Estimated effort: 11 hours

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 including one AI render

Design Program

• Total gross floor area: approximately 70,000 SF, within +/- 5%. If your Week 2 massing missed this, fix it now.
• Ground floor: 8,000 to 12,000 SF of active 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 massing makes that impossible.

◦  If workplace: open floor plates at roughly 150 SF per person, with at least one shared amenity zone.

• 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.
• Floor to floor heights: confirm or revise your Week 2 assumptions. If you change them, say why.

Getting Started

1.  Duplicate your Week 2 proposal in Forma so your Week 2 submission stays intact.

2.  Refine the massing with the Solid Mass Editor, watching Floor Plan Metrics. Hit your target area before touching 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. Generate a first pass with the AI assisted layout, then correct it. Draw interior line diagrams, snap walls to your grid, place doors and windows, assign unit types and functions. Verify the unit mix.

5.  Place the core. Stairs, elevators and shafts aligned vertically. Do this before finalising the facade, because the core will punch holes in your plan.

6.  Generate two facade options using the automations. Test different window-to-wall ratios and different distribution patterns such as ribbons, bars, squares or modular. Then use custom automations to refine window, door and balcony distributions where the pattern fails, for example at the ground floor or at a corner.

7.  Run daylight potential and total carbon on both options. You already have sun hours from Week 2, so you do not need to rerun it.

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 decides 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.  Daylight potential and total carbon run on both.

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.  One AI render of the chosen proposal.

What to Submit

1.  Working share link to your Forma project.

2.  One page facade comparison showing both options with their metrics.

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

4.  One AI render of the chosen scheme.

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 to your individual Forma Board and add to the Shared Class Board. Save to Forma Data Management, create a project link, and post it on the Module 3 Notion gallery page.

At Friday check in, present both facade options and defend the one you chose. Expect to be asked what the analysis would have had to show for you to pick differently.

Points to Ponder / Wrap-Up Questions

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