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?
It’s important to accurately model land features with a toposurface because there are design choices that depend on the topography of the site. It is important to model the features then because it provides the reason for those choices and communicates the site considerations.
When designing a project...
- Should the building adapt to the terrain?
- Or, should you adapt the terrain to the building?
The building should generally adapt to terrain if it is the most efficient thing to do. It would be unreasonable to flatten a hillside, for example, if one side of the house will still be underground. It is also more environmentally sustainable to try and minimize the degree to which the topography is altered.
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?
An example that wouldn’t vertically stack is the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles - despite it being multi-story, each floor is extremely different because of the building shape and the functionality of each floor. Stacking levels and copying is efficient, saving you time if walls and other components are placed in the same place on different floors. Some advantages of non-vertical stacking, however, include being able to have designs that vary by floor allowing for extremely creative design.
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?