Module 3 - Points to Ponder

Why is it important to accurately model the land features of your project site with a toposurface?

• It is important to accurately model the land features of your project site with a toposurface because land features can impact design decisions and they provide important context for models. Aspects such as floor plan, foundations, and landscaping are most affected by terrain features.

When designing a project...

• Should the building adapt to the terrain?
• Or, should you adapt the terrain to the building?
• Yes the building should adapt to the terrain to minimize environmental impact and damage. To encourage more sustainable design and construction measures, it is important to work in tandem with the constraints of features within a given terrain. These constraints should be viewed as opportunities to compose interesting designs unique the site. Adapting the terrain to the building should be viewed as a last resort measure to ensure design feasibility, structural soundness, safety, etc.

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?
• maximizing appeal to specific buyer and/or client preferences such as higher ceilings which can permit more air flow and light, or lower ceilings to increase the number of floors in a given building height which in turn can be used for marketing the building to buyers.
• From a designer's perspective?
• Cohesion between the overall building plan, elevation, and other design aspects. Designer decisions in terms of floor height are shaped by the need to create a cohesive and/or consistent theme throughout the building.
• From an engineer's perspective?
• Structural properties of the given materials intended to use of construction. The fundamental structural properties of chosen materials will limit how high floor-to-floor heights can safely be set.
• From a builder's perspective?
• Feasibility of constructing the given designs in terms of time, cost, and safety.
• From an owner's perspective?
• Maximizing the amount of rentable space and/or units in a given building. For a multi-story apartment building more floors generally means more units and therefore more potential revenue from rent. For a commercial, higher floors may reduce the number of rental units, but permit the ability of tenants that require larger space to rent and thus, owners could charge higher prices.

What are the advantages of stacking the levels of a multi-story building vertically?

• Stacking the levels of a multi-story building vertically has the benefits of reducing the overall building footprint in a given landscape, simplifying the design process in terms of elements such as stairwells and elevator shafts, and making the construction process more streamlined.
• 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)?
• Ex: Habitat 67, Montreal


• What were the advantages or reasons for non-vertical stacking?
• The advantage of non-vertical stacking was given the architect more flexibility to tailor the design such that amount of outward facing windows for each unit was maximized. Moreover, the non-vertical stacking encouraged modular unit designs which in turn made the construction process more streamlined despite the more complex design and layout.

Why do stairs follow specific proportions with a set relationship between the tread length and riser height?

• Stairs follow specific proportions with a set relationship between the tread length and riser height because the specified proportions have been determined to ensure safety and comfortability for users. The specific proportions prevent the stairs from being too steep, too shallow, or too narrow.
• How can building modeling help prevent the mistakes that often occur when designing and installing stairs?
• building modeling can allow designers to not only concrete visualize their stair designs, but also simulate user experiences through the inclusion of scale figures, model measurements, and comparisons to other modeled features.

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?

• It would be worthwhile to create a new custom component in Revit if you were repeatedly incorporating a model feature that you had to model from scratch, such as through an extruded surface, given its lack of inclusion in the given libraries. The decision to customize versus using readily available components is dependent on how unique the design environment is and your design ambitions.