Why is it important to accurately model the land features of your project site with a toposurface?
- What aspects of a building design are most affected by the terrain features?
Foundations, walls, utilities (power, sewer, water, etc) are all affected by terrain features. Utilities, especially sewer lines and water lines, are sensitive to elevation and sloping of the land, as this can directly impact flow speed within pipes. Foundations, walls, etc also require precise placement and thus adequate understanding of the topography is essential, hence the toposurface provides a digital model representation.
When designing a project...
- Should the building adapt to the terrain?
- Or, should you adapt the terrain to the building?
Depends on the situation, some features of terrain such as water level and groundwater are hard to control, while others such as the surface layer of the terrain are much easier to. It is generally better to work with the terrain as it also interacts with climate. Trying to change the terrain too drastically can result in unintended consequences. Think for example installing a seawall, leads to nearby beach erosion, destroying/draining marshlands can negatively affect flood management. Cases like Venice show that even when adapting terrain, terrain is still a consideration, as the wooden pilings were driven into the mud and took advantage of the anoxic environment to create solid ground which buildings could then be built upon. Individual buildings did not inform the pilings, rather the terrain itself was the driver for adaptation.
What considerations affect a project team's decision-making when deciding the floor-to-floor height to use in a multi-story building?
- From a real estate developer's perspective?
- From a designer's perspective?
- From an engineer's perspective?
- From a builder's perspective?
- From an owner's perspective?
What are the advantages of stacking the levels of a multi-story building vertically?
- Can you share an interesting example of a building that doesn’t vertically stack (where the floor plates change their shaped radically between the floor levels)?
- What were the advantages or reasons for non-vertical stacking?
Why do stairs follow specific proportions with a set relationship between the tread length and riser height?
- How can building modeling help prevent the mistakes that often occur when designing and installing stairs?
Describe a case when it would be worthwhile to create a new custom component in Revit… How do you decide when customize versus using readily available components?
Custom components can allow you to fill gaps in preexisting families, think a supporting bracket for a solar panel. Custom components enable innovation, you could create a custom component that matches a prototype you have been working on, or a niche part that has yet to be uploaded to a public database. Custom components require a degree of specification however and are thus best served once you have already exhausted the readily available components. Readily available components are more likely to be easier to obtain both digitally and in real life and through their use/comparison can inform custom parts if pain points emerge.