Architectural Design and Planning
From brief to layout
The exam tests whether you can convert a client brief into a buildable, code-compliant plan. Start with the brief: budget, accommodation schedule, occupancy, growth, servicing. Then appraise the site, covering access, topography, drainage, soil, noise, views, prevailing wind, sun path and the statutory envelope of setbacks, coverage, plot ratio and height. The design must sit inside that envelope before any aesthetic argument is made.
Planning principles
Zone by privacy and function, moving from public (living, guest) to private (bedrooms) to service (kitchen, laundry, stores), and separate served from servant spaces. Keep circulation short and legible with a clear entrance sequence. Use anthropometrics honestly: 900 mm door leaves, 750 mm clear in bathrooms, 1,500 mm turning circles for wheelchairs, kitchen work triangles under 7 m. Corridor and stair widths and headroom follow the National Building Code. In hot-humid Nigeria, elongate the plan east-west, put habitable rooms on north and south façades, and buffer west walls with service spaces, screens or planting.
Worked example
A ramp must rise 600 mm to an entrance. At the maximum accessible gradient of 1:12, the sloping run is 600 x 12 = 7,200 mm, plus 1,500 mm landings top and bottom and a rest landing at intervals along the run, with handrails on both sides. Total length is roughly 10 m, which is the space to reserve on the site plan before the layout is fixed.
Traps
Drawing a plan that ignores the plot envelope or required parking; placing bedrooms on the west wall and then relying on air conditioning; treating the brief as fixed when site analysis reveals constraints worth raising with the client.