Why is it important to accurately model the land features of your project site with a toposurface?
- What aspects of a building design are most affected by the terrain features?
When designing a project...
- Should the building adapt to the terrain?
- Or, should you adapt the terrain to the building?
The building should adapt to the terrain in the interest of cost and environmental concerns. It is optimal to leave the surrounding environment as untouched as possible to preserve nature and also save on cut and fill costs.
You should adapt the terrain to the building when constructing a massive building such as a company campus. Since you want the building to be flat and easily accessible, it makes sense to cut and fill the environment as needed in order to accommodate a large building.
What considerations affect a project team's decision-making when deciding the floor-to-floor height to use in a multi-story building?
- From a real estate developer's perspective?
- From a designer's perspective?
- From an engineer's perspective?
- From a builder's perspective?
- From an owner's perspective?
A developer is concerned about space. They will want to maximize the floor to floor height in order to make the building more attractive but in an urban environment, would need to consider the total height they are allowed to build up to.
Designers will want to maximize floor to floor height for aesthetics purposes increasing the sense of openness of the space.
Engineers would consider the height of the walls that would have to be built and placement of columns for large areas. These elements would have to be thicker and more bulky if the floor height is too large.
A contractor would consider the feasibility of constructing high walls and the equipment necessary to build tall stories leading them to prefer a cost effective option.
The owner would consider the cost of building with a taller floor to floor height and the amount of money they would possibly make off of rent for such a space to decide how tall the stories should be.
What are the advantages of stacking the levels of a multi-story building vertically?
- Can you share an interesting example of a building that doesn’t vertically stack (where the floor plates change their shaped radically between the floor levels)?
- What were the advantages or reasons for non-vertical stacking?
Why do stairs follow specific proportions with a set relationship between the tread length and riser height?
- How can building modeling help prevent the mistakes that often occur when designing and installing stairs?
Describe a case when it would be worthwhile to create a new custom component in Revit… How do you decide when customize versus using readily available components?
It would be worthwhile to create a new custom component when you would like to model an artistic piece such as a sculpture. You should always choose to use available components and modify them to suit your needs as possible but opt for custom components when you have a unique item that has not been modeled before.