Glenn KatzOverview
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.
In this project, the biggest design feature that I tried exploring was three things: repeatable but unique designs, easily accessible, and using the environment for energy savings. This building is located in São Paulo, Brazil where sustaining weather is a strong element in a building’s success. The building sits on a hill that has a view to the city. The building was set on preliminary objectives that would work around the environment of the building while meeting the general space requirements.
- Unique Design: Coming into this project, an objective was to push away from standard designs in past buildings. We see modularity that makes boxy buildings and lack of creativity. The idea behind my design is to create a building out of different forms. This would create a challenge of design but make a unique design.
- Accessibility: The second theme of my project was to create a building that could create an accessible space layout for people to move around. I strongly feel that buildings dictate the movement of communities and it is important that a building strives to make that achievable. I created a symmetrical building that could evenly space buildings from floor to floor.
- Energy Efficiency: The location of Brazil is hot temperatures so orientation is important. Through windows and using areas where the sun is most impacted through the year, my building takes advantage of solar daylight. This minimizes my electricity and focuses my buildings HVAC to counter that section instead of the whole building (where it is not necessary).
This building was taken through 9 weeks of preparation. Non only does a building work around its environment, it also works around its own internal components that meet industry standards and make building alive. The important skill in this project was coordination. The success of the building is relying on coordination and making sure that every intricate system works with one another freely. To create a building was not easy but it takes patience, organization, and iterations… a lot of them.
- Your Big Successes -- what worked very well and what features you're most proud to share as examples to inspire others.
The success of this project was reliant on the pre planning phase of each stage. The amount of time spent before touching the design software was inversely proportional to the amount of time spent on it. The more I spent on organizing and working on the exercises, it was way easier to start working on my personal design objectives. Although it might be frustrating to want to get to design, it is important to understand the end goal and the steps to reach it. Otherwise, you can design for hours and struggle to reach milestones. Each stage was similar but different and adding on top of the previous desing. This meant that it was crucial to look ahead to the next step and realize what is functional and what is not. This also meant that the coordination tool was important to revise and check the level of design conflict.
- 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.
The challenges of this building was working through Revit’s design modeling, amount of space in the ceiling for systems, and the amount of time to plan out systems coordinating together. It was very challenging to work with the software as a mac user. In addition, revit has a unique way of working through it. This means that it is important to rely on the review sessions and TAs to navigate through Revit. A challenge was also to work on these projects early enough that you could iterate and get assistance. The software makes designing easier but it requires a lot of training. In addition, every stage is reliant on the last so looking ahead is crucial to going back and redoing milestones.
- Lessons Learned -- what sage words of advice would you share with other students who are embarking on a similar project.
The lessons that I learned in this project was to have patience and trusting my ideas to make a reality. I think it was difficult to manage the revit skills and at some point was a bigger issue than getting the prep designs in. It was important to have patience with the learning curve. My piece of advise is to ask questions to TAs and do all of the exercises. Have patience and have fun designing. Do not get frustrated if you need to iterate!
