Yes corn should be planted in blocks, the NW corner would work well. The remaining tall plants should be on the north side too, including those you will trellis (cukes or other vines). The 3 sisters scheme referred to a vining (usu. winter) squash to climb the corn. My summer (yellow) squash, has huge leaves and takes up a 4x4ft box when its happy. I have squeezed 2 plants (6in. apart) in a 4x4. I wouldn't put squash on the N side, tho I have had it get 3ft high. Certainly it would provide shade for a smaller plant, but usu. stifles anything under it. You might try radishes, lettuce, or spinach will would be done before the squash shades everything. Read up on the Squash Vine Borer (SVB) so you know what is happening when the squash suddenly dies.

This is a very interesting plan. Your architect has done a fine job of dealing with the contraints imposed by your wedge shaped lot. If it were mine tho, there are still some tweaks I would try to have made. First off, you mention a MIL who might someday need to move into the main floor guest room. If she is in a wheel chair, how is she going to get up the stairs to reach that room? And, since you say you have have teenagers, you're probably somewhere in you late 30s to early 50's now and you say you want the house to be functional for you for at least 30 years. That means you could still be living there into your 70's or early 80's. There is a good chance that either you or your spouse will develop knee or back problems or arthritis by age 70-80 making navigating stairways difficult. Even with the 1st floor guest-room, this house just isn't "handicap accessible" because reaching first-floor level requires navigating a set of stairs. While you may not want to put an elevator into the house just on the possibility that someone MIGHT need one someday, you should think now about how you could modify your home to make it handicap accessible if need be. Keep in mind that a wheelchair ramp must have a rise-to-run ratio of no more than 1 in 12. This means that for every one inch above grade level that your front door is elevated, a wheelchair ramp to reach it needs to be one foot long. Installing a wheelchair ramp is usually doable when the front door is only elevated above the street or sidewalk level by a foot of two. But, it looks like your front door is 6 or 8 feet or even more above sidewalk/street level. That means you would need a ramp 72 to 96 FEET long... possibly longer. Even with lots of switchbacks, that just really is not going to work! You also don't really have any other doors (side or back) to which you could build a wheelchair ramp. So you need to think about other options. Without a place to easily install an elevator or wheelchair lift if you ever need one, your only options are going to be either major remodeling, selling and moving, or installing a chair lift on your beautiful curved staircase. Since that staircase appears to be a major focal point of the design, I rather suspect you won't want to ruin it by installing a chair lift. I know I sure wouldn't! While those things look better than they used to, they still aren't exactly pretty. If you want to see what they look like, do an google image search on: chair lift for curving staircase. So, I would think seriously about moving the first floor P.R. and the basement P.R.& mech room to other locations and replacing them both with stacked closets that can be easily converted to an elevator shaft. A pair of 5' x 5' stacked closets will easily accomodate a home elevator big enough for a wheelchair. If you made the Theater/gameroom a bit shorter, you could probably fit both the powderroom and the guest-room bath room into the space between the guest room and theater. (The broom closet and W/D could go into the first floor's stacked closet for now because you COULD live without both of those things if you ever needed to install an elevator.) As for moving the mech closet in the basement, I don't particularly like the way the basement is designed anyway. I'm assuming general daily access by the family will be in thru thru the garage and up the stairs. I'm further assuming that those double doors into the 8x9 basement storage area won't get much use and that they are there to mainly to allow access to things like the lawn mower and bicycles. If my assumptions are correct, the basement bench area beside the stairs is okay b/c it is not too far off the main path into/out of the house. It will probably get appropriate use as a place to hang jackets and drop shoes and bookbags. But the basement powder room is a LOOOONG walk thru a windowless hallway clear around the staircase. The P.R. is simply not easily accessible to someone who comes in from a drive or from working in the yard and needs to go RIGHT NOW. Nor is it convenient to someone who heads downstairs and then decides they should probably make a pit stop before heading out on that errand. Given the current location, I suspect it will get little or no use. And, while you have a huge amount of basement storage, it is all broken up into rather small separate rooms. And reaching each one requires requires navigating thru that basement hallway and then thru a separate doorway. That means putting away things like sports equipment, bicycles, tools, and christmas decorations is always going to be a bit of a PITA. I suspect all your basement storage would get more use if it were a bit more open to the garage. So, Consider moving the powderroom so that it is tucked partway under the staircase (in that tiny closet with the sloping roof that you have now). This is still not a great position but it is close enough to the benches and the entry door that someone might occasionlly remember it is there and use it. Then, I'd basically cut the basement space in half so that only the wineroom, powderroom and entry area are in the "house" portion of the basement and all the rest is left open to the garage. This is very rough sketch but might give you a better idea of what I'm talking about... On the first floor, I've already mentioned revising the area where the powderroom is in order to set up stacked closets that can be converted to an elevator shaft if you ever need one. Other than that, I mostly like the new design tho it does seem a little bit odd to me that guests in the living room must travel thru the "breakfast area" - which is plenty large enough to accomodate a full-sized dining room table - to actually reach the formal dining room. I suspect you'll wind up using your breakfast table for dinner parties more often than not. Especially since the "bar" is right there. So, I have to wonder just how much use your formal dining room will ever get. Me, I'd probably get a couple of table leaves so that I could turn my big round breakfast table into a long oval dining table when needed and then repurpose the formal dining room into as library or music room. But then, I've got about 6000 books and DH has about 6000 music CDs that have to go somewhere. LOL! No doubt, if you find you don't ever use your formal dining room, you'll find some other purpose for it so I don't see any reason to alter the design. On the second floor: Although I'm not a big fan of "open to below" areas because of noise issues and the problems they create with keeping the temperature of both floor comfortable, I do have to admit, your design will be dramatic and beautiful! I can just picture a huge chandelier in your entry and that dramatic staircase sweeping up to the "bridge" area. It should be gorgeous! Talk about the WOW! factor. Your home should definitely have it! One thing that you might want to reconsider about the second floor though is having the washer and dryer up against the wall of the master bedroom. Teenagers (whom I assume you're training to do their own laundry) have a habit of deciding to run the washer/dryer at odd hours. They may suddenly decide at midnight - or 4AM - that they just HAVE to have a particular item of clothing clean to wear to school the next morning. When that happens, you don't want noise from the washer and dryer disturbing your sleep. Depending on your need for quiet in the office, perhaps you could at least move the washer and dryer so that they back up against the office wall instead of being against the bedroom wall. That would help. I'd personally rather figure out some way to switch the office and laundry room but, given the odd shaped angles necessitted by your wedge shaped property, I don't really see any way to do that without completely revising the plan. I'm also a bit concerned with the gym being right next to a bedroom and right over the theater. Who exercises in your house and when do they do it? If you or your spouse tend to exercise in the mornings, remember that teenagers tend to like to sleep late whenever they can. So, will whomever is exercising be likely to wake up someone who is sleeping in the bedroom next to the gym? Or if someone is lifting weights in the evenings, will the noise when they drop them back down bother someone else who is trying to watch a movie downstairs. I do understand the concept that having the gym up near the bedrooms might be an incentive to exercise a bit more often. But I wonder if having the gym in the basement might not make more sense "noise-wise"? If the gym were moved downstairs, that basement powder room would probably get a whole lot more use. You would probably even want to enlarge it to include a shower and start keeping a bunch of one-size fits all bathrobes down there. With the gym in the basement, the laundry room could go where the gym is (with the washer and dryer backed up against the bathroom wall) AND you could enlarge the office next to the masterbedroom.

I can't agree with building an extra-large house just for resale. You're not just talking about building. You're talking about paying taxes, maintenance and heating/cooling on a house that's bigger than you need . . . in hopes that in a decade or more the housing market will still expect this type of house. I'm not sure the generation who's in high school /college today (that is, the group who'd be poised to buy your house when you're ready to downsize) is going to follow suit and buy into big, expensive houses. Most of them are graduating with student loan debt, and they're walking into a difficult financial picture -- many of them won't be able to buy, even if they want to do so. And they are less motivated by the things our generation sees as necessary -- like big houses. I think building something you don't want just for resale is a risky proposition. Chicagoans, I like the idea of doing away with the two-story foyer and going with an extra-large "between the bedrooms" closet. I'm not that crazy about two-story rooms, and no one hangs out in the foyer anyway. But everyone likes extra storage! When I was a small child, my grandparents had a house with something similar: Two bedrooms. Between them stood two walk-in closets. One closet was "dedicated" to the left bedroom. The other had two doors, one opening to both bedrooms. In the years that they lived there, the rooms served many purposes. At times, the right bedroom was a guest room, so the person on the left had TWO walk-ins. It'd be cool for the kids when they're small, and it gives you versatility for the future. Some family who looks at your house in the future might see that as a two-closet bedroom for a teenaged girl. Or they might see it as space to store items for an at-home business. Really, this extra-large closet idea is solid gold. As for that picture of the loft . . . one absolute: It could go into BOTH boys' rooms, or it could go into the playroom. You could not build it for one boy and not the other. It would cause nothing but fights! It's just too cool. I do agree with leaving the room over the garage (the least desirable room) as the playroom.

I think your house has a lot of potential! I know you didn't initially ask re: the second floor, but I couldn't help taking a crack at it - especially regarding the laundry room & master closet... =) Basically the left-side bedroom gets a large reach-in closet, thus removing the weird bumps in the master closet. The right-side bedroom gets a bit more depth in its bathroom (storage!), and there's 70" of closet on one wall + room for hooks, mirror, etc on the remaining closet walls. The laundry room is a bit more narrow (33” between wall & machines) but no longer has the machines against your master bedroom wall. Good luck - looking forward to your project going forward! =)