Space Planning

Sep 24^th Field Trip

333 Main Street

MTS Tower

On this field trip we have visited the MTS and Bank of Montreal building structures. The engineer on duty explained us how the systems are working and took us for the tour around the tower. The structure has 23 floors and is divided into blocks, which is preferred by the types of businesses located within the building. The tower provides working and meeting spaces for about 600 people.

It was valuable for us, as future designers, to understand and see the real systems that are needed to maintain such a structure. It is amazing how much space and maintenance they require. It is important to plan enough space and choose the right location for all the systems from the first time or at the beginning of the design project since alterations and removal of such systems later might cost a fortune or be not possible at all. It was interesting to find out that the location and characteristics (such as heat, noise or power consumption) of such systems might be key elements influencing some of the main design decisions. Nowadays this particular building’ systems require tremendous amount of space and maintains. Such systems include heating, cooling and ventilation, fire sprinklers, and diesel and battery backup generators. Their placement is determined by the placement of the building in relation to sunshine or wind. Besides that the interiors still have to be divided into zones to help balance the building and provide optimal and equal level of comfort for all of its occupants. The images above illustrate some of the volumes systems of the MTS tower require to sustain well-being and work performance of the people working in the building. This systems do consume a big amount of energy, that is why when appropriate they might be shut down or regulated in other ways to save some energy (for example for the night when the building is not occupied the heating might be turned down and few hours before the start of the work day turned up again).

People are still needed to perform such tasks as regulating systems’ energy consumption and performance, as well as to be there to immediately solve any technical problems. Such professionals are located and also work full-time inside the building they are looking after. On this field trip it was sad for us to observe that in the building where beautiful offices and huge corridors were designed, there was no space planned for the building engineers. Storage spaces were all they had available to adapt for their work spaces. They work in a small room in one of the noisiest parts of the building, with no natural light or wheelchair access. Designers goal is to make sure their design after it is built would treat all the building’s occupants equally, which is not observed in the MTS Tower.

One of the most exiting parts of our building tour was visiting its roof. Here we could see some of the “extensions” of building systems, which also took lots of space and were quite noisy. One might think that it should be no problem since nobody uses or cares about the roof space anyway… but while we were there taking pictures of the beautiful views of Winnipeg Downtown and The Forks, the building engineer mentioned that if we came few weeks later we would see the most beautiful picture of the year from this roof with all the autumn colours... He also noted that people who work in the building in autumn often ask him to take them to the roof to take pictures! That’s when I thought WHY doesn’t anybody use the roof space? There are so many businesses in the world that make money on just providing views that people are always exited to experience. Lots of work and money might be needed to adapt the roof space to make it comfortable, safe and suitable for people to gather in or use as a space to go for a break, take time away from the office headaches… there could be a green space on this roof... Mts Tower Roof

http://www.land8lounge.com/profiles/blogs/chicago-tops-north-america-for "Chicago Tops North America for Most Green Roof Installed"

Lecture: Measured Drawings (Sep 18th, 2009)

We’re about to start working on out first assignment which is measuring and recording the King’s Head Pub. Today’s lecture was mostly about the right method for doing this. But before this, we did a short overview of building systems.

When we’re dealing with building systems, the most important thing to consider is the people who are going to use these buildings and their needs such as air quality, visual comfort, acoustic comfort, thermal comfort and spatial comfort to name a few.

Selection of materials could be critical in indoor quality. Beware of volatile organic compounds which are basically contaminant gases emitted by some building materials. These gases could adversely affect indoor air quality and make people irritated and uncomfortable. There is even an illness called “sick building syndrome” attributed to this. Read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volatile_organic_compound

Another very important issue to consider is ventilation. Buildings in Winnipeg are closed most of the year. This could cause mold growth which could lead to respiratory infections and allergic reactions in humans.



And now back to the assignment! We’re going to do as built drawings of the King’s Head Pub. Wiggings describes how to do this properly in “A Manual of Construction Documentation”.

“From information on standard utility graphics through specifics on schedules and sequencing, this book covers every aspect of the working drawings and schedules that comprise a standard set of construction documents.” (product description on Amazon)

Just a few quick tips:

-Have a checklist of all you need to do so you won’t miss anything.
-Use standard symbols! You want your drawings to be usable by others.
-Collaborate and share information!

On another note, this new software from Autodesk named “Imagemodeler” is introducing some exciting possibilities for designers. What it does, is generating 3D models from images!

“Bridging the 2D and 3D worlds, Autodesk ImageModeler enables you to capture the reality as-built, take measurements of buildings, and easily create photorealistic 3D models. “

Seems too good to be true!

Learn more here: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=11390028