Overview
Replace this text with your reflections on your design journey through class from a higher level and share your insights about the entire experience. What were:
- Key / Essential / Unique Design Features that you explored in your project.
- Your Big Successes -- what worked very well and what features you're most proud to share as examples to inspire others.
- Your Big Challenges -- what aspects of the project created the biggest challenges and what would you do differently (in hindsight) to avoid or overcome these challenges.
- Lessons Learned -- what sage words of advice would you share with other students who are embarking on a similar project.
- Think ahead before designing any systems because they will interact with each other.
- Having a logistic and reasonable space layout is very important, it will make the design process much easier.
- Watching all videos for each section before actually designing, because the confusing parts will be explained in the later videos of the section.
My exhibition center is a 2-story building located in Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve near Searsville Lake, and the visitors can enjoy the great lake view in the building. Because of the great natural environment around the building, the first unique design feature in my building is the exterior patios located on each level as shown in Figure 1. The structural system designed for the building is steel because it could use fewer columns and longer span lengths to bring visitors a wide-open view; for the patios, I used wood structures because wood is a biophilic material and it is more suitable to connect the natural views than steels. The patios are located near the cafe dining area, so after visitors finish their lunch, they can easily walk to the second floor using the stairs, which encourages the visitors to use stairs than take elevators.
My second unique feature is the skylight systems on the roof as shown in Figures 2 and 3. By implementing natural light, we can reduce the consumption of artificial light and bring a more natural environment to visitors. The large skylight is designed to bring natural light to the corridor of the building on the second floor. My idea is to also have glass panels on the top part of the walls surrounding the corridor to also let natural light shed into the rooms but it is not modeled.
My third unique design feature is the greywater system in the restrooms as shown in Figure 4. Since the bay area is experiencing water drought. Reusing the water from sinks to flush the toilets and urinals is an efficient way to reduce the amount of water that needs to be treated and processed at wastewater treatment facilities. Greywater systems can also help reduce the overall environmental impact of water usage.
I think my building meets the sustainable goals by implementing greywater systems and natural light. I also tried to model rooftop PV panels by using Solarstone in Revit but it crashes every time. But if the rooftop PV panels were implemented, by taking advantage of PV panels, my building has the potential to meet the net-zero goal set in Module 3, or at least meet 60% of the goal.
Another big success I have is the connection to nature. Since the location of the building is near the lake, curtain walls are designed to bring the great lake view to the visitors when they have lunch on the first level and visit the exhibition space on the second floor. The exterior patios with stairs give the ability for the visitors to walk to the second floor and enjoy the natural views when they stay there.
My first big challenge is actually the space layout. When I first designed the layout, I didn’t realize the impact of the locations of different spaces will have. For example, I have different locations of mechanical rooms and restrooms located on each floor, which would cause a lot more trouble when designing the HVAC systems and plumbing systems, so I have to redesign the layout and relocate the mechanical rooms and restrooms. If I knew these impacts before, I would design more logistics and reasonable locations of the space layout to avoid editing in the future.
My second challenge is to coordinate different systems in the building because the structural system, HVAC system, and plumbing system all take up some space on the top of the floor, so we need to be very careful not to intrude on the different systems by setting the different height of the components in each system. Sometimes even though the systems are conflicted, Revit can still model it and we need to go to the coordination tool to verify the clashes and come back to Revit to fix them.
Video Presentation / Tour of Your Project Features
Replace this text with a link to your Video Presentation / Tour.
- If you've saved your Video on Zoom, copy the link , then type "/web" and embed the link to it here.
- If you've saved your Video on YouTube, copy the link, then type "/vid" and embed the link to it here.
