The small-house design process has five main phases

Session 1: Set garden position, house position, and living room
Session 2: Define house volume and the inside of the living room
Session 3: Place walls, entrance, roof: the substance of the building
Session 4: Establish building structure
Session 5: Fix outdoor spaces, doors, windows and ornament

Each of these phases is long enough for a single session. You should complete a session, then have a rest, before you start another session.

Session 2: Define house volume and the inside of the living room

Steps Action Notes

Step 2a
If you can see the living room in your mind's eye, now step back and ask if you can also visualize the house as a whole, its height, position, and character.
Imagine the house volume as a major center of beautiful shape (possibly flanked by smaller centers)
.

Step 2b
To see the house character well, you should see the garden as a positive center, and the house volume as a positive center which complements it, so the two, together form an inseparable unity in which each helps and makes the other, beautiful.
See the house volume and garden as two complementary centers, each beautiful of shape, each forming the other

Step 2c
Does the quality of the living room as the main interior space, as a structure (shape, height, space, and plan) reflect the structure of the surroundings. Given how you visualize the room, do you feel that it is harmonious with the land around, position of nearby buildings, trees, and will it take its place in nature as an extension of the structure which exists on the site all around?
Make the main room a complex but beautiful center which you feel as a whole

Step 2d
What are the contents of the main room. Can you identify the main things that will be happening there: sitting, eating, working, talking, playing, sleeping... Because it is a small house, the house will be dominated by this main room and what happens there. What matters is that your understanding of the main things going on in the room reflects your own idea of the house, and your dream of the house.
Get these potential centers clearly in your mind

Step 2e
Can you identify the two major things that will be happening in the main room, well enough to see two main centers in the room, that then define the room and make it capable of holding everything that you want?
Give flesh to these two main centers, and see how the one whole of the room is able to contain them both, as distinct, yet unified.

Step 2f
If so, can you close your eyes and imagine being in the room, and visualize these two main centers physically, walk into them, see each one from the other, and then have a complete understanding of the life of this room as you wish to see it?
Strengthen the two centers.

This completes Session 2

Back to session 1

Go to session 3

SESSION 2 Inside the living room