Facade automations generate a pattern across a whole building in seconds.
◦ What does the automation know, and what does it not know?
◦ Where did the generated pattern need overriding, and why?
◦ If the automation produces something that analyses well but looks wrong, which wins?
What drives a project team's decision about floor to floor height?
◦ From a developer's perspective?
It will define the need to cover in the sector (a residential project must take a different workframe than a commercial one, for example) together with the architecture team.
◦ From a designer's perspective?
It will be define by the environment that will be impacted, the types of sectors to cover and the spaces between the building slab and the ceiling.
◦ From an engineer's perspective?
It will depends on the materials, the building structure and the seismic analysis based on the current code of the country.
◦ From a builder's perspective?
It will define how buildable a design can be and the resources to use according to their budget and deadlines.
Last week we chose a massing option based on site evidence. This week you had to fit a program inside it.
◦ Where did the program and the massing disagree, and which one gave way?
The conflict was generated because the required distribution of the apartments didn't fit with the initial proposed volume (GFA). In this case, the massing gave way. The program remained as a requirement, which force me to modify the building geometry adding an extra floor to be able to meet the required capacity.
◦ What would have had to be true for you to change the massing instead of the program?
The chosen sector where the building will be, this is because the massing borns from the project need in a specific sector. If the maximum height allowed by the regulatory plan, the setbacks or the shadow impact over the neighbors hadn't allow us to add that extra floor, the massing would have been immovable and the program would have had to adjust to that volume.
◦ Which of this week's program decisions will the structural engineer and the mechanical engineer assume you got right?
They will assume that the vertical continuity of the building is already resolve. Specifically, the decision to align the distribution of the load-bearing walls from floor 1 to the last one, and the consolidation of the networks in 2 continuous shafts. These early decisions are critical because they avoid spatial clashes and drastically reduce the coordination conflicts for structural and MEP (Mechanical, Electrical and Plumbing) engineering.
Total carbon can now be estimated before materials are specified.
◦ How much confidence should a team place in that number at this stage?
◦ Which decision made this week has the largest effect on it?
◦ How would you present it to a client without overstating its precision?
At some point a conceptual model has to stop being conceptual.
◦ How do you know when a proposal is resolved enough to move into Revit?
The proposal must pass when all the specialties added their requirements to the proposal, things like the amount of shafts, floor heights, number of apartments, wall distribution, impact on the environment, among others, they are base to have a good analysis previous to be transformed to Revit.
◦ What is the cost of moving too early? Of moving too late?
If it is too early: analysis of the factors without development and the results can be not representative, you can take a bad decision with incorrect or very deviated data. If it is too late: the environment conditions can change, changing also the project needs, finishing in a project without the expected profitability.
◦ Which parts of your Forma model do you expect to survive the handoff?
The site topography, the orientation, the gross volumes (conceptual masses) and the basic grid. The details are rebuild with real constructive elements (wall families, slabs, windows) already inside Revit.