Your Design Journal entries this week should highlight your design thinking that influenced your decisions about:
- your overall strategy and the features of the structural system
- the material and framing system selected
- the locations of structural columns and major framing elements
- any special structural challenges
I chose all concrete structural systems to maintain the material palette I had selected for the exterior walls, following my research into common materials used in Sao Paulo to blend into the landscape. I created a few different iterations of grids, as it was difficult to create a uniform grid with the light shafts within my building, and the way I designed the shape of the two parts of the building sitting atop one another. Overall, I made sure to include structural columns at every corner where the wall meets the floor and roof, and added additional columns on the fourth floor to support the cantilevered floor. I added some additional columns reinforcement on the exterior walls of the first three floors. Since these floors don’t have windows, irregularly-spaced columns (to remain hidden in walls) would not be visible, and provide additional support. I went with a vertical beam system, to follow the direction of my stairs, so that beams would not intersect with the shafts created for stairs.
I chose 3 in LW concrete on 2 in metal deck. I added retaining walls and foundations below level 1, as the building is partially embedded into the sloped hillside. I had some trouble aligning the beams on floor 2, as the linked elements are a little offset, so I need to figure that out.
