Module 3 - Design Project Brief:
Play, Stay, or Pay

Module 3 - Design Project Brief: Play, Stay, or Pay

Overview

In this assignment you’ll design a new multi-story building and then document and present your proposed design using Autodesk Revit.

Choose an Option Based on What You’d Like to Design/Model

Choose any one of these three suggested programs/design briefs for this Design Project:

Option 1: Play — Design a Vacation House on a Hillside Site

Your task is to design and model a small vacation house that will be built to provide a weekend or short-term retreat for a small family or group of friends at Lake Tahoe or a similar mountain resort area.  This is a house that will be used for short periods at a time, so your design strategy and the features you provide can be a bit different from a home that would be used day-to-day throughout the year by a single family.

Design Program

Your proposed design for the vacation home should provide the following:

  • Total size of the living area should be around 2000 – 2400 SF.
  • A large central meeting space/lounge/living room. This is the heart of the home where people will gather to share stories (around a fire?), be entertained, and hang out.
  • A food preparation space/kitchen/dining area. While this kitchen may be a bit smaller than what you’d find in a primary home, you’ll still want enough room for several cooks to work together on a preparing a grand meal. For your clients, preparing the meals is part of the shared vacation experience.
  • Three primary sleeping spaces (bedrooms) around 150 SF (just over 12’ x 12’) or larger. For your initial design, think of one as holding a queen size or double bed plus typical bedroom furniture. The other two would probably be furnished with two twin beds or bunk beds plus other furniture.
  • Two small bathrooms with toilet, vanity/lavatory sink, and shower.
  • Another room that can be used as a study or quiet retreat (for when someone wants to get away from the crowd). 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’) for all those off-season items. It’s where the skis will live during the summer, and where the rubber rafts will be stored during the winter.
  • A parking area for two cars (about 20’x20’). This could be a fully-enclosed garage (with walls and roof) or a covered carport (roof, possibly a partial wall, but not fully enclosed). These 400 SF are not counted in the living area above.
  • This vacation home will be built on a hillside site with fantastic views of the lake and valley below. Your clients would like to an outdoor entertaining space (a deck or a terrace) that takes advantage of the view. They’d also like as many of the living and sleeping rooms in the house as possible to also enjoy the view.

Inspiration Images

Your clients have provided examples of some of their favorite homes to help explain their design aesthetic/preferred style and inspire your design work.  These include:

image
image

Your design does not have to look like any of these examples, but use them as inspiration and think about the qualities of the spaces in these homes and how it will possible to incorporate them in your design.

Construction Planning / Methods

Some issues to keep in mind when designing on a hillside site:

  • 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

Use this Revit project file (.RVT) as the starting point for your work:

This project contains some standard wall, door, window, floor, and roof types to help you get started.  You can use these pre-loaded types or customize them as desired --  feel free to define or load additional types and elements into your model as needed.

Note: As you search for Revit component families to add to your building model to illustrate your design concept and add context, be sure to check out the choices available in the Revit Library or download them from websites, such as Revitcity.com or manufacturer sites.

Option 2: Stay — Design/Model/Adapt a House or Dwelling That You Know Very Well

Your task is to design and model a house or dwelling that you know very well. It could be:

  • your family house where you grew up
  • the house of your best friend where you used to spend a lot of time
  • a place that you really loved living in

If the dwelling is an apartment in a larger building, you can create a very general model of the whole building, then precisely model only the features of the apartment that you know well.

Design Program

Your model of this house or dwelling should include the following spaces:

  • a central lounge or living area
  • A food preparation space/kitchen/dining area
  • A few sleeping spaces / bedrooms
  • At least one bathroom with toilet, vanity/lavatory sink, and shower/bathtub.
  • Any other important spaces that you enjoyed — perhaps an office or working space, a music room, or a play space.

Be sure to also modeling the surroundings — for example:

  • A garden, if there is one
  • The nearby street if this is a house in a city
  • The house you chose should at least contain:
  • Any surrounding topography (for example a hill or valley)

In addition to the plan and elevations described below, be sure to include a picture of the space — we’d like to see it too!

Construction Planning / Methods

The construction methods used may vary quite a bit based upon where the place that you’ve chosen to model is located. For example:

  • wood frame construction is very common for low-rise residential construction in the United States
  • brick, block, or concrete construction is much more common in areas where wood is more scarce

Be sure to modify the floor, wall, and roof types used in your building model to accurately reflect the materials that you believe were used in the construction of the space that you’ve modeled.

Getting Started

You can use this Revit project file (.RVT) as the starting point for your work. It contains many common floor, wall, and roof types used in residential construction. You can modify the floor, wall, and roof types in this starting point model as needed to create new types that accurately model the construction assemblies for your building.

If your building is on a hillside, you can use or modify the topography element contained in this starting point model. Or, if your building is on a flat site, just delete the topography element or create a new one with no elevation changes to represent the site.

Option 3: Pay — Design a Small Retail Center

Your task is to design and model a 2-story commercial building that will be built in one of the many small cities in the San Francisco bay area. The proposed design should create a well-designed, comfortable, and enjoyable place to shop, eat, and meet up with friends.

Design Program

Your proposed design for the small retail center should provide the following:

  • Two levels of retail space with a useable rooftop.
  • 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 a typical retail store.
    • This area could be distributed as you wish to get the most yearly rent from your building.
    • For example, six retail spaces of about 20ft x 40ft would provide 4800 SF of rentable area.
  • A rooftop level which will provide space for a small restaurant. This will be a very active space, where people can gather to eat, be entertained, and hang out.
  • Two small restrooms on every level — each with a toilet and vanity/lavatory sink.
  • A small office for the building manager, that could double as a place to stay overnight when needed 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’) on every level for storing equipment and maintenance items.
  • A parking area for six cars (each car requires a space of 9 ft x 18 ft). This parking could be in an open space (a small parking lot) or partially covered by a carport (roof, possibly a partial wall, but not fully enclosed).

Inspiration Images

Your clients have provided examples of some of their favorite commercial buildings to help explain their design aesthetic/preferred style and inspire your design work. These include:

image
image
image

Your design does not have to look like any of these examples, but use them as inspiration and think about the qualities of the spaces in these homes and how it will possible to incorporate them in your design.

Construction Planning / Methods

The construction methods used may vary quite a bit based upon where the place that you’ve chosen to model is located. For example:

  • wood frame construction is very common for low-rise residential and small commercial construction.
  • concrete block walls and wood or steel floor joists are very common choices for small commercial buildings in the bay area.

Be sure to modify the floor, wall, and roof types used in your building model to accurately reflect the materials that you recommend using for the spaces that you’ve designed.

Getting Started

Create a new project using the Imperial - Architectural template to get started. It contains a good assortment of wall, floor, and roof types that are commonly used for small commercial buildings.

What’s Expected - For All Options

  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 or a key interior space in your proposed design

Some tips for placing views:

  • 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

Please follow the instructions in the Canvas assignment to upload your building model to your folder on Autodesk Construction Cloud (BIM 360) and create a new post sharing your project on this linked Notion page.

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Module 3 - Design Project Submissions: Play, Stay, or Pay

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.

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Module 3 - Points to Ponder