Estimated effort: 13 hours

Overview: What and Why

This week your building stops being a single-author document and becomes a multidisciplinary project.

You will create a separate structural model, linked to your architectural model through shared coordinates, and lay out the framing that lets your building stand: grids, columns, beams, floors, walls and foundations.

You are not sizing this structure by analysis. That is an engineer's job and a different course. What you are doing is making the big structural decisions: what system, what grid, what spans, where the transfers are. Those decisions constrain everything downstream, and design teams make them long before any analysis is run.

Expect your architecture to change. That is the point.

Focus: What You Are Adding This Week

• Grids
• Structural columns
• Beams and beam systems
• Structural floors
• Structural walls and shear walls
• Foundations
• Cantilevers and the floor openings your core requires

Design Program

• A separate Revit structural model linked to your architectural model with correct shared coordinates. Both must open in the same place, orientation and elevation.
• A declared structural system, consistent with your building height:

1.  Concrete frame, viable at any height in your range

2.  Steel frame, viable at any height in your range

3.  Type III wood frame over a concrete podium, realistically capped near five stories of frame over one or two podium levels

• If your Week 3 massing exceeds what your system can carry, reduce the height or change the system, and say which.
• A declared grid that relates to what happens above and below it.
• Foundations at every column and bearing location.
• A podium transfer level if your system requires one.
• At least one cantilever and the floor openings your core requires.

Construction Planning and Methods

Your choice of structural material drives cost, schedule, floor to floor height and what the building can look like.

• Concrete gives thin floor plates, good acoustic separation between residential units and inherent fire resistance, at the cost of longer schedules and higher embodied carbon.
• Steel gives long spans and fast erection, which matters if your ground floor wants a column free space, but needs fireproofing and separate floor construction.
• Wood over podium is the cheapest and lowest carbon option for mid-rise residential, which is why most buildings of this type in California are built this way. It constrains your height, your spans and your floor plate depth.

Your column grid should relate to what happens above and below it. A residential grid wants columns in the party walls between units. A ground floor retail space wants them out of the way. Where those conflict you get a transfer, and transfers are expensive. Finding that conflict is part of this assignment.

Getting Started

1.  Create a new Revit model from the structural template.

2.  Establish shared coordinates before placing a single column. Fixing this later means moving everything.

3.  Set Project North to match the architectural model.

4.  Link the architectural model and set up discipline specific views so you see the architecture as background without editing it.

5.  Copy and monitor the levels and floors so they stay synchronised when the architecture changes.

6.  Plan your structural strategy before drawing. Where do columns want to be, and where can they not go?

7.  Create grids, then place columns, beams and beam systems, structural floors and walls, then foundations.

8.  Model the cantilever and floor openings against the core from Week 4.

9.  Tag your structural elements and set up structural sheets.

10.  Publish and run a first clash check against your architectural model.

What Size Should the Framing Elements Be?

We do not know yet, and that is the honest answer.

With experience you develop an intuition for member sizes from buildings you have seen in similar conditions. Starting out it is an educated guess. Make your initial sizes large enough to accommodate the largest size an analysis might later dictate, because resizing downward is far less disruptive than discovering everything is too small.

A structural engineer will size these members properly later. Your job is a layout that is coherent, buildable and consistent with the architecture you have drawn.

How Detailed Should This Model Be?

Reflect the locations of the major framing elements and the essential components of your strategy. You will not resolve every framing condition across your whole building geometry, and that is fine. Unknowns left for future resolution are typical, expected and acceptable.

How This System Affects the Others

Your structural choices drive the HVAC work in Week 7. Beam layout and depth dictate the space and paths available for ductwork. Longer spans mean deeper beams, and deeper beams mean tighter ceiling plenums. A column free ground floor costs you beam depth or a transfer, and the mechanical engineer inherits that.

Your Week 4 core becomes load bearing this week. If it does not stack, you get transfers.

What's Expected

1.  A structural model linked with correct shared coordinates, verified by both models opening aligned.

2.  A declared structural system with written justification tied to building height.

3.  Complete framing: grids, foundations, columns, beams, beam systems, structural floors and walls.

4.  At least one cantilever and the floor openings your core requires.

5.  Structural sheets: foundation plan, typical framing plan, one framing elevation or section, one tagged 3D view.

6.  A first clash report with clashes classified as issues or not issues, with counts.

7.  A written note on what your architecture had to change.

What to Submit

1.  Working links to both models in Forma Data Management.

2.  PDF sheet set at D size, 36 by 24 inches.

3.  Classified clash report with counts.

4.  Design memo of 300 to 400 words: which system and why, where the grid fought your architecture, what you changed in the architectural model.

Sharing Your Project

Publish both models to Forma Data Management, copy the latest versions into your Coordination Space, walk a merged view, and post on the Module 6 Notion gallery page.

At Friday check in, present the single worst conflict between your structure and your architecture, and how you resolved it.

✏️Module 6 - Submissions

Points to Ponder

Please share your comments on 3 of the following 5 questions.