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?
I think it should be a mix of both but predominantly, the building should be adapted to the terrain. For example, it wouldn’t make sense to build a wooden cabin on the beach because the ocean air would quickly erode the structure or to build a skyscraper on top of a super treacherous mountain. While the terrain can be terraformed for a project for certain needs, if the terrain isn’t taken into account it can become unnecessarily complicated and expensive.
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?
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?
Even while making my own model, I had to redo the staircase several times because my initial layout didn’t leave enough space for a railing, was awkwardly placed, and it was too close to the door of an upper-level room. Building modeling prevents a mistake that would have cost a lot of money and time if it was built on the spot without visualizing it first.
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?
As an example, it would be worthwhile to create a new custom component in Revit if there is a component that is essential to the homeowner that does not already exist readily available such as specific, unique furniture. If it is an odd shape/size but is important to the homeowner it would be worthwhile to create a custom component so the living area/bedroom can be modeled with those special pieces included so they can be moved around if they’re weird in the model and save grunt work in real life (which can translate to time and money).