Nice ideas bellesum. Here is the same thing with l-shaped kitchen. Bathroom ends up being a few inches wider to get the w/d to fit...you'll need to look at this in more detail because the w/d often requires extra space behind for connections. As drawn it's exactly 760mm square. If you do need more space for connections you'd have to fiddle with the design of the cabinet. Perhaps the refrigerator, pantry and laundry centre are one large (and fairly complicated) cabinet. That would save you a few mm of wall space. You could even put a "hidden" sliding door on the tv wall that opens to reveal the w/d hidden inside.

As for the clerestories, glass is a very, very poor insulator & doesn't block radiant heat (sunshine). So in winter you want to gain more heat from sunshine coming in the house than you lose through poorly insulated windows (clerestories lose a lot of heat, as it's warm near the ceiling). So you want your windows to be unshaded in winter. Unfortunately your roof design means your northern clerestories will be shaded, losing more heat than they gain. So I see no advantage having north facing clerestories with that roof design. As oklouise says, north facing clerestories are much better with a skillion roof, as they will receive winter sunshine. As for western windows. All western windows are a problem in summer (& won't receive as much sun in winter as northern windows). Clerestories will be shaded for much of the day, but will still receive sunshine in the late afternoon. So I wouldn't be including them. You obviously want some windows facing your western yard. But I'd be reducing them, shading them with a western covered alfresco & using low-e glass to reduce radiant heat transmission. Southern clerestories. These receive no sunshine in winter, & leak heat. So I wouldn't be having these either. Maybe a case of form over function. You want form to follow function (as is the case with north facing clerestories with a skillion roof in the below example).

Thanks everyone for your comments so far. Some great points have been made and I'm going to take each one of the away to have a think about. In the meantime, I've asked my draftsman to provide me all the measurements to existing and proposed so I can share it here as soon as I get them. Some more info: We're located in the northern suburbs of Melbourne. Our budget is approximately around the $200k...this is so we don't over capitalise on the property. We thought about building to one boundary because we are of the thinking that we need more width to achieve the space we want. As a guesstimate, I believe the block is 12m or so wide. Each lane way is approximately 1.5m (3m combined) which only leaves us with an internal width of 9m (minus walls). We chose to explore building to the eastern boundary because existing utilities such as hot water system, ducted heating are already setup there. Moving it to the western boundary would cost $$. The eastern laneway has nice new concrete paving and allows us to more easily access it from our carport.The other reason for potentially building to the east is because we're the 2nd last house on the street (near a corner). We get a bit of traffic on our street but more so on the street parallel the western wall. I thought it would be more peaceful moving the house away from the traffic and noise rather than towards it. Also, the addition of the dining area (connected to kitchen and alfresco) will give us a bit more privacy from the street (parallel to western wall) when we're out on the alfresco/deck. Just my thinking but happy to get some further feedback. We're happy to consider keeping the current building boundary if we can achieve the design we want etc. I've attached a few pictures of the existing low ceilings towards the back of the house. The pics show the ceiling from kitchen and towards the back door (curtains are closed). The ceiling is about 2.4m and you can see the exposed beams which makes the ceiling feel even lower. I'm only 1.6m and I can touch them with my finger tips if I try... Whether it's a full knock down or increasing the height of the roof, I think it's the one thing we're about improving/removing. Hope that's some more info for everyone to go off... Thanks again for everyone who has already replied and made some great points. Cheers

Wow there are so many angles on the rooves (roofs?)... I don't know the right or best option but I imagine the deck being curved, to create some interest. I want bug chunky timbers in dark stain like recycled wharf beams or railway sleepers. I think start by removing the little roof over the porch and opening it up flush with the brick wall of the front door. Then install chunky beams (wood or steel) that fly quite high and straight over the void between the 2 sides of the house. I would use a polycarbonate roof in that area to let extra light through and not make the house entrance too dark. The area behind the carport where the deck is level with the rear of house, I would have a solid roof that matching the pitch of the back of the house, or even not have a roof at all. I would leave the entry deck area and the curve unprotected. My only question is this... is this an area you would hang out seeing its quite disconnected from the living areas? perhaps having a more ramp like entrance with interesting trees in the void area and making a matching deck on the other side might work. I just feel if its only going to be an entrance its a big capital investment and an expensive exercise with all the roofing.