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?
I think a designer can choose to go with either option. However, one will be more expensive than the other. If a designer is committed to making a certain house regardless of the terrain available, it could prove very costly as the supporting structure it will require might not be there: e.g., I want to design a house on a hill, but my build plot is completely flat; I will need to add a lot of supporting columns and walls to make my building stand as if it were on a hill. I think it is probably easier for a designer to design around the terrain and use its features to make the project simpler and cheaper for the client.
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 I can think of is The Great Pyramid of Giza. They couldn’t stack every level vertically because they didn’t have the technology to send the building material up so high (like we do nowadays when we build skyscrapers). By building it at an angle, they were able to carry the materials up to each level without having to build a different support structure to bring it up to the very top.
An advantage of this non-vertical stacking is that it also requires less material overall.
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?
Having the standard dimensions in all design software makes it a lot easier to avoid mistakes when it comes to crucial features such as stairs. We are allowed to change the thread length and riser height, but it is something we have to change; Revit automatically gives you the standard dimensions, so even though those sizes might not be exactly what the designer wants, they will start from the correct dimension regardless, and the designer will only change it if necessary.
I personally think it is very important to follow these standards because people with low mobility would struggle with weirdly tall steps and could potentially not climb them. The opposite, having very low steps, could cause some serious accidents if its users were not expecting such a stairwell.