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?
When designing a project...
- Should the building adapt to the terrain?
- Or, should you adapt the terrain to the building?
Both are possible, but I tend to be a fan of buildings adapting to the terrain. While some landscaping makes sense, Large-scale flattening and moving dirt can cause more environmental harm in the already somewhat destructive building process. A building that fits into and adapts to the environment also looks more natural, and seems less out-of-place, in general. Designing a building to a landscape can spark a more creative design, and therefore a more interesting building.
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?
- Stairs that are too wide or too narrow would be uncomfortable and/or unnatural for people to walk up. This could lead to injuries, especially if people are moving fast and don’t expect them to be unusually steep. Building modeling allows for a visual, which can make it more obvious if stairs are clearly unusually steep or shallow. They can also dictate/default to a standard tread length and riser height, so the person modeling can be sure their design will be safe and practical.
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?
If you were designing for a client who was planning on keeping some of their old furniture when moving into the house, you may want to create those pieces as custom Revit components. If they had unusual proportions this would be especially helpful, so that you could easily be sure they fit in the space. This would also give your clients a better sense of how the home would look once it was theirs.