How thoughtful architecture can prepare your home for the unfolding stages of family life

Chema and her husband Tully have 3 extremely tall, boisterous teens, and we have marveled at how the needs of her family have changed remarkably through different stages of family life, requiring their house to respond and adapt. This experience of family life is reflected in our clients’ needs and we have been delighted to hear how they have adapted to work for our clients’ changing requirements. At Bower, we believe in looking ahead while designing architecture and interiors to ensure our clients homes can endure and carry them into all stages of family life. Some critical principles we follow are:

1. Zoning Zoning Zoning! A well designed floor plan responds to everyone’s needs for both separation, coming together and porosity for maintaining interaction. This is a real key in the planning of all of our projects.
   
2. An adaptable space: A flexible space that can adapt from being a bedroom, a play room, a teen retreat, a study space, a guest room or even a slumber party zone at various stages of family life. Having this near the kitchen and a bathroom will mean reclusive teens will venture out driven by their stomachs
   
3. Heart of the home: the kitchen is almost always the most hard-working space that everyone gravitates to and should be able to respond to a family’s changing needs
4. Hard-working service spaces: well-planned and functional laundries, service yards, bathrooms, pantry cupboards – these spaces have such potential to make our lives easy if they are carefully considered
   
5. Our heros: Large sliding doors often feature in our projects to makes spaces adaptable
   
6. Me time: Moments and spaces for just one, separated from everyone else when needed
   
7. Great indoor-outdoor flow and visual access
   
8. Adaptable bedrooms: kids bedrooms that allow for expression and changing needs over time. Flexible storage and excellent access to natural light for positive mental health.
   
9. Robust and natural materials to withstand and age gracefully
   
10. Storage where ever we can fit it!

We implement these principles in almost all of our projects and in our experience, they assist us in approaching the varying stages of family life, which we think can be roughly summarised into 5 key phases:

Stage 1 – Babies and toddlers

At this stage small children and their parents want and need to be close to each other. Parents want to observe their play and safety, so closeness is ideal to be maintained. However little ones can also make a mess, so if a play space near the main living areas is included, a large sliding door to shut it away could be welcome! Robust materials are also important so kids can do their thing without being too precious, natural materials are key for optimal health and considering allergies. Parents may also be working flexibly from home at times, so acoustic separation of the work space is key. Babyhood also places demands on the laundry, bathrooms and services zones of the house. Well-designed spaces with lots of storage and materials that are easy to keep clean are ideal. As always, good natural light and easy access to outdoors is optimal for this time – taking young children outside seems to fix every mood, and does wonders for parents too!

Stage 2 – Primary school age children and parents who may work full time:

This is a very busy time where logistics dominate and making life feel easy is essential. Many of our clients comment that organisation, logistics and systems are essential to reduce the mental load. Our gorgeous client Meghan shared that her key wish list items were all about organising to make her home easy and functional: a command centre for school notices, places for bags, shoes and sports gear, and clever storage for everything!

In the primary school years families tend to do a lot entertaining with other families, often during the day and indoor/outdoors. Great flow and connections to the outdoors is a given for easy BBQs and pizza nights, if a pool is included, surveillance and quick access is important.

Space for parents to enjoy reconnection when the kids are in bed for adult conversations could be welcome, the toddlers play space may be adapted to a kids play and retreat for movies and craft, and adapt again in the evening. It can be a great area to let the kids have some downtime in their gang, and facilitating parents to again have more adult time with their friends too!

Stage 3 – High school tweens and teenagers

This is a time where social lives are expanding and privacy needs are changing. Allowing each child the space and privacy needed to grow into their individuality is important, while also maintaining safety. Architecturally, clients have loved the play space changing into a teen retreat where they can hang out with their friends not under their parents eye (but where some visual access is possible!). Lots of parents love the idea of their house being the place teens all want to congregate and a pool can also be a magnet for this, along with an outdoor area that can feel like theirs away from parents. The kitchen becomes a central hub as teens really love their food and can be drawn together with parents in this space. We often think of the kitchen in a family home as the heart and hub of the home, for gathering and serving ferocious appetites and rapid metabolisms!

Allowing each child the space and privacy needed to grow into their individuality can be considered in their bedrooms. Teens love a bedroom that can express their personality and interests and we have designed for this with large pinboards and shelves to display things and desks for projects. Natural light and connection to views and nature is super important for everyone’s mental health and wellbeing.

Again, well designed storage and laundries continue to be important as washing only gets bigger as their clothes do!

Adult retreat spaces, being a sitting room or a study that also acts as a den, can be thoughtfully separated from the social areas of the teenagers.

Outdoors continues to be important and areas to play sport outside via a surface that can be used for basketball or netball or a grassed area for cricket. When space is tight, even a side laneway can be used for this purpose. A pool and pool house can be a valuable item to add to your primary residence that can adapt to be accommodation for family members or generations at a later date.

Stage 4 – Young adults and boomerang grown up kids

This is a stage where parents and children want to lead independent lives when desired. They may not want to disturb each other, however still enjoying gathering for meals and events or spontaneous connection. Carefully considered entrances to come and go more independently from the main house can work well. At New Modern, the rear games room can be converted to a slightly separated young adults bedroom suite and they could come in via the garden. Stepping House features a secret side entry and a romantic spiral stair to take young adults to their retreat which includes bedrooms with ensuites, a rumpus that is now young adults lounge and a balcony of their own. A ground level main suite can function for guests or the main bedroom as our clients get older.

Stage 5 – Empty nesters and grandparents

This is a time where adult children have flown the coop and potentially visit with grandchildren. We consider accessibility, flexibility of rooms and acoustic/physical zoning.

Beautifully designed rooms that may have been a bedroom once but can smoothly transition to sunny day-time work space for working from home or day use during retirement. If there was a separate zone that could be self contained this could viably become a guest suite for more regular visitors or even a potential rental income stream. At Coastal Court this area was essential as our dear client Peter became more poorly and a full time carer moved in.

Good zoning can also be achieved so that kids areas can be shut off and not heated or cleaned until it starts to be inhabited by grandkids! Planning the whole site from the earlier stages to allow the potential consolidation of several adult members of the family on one site in separated areas may become more important. For example this could be allowing for a future apartment above a garage that could be a separate small dwelling for an adult child, parent or grandparent.?

We hope this piece gives you some insights into our design and thought process for our family projects, we absolutely love working with all families at all stages. We would love to hear your experiences and perspectives on this topic!

Cowritten by Anna, Jess and Chema.