Module 3 - Points to Ponder

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Module 3 - Points to Ponder
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Please share your comments on 3 of the following Points to Ponder questions. (Choose 3 of the questions below.)

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...

  • In some cases, the building should adapt to the terrain, as for example this house is located to the hillside, so the design needs to take into account that the terrain will be steep. A good design should be able to take advantage of the terrain conditions
  • However, in some cases it is possible to adapt the terrain to the project, although this is expensive. In this house, for example, construction pads and retaining walls were used to flatten the terrain behind and in front of the house, in order to increase the amount of useful space.

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?

  • Stacking the levels of a multi-story building is very common, although there are some buildings that don’t follow this pattern. Some examples are the transamerica pyramid in SF that decreases floor size as it goes up, or the MIRA twisting tower in SF that has levels that twist with respect to the level under them.
  • The advantage of stack in is that construction becomes more efficient and fast, as the crews only need to repeat the same process over and over again. It also allows for material savings, as the same formwork can be reused as the building increases height. However not stacking the levels also has its advantages, as it allows for more creative architectural designs.

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

  • Stair follow specific proportions in order to make them usable by human beings, taking into account the size of their feet and how much can they climb in one step. Usually to detail stairs is very hard and one can be prone to errors because we need to satisfy a lot of requirements, so having a tool that does this automatically is extremely useful.

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?