The design of the flat has to suit your needs as well as your
lifestyle. You cannot buy a flat or a house and change your
lifestyle to suit its design. If you have grown up being accustomed
to a certain relationship between your bedroom, bathroom, kitchen,
living room and dining room then you should not, and need not,
change that relationship to suit the design of your new residence.
When compulsions have you short-listing an apartment not designed to
your satisfaction, you should look into the possibility of changing
the internal partitions to suit your needs. These changes, however,
will have to conform to the provisions laid down in the building
rules of the municipality or corporation. If changes are not
possible and/or not permissible, ideally you should not buy the
property.
We must understand
that an architect designs a building to the satisfaction of an
average person. At the same time, it must conform to the building
rules and the strict guidelines provided by the developer. Chances
are, therefore, that the design will not satisfy you a hundred
percent. But what is satisfying to you may
not be so to someone else. Some people prefer combined living and
dining rooms and some people do not. Some people prefer large
toilets while some view that as a waste of space.
Are there too many connecting corridors inside the
apartment? Corridors should be avoided because they eat into your
valuable floor space. Ideally, the entrance should be through the
drawing room; because, surely, you would not want your visitors to
walk into your flat through the dining room!
Try
to place (by drawing) your furniture on the floor plan to work out
the circulation space. A flat with the least amount of circulation
space is the most efficient. A large flat with a lot of circulation
space connecting the rooms will leave very little usable space for
the furniture.
The windows
should be in such a position that cross-ventilation of air is
possible.
Keeping
in mind exigencies/emergencies, the distance between the
apartment and the staircase/lift or other exit points
should be as short as possible.
You must check for other safety factors, like height of
railings, gap between each railing, etc., in the
apartment and in the common spaces. Most
promoters/builders incorporate safety features to just
about meet statutory requirements, and this may not be
good enough especially when the safety of children is in
question.
Some designers have a tendency to place the toilet and
kitchen adjacent to each other to save on cost of
plumbing. This trade-off invariably results in poor
ventilation of some other rooms in the apartment. Such
an arrangement should be avoided, though it is not
avoidable in low-income group housing.
Finally, grade all the apartments that you have
inspected from the point of view of design,
functionality and efficiency and make your final
evaluation.
