Glenn KatzYour Design Journal entries this week should highlight your design thinking that influenced your decisions about:
My overall strategy was to keep my core areas open. This included my atrium and staircases. I moved on top making sure the columns were optimized in their location. I prioritized the office floor (6th Floor) and reduce crowded columns due to the floor with more hallways. I checked the other floors with a repeatable pattern and soon realized that in a few floors, one column would be awkwardly placed. It was not worth overcomplicating the structure so I would push to redefine my architectural walls that have no issue with shifting to hide the structural columns. I choose a standard W12x26 beam with W10x49 columns. The largest span is about 30 feet which did not affect increasing the beam size. A challenge was to understand how the exterior decks would play in for structural support. I placed columns in my spherical floors on the exterior edges of the square floors that would interconnect from bottom to top. This makes for easier construction while keeping structural integrity and allowing for maximum space outside the deck. A key point was to also leave atriums and staircases open to the top for roof access and atrium light.
