BY A STUDENT FROM TAYLOR'S UNIVERSITY
Advanced Architectural Construction
Project 1: Industrialised Building System
Our understanding of the Industrialised Building System (IBS) construction methods would be thoroughly tested in this assignment. As a group of five students, we were assigned to create a multi-page A3 report of a case study on a building that used IBS construction. The report would go on to analyse the type of IBS construction used in question, as well as its construction procedure, advantages and drawbacks. From that case study, we were then to propose a 3-storey apartment building using IBS construction methods, and calculate the resulting IBS score for it.
The apartment design was required to have a maximum 100 sqm floor area per unit and each unit to consist of a living hall, dining area, three bedrooms and two toilets. Components of IBS construction such as precast concrete columns/beams, prefabricated bathroom units (PBUs), hollow care slabs and so on were to be included. Our final result was a primarily precast concrete apartment building with a central staircase core, topped out with a steel roof truss system.
Project 2: Construction Solutions
This individual assignment was incorporated with our final Architecture Design IV studio project.
Meant to instruct us on how to consider the required construction methods and workability of building envelopes and facades in our design, the outcome would be another multi-page A3 report consisting of precedent studies for our chosen construction methods, alternative building facade schemes using different construction typologies, and sectional perspectives of two interesting spaces in our design scheme.
The learning objective was that we were encouraged to think about the feasibility and the practicality of construction in our studio project with more depth, and not merely consider it after the fact. I certainly think that it was a useful learning experience in how to balance the poetics and aesthetic appeal of a project while giving its practical construction methods some more serious analytical thought.
