Project1

The overall design idea behind both houses was a combination of feng shui, energy efficiency, and the individual styles/needs of each of the clients. The exterior design is very geometric, as no joints are a perfect 90 degrees, and no two walls are parallel. This gives the houses an interesting shape from all angles; also, it works to keep the sun from directly heating one wall for an extended period of time. In Wei Yan’s house, the larger of the two (and northern most), the floor plan was designed so that his two children have adequate learning and open playing space upstairs and downstairs, while the studio office and all bedrooms are private and separated. Wei Ling’s house, on the other hand, is largely open and simple. She has access to outdoors from the majority of rooms in the house, as this is where she likes to spend the most time. Both houses take into account inlets and outlets for wind ventilation. This allows easy cooling in the summer and (mostly) negates need for air conditioning in the spring and fall.

The modeling process was accomplished using BIM (Building Information Modeling). The series of steps used (summarized) are as follows: exterior walls, floor, building pad, interior walls, stairs, ceilings, roof, components (furniture), landscaping, and other details.

I would say that the Autodesk Revit interface is very useful and well organized. It is easy to access each tool and helpful that there are explanations if you hover over them. There were continual problems with editing the materials and duplicating instances. To resolve this, it would be helpful if instances were not automatically grouped, and instead, the user could group walls/floors as needed to change the materials. In overall performance, Revit worked fairly well. The interior renderings are slow, but they have numerous rendering options that make each rendering incredibly photorealistic.