen in below photos.

I published the incomplete HDB Database on website for first time in 2012, resumed working in 2014 and finalized the database in 2015 to offer it as paid service for professional use, it has been purchased by several real estate agencies, home insurance companies, telecommunication, door to door services, etc.

I published the AutoCAD map for first time in January 2016 to show you that I can design maps too, to see if anyone is interested, how such AutoCAD map could be used and what details should be added on map. If there is sufficient demand from multiple people I will revive the project and offer as paid download.

Potential problems: my idea is to design a map in AutoCAD and allow anyone to purchase DWG or PDF file at an affordable price. Price may rise once I add more details. Due to rounding to save time, using multiple straight segments to draw curves, all roads will be few meters off their real position. What accuracy level is needed to make customers happy and not spend too much time? Such map may be good for orientation only.

Singapore does already have maps like www.onemap.sg and www.streetdirectory.com, pretty detailed having block numbers and a lot of places of interest, they are good for orientation making my map almost useless, but they do not have option to download map, nevermind editable DWG format. URA do have very detailed maps in DWG format available for purchase by professionals (at high price), and a map designed by 1-person in AutoCAD will never compete with the official maps done by government authority.

If you ate interested in AutoCAD map, DO NOT ask about completion status or what is included on the current map… most likely I have to trash it and start over designing a new map according your requirements:
Do you need axis line of all streets in Singapore? This would be easy to do.
Do you need building outlines? Theoretically is possible to draw them over satellite photo, but will take too much time considering how complex are shaped the HDB blocks.
Do you need anything else that do not come in my mind? Tell me…

In June 2017 someone asked me to design a map with street axis, border and colors that indicate land use (HDB, private, educational, industrial, park, water, etc). This remind me of the Ploiesti city map designed in 2005. See a SAMPLE:

Over next 2 years several people contacted me intending to buy an AutoCAD map, but all them turned to be students with low budget. Some lazy people did not even told me exactly what details should be included on map. Whenever professionals will come in the future, the effort required to draw the map will not justify if it will get only few sales per year.

In conclusion: Singapore AutoCAD map is a DEAD project!

New Ploiesti city map (2018)

In 2012 I realized that AutoCAD 2007 introduced PDF export, this opened a potential new era in making maps (previously I was using AutoCAD 2002 and 2006).

Over years been contacted by several customers looking for a high-resolution map to display on wall in their office, case in which my 2005-2007 maps made in Paint maps were unusable, Google Maps also unusable. Number of visitors per day in Romanian section of my website was low, so potential sales of map were too low to worth my time making new PDF maps.

As the number of visitors rose in 2017 and discovering that I can promote the map via Facebook groups, I decided in January 2018 to return to Romania. I opened AutoCAD map made in 2008, reduced streets width, then I spent about 100 hours to add buildings between March and June, and exported PDF. See below final map:

Ploiesti city map cover an area of 8192 x 6144 meters (base-2 FTW!) and can be printed on paper up to 210 x 160 cm (scale 1:4000). Since all elements are included in DWG file, it can be quickly customized in terms of colors, line thickness, add your company logo, etc.

Price: 500 RON (about 125 USD) plus printing cost (50 RON / square meter).

Interactive maps with buildings in Google Maps

In September 2017 I discovered Google Fusion Tables, a FREE experimental application where I can import CSV files containing latitude and longitude, and some other data, to display it as icons / markers / pushpins on map.

I imported Singapore HDB Database into Google Fusion Tables, creating HDB Interactive Map.

In January 2018, shortly before drawing Ploiesti city map in AutoCAD, I compiled a database of Ploiesti apartment blocks similar with HDB one (block number, street address, number of floors, apartments, GPS coordinates). It took about 20 hours for ~1800 buildings, and displayed information in Google Fusion Tables. Posting it on Facebook groups, it became a sensation, being an unique project never done before in Romania.

Over next year I got few requests from people living in other cities to draw maps in AutoCAD or interactive maps in Google Maps for other cities. But POOR SALES of Ploiesti AutoCAD map, made me to decide to NOT draw any more maps in AutoCAD, neither for Romania or Singapore. But I continue compiling building details in Excel for other Romanian cities, which takes 5-10x less effort than drawing a map in AutoCAD and have more usage potential, displaying data on an interactive map help regular people with FREE information, generate hundreds likes when posted on Facebook, and there is also a potential to sell Excel database to real estate agencies.

Google announced closure of Fusion Tables on 3 December 2019. In October 2019 I moved to ZeeMaps, a paid service that provide 31 colors to choose from, as well as filter option to display only buildings matching specific strings of text or having values (like number of floors) greater than specific #.

10 comments

Palace Trianon 3D design

Filed under ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN WORK

This palace is one of the most beautiful 3D modeling works that I ever designed in AutoCAD. Many people were impressed not only by the beautiful 3D renders, but also for excellent model geometry that makes it to look like 18-19th century neoclassic architecture. Some people asked me how I got the idea to design such complex building, and suggested to change some details to make it better, BUT….. (scroll down)

Interested to download AutoCAD .DWG 3D model file?
Contact me and make a price offer. Remember: I spent over 100 work hours to design this digital art masterpiece.

The palace 3D model viewed from all 4 angles

The palace 3D model’s eastern and western facades

The palace 3D model viewed from low angles

The palace aerial perspective, showing internal floor plan
The interior design is simple and modern without many decorations, to avoid overloading the drawing and crashing AutoCAD. Trees and window curtains are removed in these photos.

The palace floor plan and elevation drawings

Funny views of the palace 3D design
Left: the 3D model in wireframe view, can you count the polygons and faces?
Right: “We built all floor slabs, we built stairs and roof, we installed all doors and windows, we have even window curtains and rainwater pipes… I forgot something, or we can move in?”

BUT….. they don’t know that this palace is NOT my personal conception, instead it is a 3D model of a REAL building, the Cantacuzino Palace “Little Trianon” from Floresti-Prahova, Romania, built in early 20th century and abandoned before being finished.

My project was to design the palace in AutoCAD with maximum accuracy possible (unfortunately, without having original palace floor plans), so I did not wanted to go too far away from the original building design.

The REAL palace

Versiune in romana www.teoalida.ro/micultrianonfloresti

Several different long stories exists about the palace (in romanian), I wrote myself a short story in english:

Conservative politician Gheorghe Grigore Cantacuzino, nicknamed The Nabab for his immense fortune, member of the Cantacuzino family with a long-standing history in Romania, started to build a palace in Floresti village, 80 km north from Bucharest, intended to gift it to his niece, Alice.

He hired the architect Ioan Berindei to design a palace similar with french palaces: the shape and height are inspired with Petit Trianon palace, while the architectural style and wall decorations are inspired with Grand Trianon palace. This nicknamed the Cantacuzino palace as “Little Trianon”.

Construction starting date is somewhere between 1907 and 1912, different sources says different years. During World War I, the roof was damaged (cause and extent of damage is unknown, probably limited to pitched roof and not floor slab). In 1913, Gheorghe Cantacuzino died without being able to complete the palace, their children did not had enough money or were not interested to finish the palace, so very little work was done between the two World Wars, a period in which the palace was used as a warehouse.

All walls and external decorations were finished, but inside only few rooms were finished, the windows were not installed and probably the stairs were not built too. Nobody lived in it, NEVER!

At the time the palace was built, were no earthquake engineering norms in Romania. All walls are made by bricks without any reinforcement and were covered with sculpted granite blocks on external facades. Concrete was used only in arches above windows and doors and few internal walls. This offered NO protection against the deadly earthquakes that occur in Romania every 30-40 years. However, the palace survived well the 1940 earthquake.

After World War II and installation of communist regime in 1947, the Cantacuzino family had to flee away from country to retain its wealth, and the palace remained in the care of nobody, water infiltration affected the abandoned structure. During communism times, the Cantacuzino grounds have been used by various people including an army camp, a tuberculosis hospital established in the nearby, older houses of Cantacuzino family, the hospital remains until today.

The 1977 earthquake caused collapse of four 20 tons chimneys, fifth chimney remained standing, the falling chimneys destroyed some of the internal walls. While talking with few local people, some told me that the roof slab was already destroyed before the earthquake, in a test of explosives done by the army camp during 1950s, while others told me that prior earthquake there was still possible to climb to the roof.

Several movies were shoot in the ruined palace during 1970s and 1980s, further aggravating destruction. I wish to know the name of movies, a search on YouTube may reveal how the palace was looking before the destruction.

But the major destruction occurred only after 1989, after fall of communist regime, when villagers from Floresti and not only, vandalized the abandoned palace by destroying almost all internal walls and floor slabs, as well as a part of external wall was destroyed in 2006 (the wall behind columns on western facade), to steal bricks, marble and granite for their homes, also to get steel beams used in floor slabs and sold them as scrap metal.

Plans of restoration were made since 1980s, but the nearby hospital scary potential tourists and keep investors away. Even the country president Nicolae Ceausescu intended to restore it. Since there are over 100 meters between palace and hospital buildings, a wall can be built to prevent patients entering into palace grounds and spread disease.

The restoration may be still possible, but is estimated to cost about 20 million euro, a risky investment that could be hardly recovered.

Around Romania there are a lot more historical monuments and heritage buildings, that despite of being structurally intact, require less investment and can generate higher profits due to their location on waterfront (for example Constanta Casino – video inside), are ignored by authorities and left to self-destruction. Thus, the chances for the Floresti palace to be restored to original conditions are very small. Let’s hope it will be at least converted in museum, reinforced to make it safe for visit and to prevent further damage or theft.

Great news! The palace was given back to Gheorghe Cantacuzino’s grand children, who sold in 2009 to Radu Tudorache, Google consultant in Romania. In 2012 a fence was built around it to limit people access into it. In 2013 some works started, scaffolding were installed, unstable bricks were removed… but nothing else. Thee is unclear if they intend to rebuilt it or just to conserve ruins.

The Cantacuzino Domain in Floresti is spawned over 150 hectares (3 km long along Prahova river). It also include seven smaller buildings built around 1830-1850, still maintained and housing a tuberculosis hospital, plus one church, and a water tower built also in 1830s, not maintained but almost intact, which offered a panoramic view to Prahova valley, until the concrete spiral stairs collapsed during 1990s. The property was a huge park containing a lake with an island, rivulets, aqueducts, several carved reinforced concrete bridges made to resemble wooden bridges (one bridge is almost intact, photo below), paved alleys with rare trees, greenhouses, hunting grounds, golf courses, and horse riding grounds.

Around Romania there are at least 10 palaces and manors wearing Cantacuzino name, built between 16th and 20th century by branches of same family, most of them are in same or worse destroyed state. The Floresti palace is the most impressive from architecture point of view.

I post there some photos with the remains of the palace, selected the best photos uploaded by people on Panoramio, credits to their authors. I also made myself about 100 photos in 2006-2007 but my photos are very bad due to cheap photo camera and low photographic skills.

Main facades

Other photos

Photos around the palace

Aerial (drone) photo of the palace

A video from 2013 showing scaffolding
At 2:40-3:10 you can see old photos with roof and chimneys intact (which collapsed at 1977 earthquake, photos may be before World War II)

Filmare cu drona din 2015

Drone video from 2015

Drone video from 2018

The location viewed from satellite

View Larger Map

More stories and details
English: http://www.rri.ro/arh-art.shtml?lang=1&sec=170&art=12996
Romanian: http://www.ziua.ro/display.php?id=245227&data=2008-11-10
A lot of photos: http://entertainment.webshots.com/album/573565104jSqRYM?start=0

Me and the palace

I live in Ploiesti, 20 km away from the palace location. I discovered and visited the Floresti’s Trianon Palace first time in 2003, I was 14 years old and I liked the palace so much and I even had a dream in which I restored it and used it for my home, but being just a little child, I could not anything else than a virtual reconstruction in AutoCAD.

In 2006 I visited again the palace, this time with photo camera, paper and measuring tape. I measured every piece of wall, even the chimneys (the collapsed ones, I do not risked my life to climb towards the roof). I made several sketches on paper plus about 100 photos of every wall. When I arrived home I started to redraw a 3D model in AutoCAD, this time high-detailed form compared with 2003 done by memories only. Note that all these drawings were done solo for pleasure of the art of 3D modeling in AutoCAD and were not intended to be used for any restoration project.

Maybe I liked more to design the Parliament Palace, Peles Castle or other well-known palaces, but in case of Floresti’s Trianon palace, being abandoned, I was free to explore and do anything I wanted.

In 2009, after buying a new, powerful computer (2 GB RAM instead of 512 MB), I done few small design improvements and rendered 15 images, to post them on my website and replace the original 2 images.

In 2014 I done the first major redesign of the palace 3D model, to bring it to current skills of AutoCAD drafting and 3D modeling, and use it to promote my architecture design and 3D rendering services. I changed textures, added trees in landscape, added more geometric elements and corrected few mistakes done in the original design. Thanks to few friends, architecture students, who visited the palace armed with a laser measuring tool, able to do more precise measurements than me with a 3-meter measuring tape.

Even if the palace is heavily damaged, the almost intact external wall and basement level show well the palace floor plan, so I am sure that my design respects 99% of the original design in terms of room layout, but most of internal doors are hypothetical.

Although from outside the palace does look like a symmetric building, the internal layout have several mysterious differences between north and south sides, which intrigue me what was the purpose of each room.

The absence of glass fragments (other than beer bottles) suggest that windows were never installed. Unlike French palaces having flat roof, the Floresti palace had a copper roof with a pitch of 1:3, this is visible on chimneys, but is unknown if the roof was plain or had eye windows, or if the attic space was used in any way.

Palace dimensions and statistics

Between the axis of external walls, the palace is 43 by 35 meters, the face of walls (excluding decorations) is at 30 cm offset from wall axis (40 cm for basement walls), the roof cornice overhang 1 meter from wall axis.

The palace gross floor area is about 4000 square meters distributed on 3 floors. It have 120 external doors and windows, and 50 internal doors (this is the number of windows in my AutoCAD drawing, I cannot know how many doors were in original palace).

The center of palace seems that have been a great ballroom sized about 370 square meters (25 by 14 m) and double volume tall, with 5 doors opening to the great western terrace with 10 columns, facing to fountain, park and lake.

A second double volume room is in the north-west corner, about 100 sqm, possible dining room.

At the corners of great room, there are two rooms small as 5 by 3 meters, double volume too, as there is no evidence of floor slab where it shall be. This indicate that these rooms were intended for staircases, the basement floor plan also confirm that the basement was accessible through this place, but I did not saw any debris that resembles a stair, so I guess that the internal stairs were never built. The great western facade with columns does have evidence that a 15-meter wide stair was planned to lead to fountain, but the lack of foundation suggest that this stair was never built too.

The palace floor plan is completed by 20 big rooms (ranging between 18 and 60 sqm, possible bedrooms, library, office, other day rooms) and many small rooms (less than 15 sqm, possible kitchen, bathrooms, servant rooms, etc), plus hallways.

Most of palace walls have a thickness of 60 and 40 cm.

Some parts of my AutoCAD 3D model are designed from my imagination or inspired from the Paris’s Grand Trianon palace because the original ones were stolen or destroyed when I discovered the Floresti palace in 2003, or never built:

– The color scheme, inspired from Paris palace, the Floresti palace was entirely white.
– Windows frames, again inspired from Paris palace.
– Staircases, there is no evidence that either internal or external stairs were built, so I added them from my imagination.
– The 3 windows on upper floor towards eastern terrace are added from my imagination, that wall collapsed in 1977 earthquake or earlier.
– I deleted one chimneys (the only one standing) to enhance symmetrical look.
– Some wall motifs are missing in my 3D design because drawing them is too hard to impossible, also the 3D model is already complex enough to make AutoCAD software to crash often.

These are the two Trianon Palaces from Paris, France

Notice the similarity with the Romanian palace and my 3D palace design

13 comments

Paper to CAD drawing conversion services

Filed under ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN WORK

Most AutoCAD designers offering paper-to-CAD conversion simply put the scanned JPG and draw over it every line, often making various identical drawing elements at different dimensions, aka low-quality CAD drawing.

Personally I offer quality paper-to-CAD conversion services, taking care to make every element of drawing a rounded dimension, and in case of floor plans of various buildings, I will give you option to add dimensions in CAD file as they are in the original floor plan, as well as adding more dimensions, or providing a CAD file without dimensions but designed according dimensions from the scanned floor plan.

You give me JPG, PNG or other raster image format, and I give you DWG, DXF or PDF. Contact me for price quote!

Paper to CAD conversion of HDB flats for interior design

This PDF to CAD conversion service involve drawing walls accurately according dimensions shown on original PDF floor plan, and add internal dimensions of every room, different than original dimensions that include wall thickness, so interior designers can accurately plan their renovation.

Paper to CAD conversion for Michael Lee paintings

Between 2012 and 2013 I worked for Michael Lee, artist and curator from Singapore, who created paints of HDB floorplans as well as various buildings around the world, focusing on buildings demolished or never built, or buildings with famous stories. But to paint them, he needs a vinyl outline, and to cut the vinyl, he needs a graphic designer, and this is my job!

To provide quality graphic design services, I design a set of axis to make sure that building elements are equidistant as they should (especially when the scanned paper he sends me is not accurate or is badly scanned), as seen in Rasa Singapura food centre. Moreover, I use my experience in architectural design to remove furniture and non-architectural elements from drawing, and sometimes, do additional research based by photos and movies, to add more details (for example adding windows, if the scanned floor plan have only walls). Michael Lee is using 1:50 scale for all his paintings and due to limitations of vinyl cutter, he require all drawing elements (walls, doors, windows) to be draw as double line, at least 1.5 millimeters wide.

The results are quite simple and black & white, does not really showcase my high AutoCAD design skills, as it requires more time than skill, but as long I am paid, I do ANY kind of graphic design!

This is my way of designing…

… that gave birth of his paintings

For more photos of art visit Michael Lee website > Dwelling

Michael Lee payments gave me approximately $10-20 SGD/hour which 2012-2013 made me happy. But over years I earned more and more money from databases, exceeding $1000/month in 2015, thus doing Paper to CAD conversions today would be a waste of time than happy.

As 2017 I can still do paper to CAD conversions but should not exceed few hours and I charge $50/hour. So if you want to convert one HDB floor plan to DWG I will do myself in <1 hour for $40, while in case of bigger projects I connect you with designers in India and Philippines charging $10/hour (you need to pay them minimum 5 hours).

13 comments

Search within this website

Your feedback matters!

Please report broken links or any other problems!

Leave comments at bottom of pages!
Comment house designs, real estate writings, etc.
Constructive critics are more appreciated than praises. Feel free to comment the comments left by other visitors too. Don’t leave the communication to be only visitors vs site admin.

What else do you like to see on site?
Don’t say “is your website, do what do you like, I do not like what you are doing so I go elsewhere“. Yes it is personal website but is made for YOU, not for me! Public opinion matters!

Do you hate website theme?
Show me another website that you like more… and I will try to replicate its theme. The theme need to follow few requirements.

Facebook

Are you SEO company looking to scam people? Fuck off! Don’t contact me at [email protected]

SEO SPAM