My original building form (pictured on the left) was 750 ft tall, and had a base apothem (half width of the hexagonal base profile) of 100 ft and top apothem of 75 ft. After evaluation of parameters like the gross floor area and gross surface area, I reached the conclusion that having a base apothem of 90 ft would actually suffice. That would save space and money.
I used nodes to calculate two metrics: the total number of panels required for the facade paneling, and the cost of parking.
- Number of panels required for facade paneling:
- Calculating the cost of parking for the structure:
The values generated from the calculations are placed in Excel as follows:
Based on the information gathered in the spreadsheet, the original choice of going with the tower height of 750 ft and base apothem of 90 ft holds good. The second choice would be with the tower with height 100 ft and base apothem 75ft. The cost of parking and the number of panels for the tower would also be optimum that way. For example, if the client has a budget of only $60 million for parking, then we could say that best choice that gives the most floor area and still approximately is within the parking budget would be choice 1.