Project Planning and Design: Concept Testing Before Documentation
This domain tests schematic design: converting program and site data into a concept, then testing that concept against code, cost, structure, and environmental performance before the team commits to documentation.
Generating and evaluating options
- Produce several schemes, then evaluate them against explicit criteria: program fit, construction cost, code compliance, daylight, circulation clarity, and phasing.
- Orientation and massing decisions are cheap to change early and expensive later. Building depth controls daylight; a rule of thumb is that useful daylight reaches roughly 2 to 2.5 times the head height of the window.
- Floor-to-floor height is set during schematic design by program, ceiling height, structure depth, and plenum depth. Later changes ripple through stairs, cladding, and cost.
Code and life-safety strategy at schematic design
- Establish construction type, allowable height and area, and sprinkler strategy before the plan hardens.
- Place exit stairs to satisfy travel distance and common path limits. Inserting stairs into a finished plan destroys planning efficiency.
- Locate accessible entrances, routes, and toilet rooms early; they are costly retrofits.
- Sustainability follows a load order: reduce demand through orientation, envelope, and shading; then improve system efficiency; then add renewable supply.
Worked example
A sprinklered, four-story office of 60,000 gross square feet. Occupant load = 60,000 / 150 = 400 people. Required stair width at 0.2 inch per occupant for sprinklered stairs = 80 inches total. Two stairs at 44 inches clear (the code minimum) provide 88 inches and satisfy the width requirement, but each stair must also sit within 250 feet of travel from the farthest point on the floor. If the floor plate is 150 by 100 feet, a central core works; a single end core does not, because the far corner exceeds the limit.
Traps that cost marks
- Developing elevations before confirming that the massing fits zoning height, area, and coverage.
- Deferring egress and accessibility to design development.
- Assuming sustainability means adding equipment rather than reducing loads.
- Ignoring structural bay logic until the plan is fixed.