Overview
- Key / Essential / Unique Design Features
Throughout the quarter, I have always kept in mind the design goals I had set at the beginning of the quarter. Those goals were the followings:
- Use the existing building as a base to build the exhibition center
- Have a green area ratio of at least 50% and aim for 70%
- Use recycled/sustainable materials for the new building
- Reduce by at least 15% and aim to reduce by 30% the EUI of the building
Going through the design process, I have found some goals to be more easily reachable than others. While the two first ones were easily achievable for instance by using a green roof, the two others were a bit more tricky.
Using a wooden structure, I was able to reach part of the third goal but I still had to use concrete for the pilers and the massive column supporting the cantilever.
I have also reached the 15% reduction of the EUI but only by supposing that the most efficient HVAC system would be used in the building. The 30% goal was unreachable with the design I had in mind.
- Big Successes
The biggest success of my project is the fact that I have managed to use efficiently the existing building. Even if it was sometimes a constraint especially to be able to come up with a layout that made sense, it was also helpful at the beginning to have a base on which to build the rest of the project.
I did not think much about the buildability of this project. In theory it works very well, I am not sure that in reality it would be really feasible to build such a massive building just adding pilers for the foundation and not having to change the whole structure of the existing building.
- Your Big Challenges
The biggest challenge I had was with creating the HVAC system. I felt like my building was looking great until I had to find the space to fit all the ducts and HVAC systems. Having used a wooden structure which takes more space than a concrete structure where columns can be included in the slab, this reduced already by 1ft the space available. I limited the height of my ducts to 2ft. So finally, with a 1ft slab, 1ft column and 2ft ducts, that would only leave me with 11ft of ceiling height considering I still had to put the air terminals.
If I had known the space it would really take, I would have used a level height of maybe 17ft compared to the 15ft I used.
- Lessons Learned
Try to put the core space with the mechanical room at the center of your building. Especially if like me you cannot use the roof to put the air handlers. This will allow to create different branches and reduce the size of the ducts.
- Suggestion
Also, I would like to suggest to provide a small module for rendering. Just to quickly explain how a rendering tool works and what you can do to create great views of your final project. After having spent 10 weeks on this project, I would have loved to have something very pretty to show.
Video Presentation / Tour of Your Project Features
Here is the link for my presentation:
Design Journal Entries
