Overview

Design Program

• The total area for the retail spaces should be around 4500 – 4800 SF. Think first about the number of retail spaces your building will have and their size based on their retail store. This area could be distributed as you wish to get the most yearly rent from your building. (Area based on six retail spaces of 20x40ft)
• A rooftop where you will design a restaurant. This is the heart of your building, where people will gather to eat, be entertained, and hang out.
• Don’t forget to add bathrooms with a toilet, vanity/lavatory sink, and shower for the use of customers and employees.
• Another room can be used as an office for the building manager. This should also be able to function as a guest room - using a convertible sofa, a futon, a pull-down wall bed (Murphy bed), padded benches, or some other creative strategy.
• Storage space (at least 10’ x 10’). It’s where the maintenance department will store equipment and personal items. Consider adding locker cabinets for the employees.
• A parking area for six cars (about 60’x60’). This could be a fully-enclosed garage (with walls and roof) or a covered carport (roof, possibly a partial wall, but not fully enclosed).

Inspiration Images

Construction Planning / Methods

• To accommodate the hillside site, the lower level will probably need to be at least partially below grade. A good strategy to use in these cases is a partial or walk-out basement – below grade at the uphill side, but open to the site at the downhill side.
• The lower level floor can be a simple concrete slab (or pad) placed directly on the site. Again, we’ll use a thick slab – that’s a little thicker than absolutely necessary for the loads, but the extra thickness will add some thermal mass to help capture heat and maintain an even temperature.
• The lower level walls will need to be concrete up to the height of the grade. The concrete walls will holdback the earth and can be waterproofed. Above the grade level, the walls can be light frame wooden construction.
• At the upper level, the walls should be 2x6 light frame wooden construction. Using 2x6 studs (actually 1.5” x 5.5”) will allow us to provide R-19 insulation, which will be better for the temperature extremes.
• The roof 2x10 or 2x12 wooden rafters depending on the span. We’re going with a larger size here due to the snow loads that will encountered in the winter months. Again, the structural soundness of your choices will ultimately be checked by one of our engineers. These are really just starting assumptions to facilitate your early design.

Getting Started

Vacation House - Start.rvt

Last modified by Glenn Katz 6 years ago

drive.google.com

What’s Expected

1. Illustrate your proposed design using a building model that the includes basic building elements for a multi-story design:
1. walls
2. doors and windows
3. floor
4. roof
5. stairs and railings
2. Add furniture and fixture objects to your building model to help create context and illustrate the scale of the rooms and the building. It’d be nice to add elements representing:
1. plumbing fixtures
2. furniture (check the Revit library and online sites like RevitCity.com to see what’s readily-available)
3. cabinetry – for this preliminary design proposal, a great time-saving strategy to consider is:
1. Not spending the time to do a detailed cabinet design and place individual cabinet components.
2. Rather, creating quick In-Place models of your cabinets by extruding some basic cabinet profiles and outlines up from the floor.
3. In practice, after the initial design concept is accepted, you can go back add the detail to the cabinets in the next design phase.
3. Place views of your building model on the provided sheets to “tell the story” of your proposed design:
1. floor plan
2. roof plan (can also be used as a site plan if you show the topography)
3. exterior elevations (all sides)
4. one or two building sections showing the vertical relationships between all the levels and the site
5. a ground level camera view showing your favorite exterior view your design
6. an interior camera view showing your central meeting space/lounge/living room

• You’ll probably need to crop your views to fit them neatly on the sheets.
• Leave the scale of the plan, elevation, and section views set to ¼”=1’-0. Although the views may seem small relative to the size of the sheet, this is a standard scale that is typically used for plotting and submitting design documents -- so, easily recognized and understood.
• Add additional D-size (36” x 24”) sheets as needed to place all the views that you’d like to share.

Sharing Your Project

Points to Ponder / Wrap-Up Questions