Estimated effort: 11 hours Maximum score: 22 points

Overview: What and Why

Last week you chose a strategy. This week you turn it into a building.

Working in Autodesk Forma Building Design, you will develop your recommended massing into a real schematic proposal: defined floor plates, a resolved unit or workplace layout, and a facade that has been tested rather than assumed. You will use Forma's design automations to generate facade options quickly, then take manual control where the automation is not smart enough.

This happens in Forma and not yet in Revit because of speed. At this stage you should still be throwing work away. A facade study that takes twenty minutes in Forma takes two days in Revit, and the point of schematic design is to test more ideas than you keep.

By Friday you should be able to say not just what your building looks like, but which alternative you rejected and what evidence rejected it.

Focus: What You Are Adding This Week

• Refined massing to the target floor area
• A resolved typical floor with unit types or workplace zones
• A vertically consistent circulation core
• Two facade options generated with automations, with manual overrides
• Sun, daylight and carbon analysis on both
• Presentation imagery in 3d and perspective

Design Program

• Total gross floor area: approximately 100,000 SF, within +/- 10%. If your Week 2 massing missed this, fix it now.
• Ground floor: Commercial use, with a defined primary entry and street frontage.
• Upper floors: commit to residential or workplace and stay with it.
• If residential: roughly 15% studio, 45% one bedroom, 30% two bedroom, 10% three bedroom, average unit near 750 SF, double loaded corridor unless the building depth or massing constrains makes that impossible.
• If workplace: open floor plates at roughly 150 SF per person, Organize the floor around a clear vertical core and primary circulation system. Include open office areas, enclosed meeting or focus rooms, a shared pantry/break/kitchenette area and at least one shared collaboration zone. Provide basic support space such as storage, copy/print, and a stack of restrooms. (Note: you do not need to lay out the individual toilet rooms, fixtures, or partitions at this stage.)
• Circulation core: minimum two egress stairs, at least one elevator, one service or mechanical shaft. Locate it once and keep it consistent through all floors.
• Facade: overall window-to-wall ratio between 30% and 50%. It does not have to be uniform on all four elevations, and probably should not be.
• Balconies: if residential, private outdoor space for at least half the units. (Note: Building Design does not report area metrics associated with Balconies; for this exercise ignore the area allocated to balconies).
• Floor to floor heights: confirm or revise your Week 2 assumptions. If you change them, say why.

Getting Started

1. Bring your Week 2 proposal across. In Forma Building Design, open Site Design Layers, select your recommended building, and add it as a Detailed Building. Only Basic Buildings and Line Buildings can be converted. (Note: If your Week 2 recommendation used a 3D Sketch Building, rebuild it as a Basic or Line Building before continuing, and note the change in your memo.)
2. Refine the massing. Edit as needed your building facade. Watch GFA in Area Metrics and hit your target area before working on the facade.
3. Set up views and sections so you can work in plan and section, not just perspective.
4. Lay out a typical floor. Use the Wall tool with Divide units or Divide rooms, then place doors and windows and assign unit types or workplace functions. Use Area Metrics to track Units, Rooms, GFA, NFA, and Efficiency Factor. There is no automatic unit mix schedule, so assemble yours from these metrics. Use a Custom Metric if it saves you counting by hand.
5. Place the core. Add stairs, elevators, and shafts and keep them vertically aligned. Do this before finalizing the facade. Keep egress travel distance up to 250 feet.
6. Generate two facade options. Use the facade automations to test genuinely different strategies. You may use a combination of:
1. Single Windows Automation specifiyng width, height, spacing, and sill height.
2. Window-to-Wall Ratio.
3. Module Automation to distribute predefined combinations of windows, doors, and balconies.
4. Apply facade automations independently when different orientations need different responses, release the automation and edit the individual elements manually.
7. Run Sun Hours, Daylight Potential and Total Carbon on both options. Do not force the analyses to tell an exciting story. If daylight clearly separates the options but carbon barely moves, report that and explain why.
8. Choose and refine the option the evidence supports.

How Detailed Should This Model Be?

Schematic. Resolve the typical floor properly, because it repeats and errors multiply. Do not resolve every atypical floor. Get the core right, because it is expensive to move later. Leave the details of assemblies for Week 4, where they belong.

How This System Affects the Others

Your window-to-wall ratio determines your Week 7 heating and cooling loads before a mechanical engineer touches the project. Your core location becomes load bearing in Week 6 and carries every riser in Week 8. Your floor to floor heights determine whether there is room for ductwork above the ceiling.

What's Expected

1.  A developed schematic proposal meeting the full Design Program.

2.  A resolved typical floor plan with unit types or workplace zones assigned, plus a unit mix schedule confirming you hit the program.

3.  A core consistent and vertically aligned across all floors.

4.  Two distinct facade options, each generated with automations, each documented with an image and its window-to-wall ratio.

5.  Sun hours, Daylight potential and Total Carbon Analysis on both proposals.

6.  A comparison of the two options with results side by side, and a stated choice with reasoning.

7.  At least one place where you overrode the automation manually, with an explanation of what it got wrong.

8.  A perspective view of the chosen proposal

What to Submit

1.  Working URL link to your Forma Board project.

2.  A comparison screenshot of the Sun Hour, Daylight Potential, and Total Carbon of your proposals showing both options with their metrics.

3.  Typical floor plan image with unit types or zones labelled, plus the unit mix schedule.

4.  A perspective view of your chosen proposal. (Option: Render it using https://gemini.google.com/)

5.  Design memo of 300 to 500 words: how the massing changed from Week 2 and why, what the facade studies showed, what you chose, and where you overrode the automation.

Sharing Your Project

Publish all visuals into your Individual Forma Board. Open your Board and copy the URL from your browser’s navigation bar, and be sure to test it in a fresh browser window to confirm that it is working. Post the URL on the Module 3 Notion gallery page.

After confirming, paste the web link into a new card on the Module 3 Notion gallery page as submission item 1.

Need additional feedback? During office hours Friday Oct 9nd (2:30-3:30 pm), present both facade options and defend the one you chose. Explain what the analysis would have needed to show for you to choose the other option You will be given critique from the teaching team that can help you move forward in the right path!

Points to Ponder

Please also share your comments on 3 of the 5 Points to Ponder questions in a new posting on this linked Notion page.