A Difficult Site

What make a site a difficult site?

As many as I can think of, a difficult site can be with one of more of the following issues (maybe some of them are not in this list): 

Natural problem areas: bushfire, salt problem, quake, snow, storm

Soil problems:

(From BCA) Ground movement caused by-

(A) swelling, shrinkage or freezing of the subsoil; and

(8) landslide or subsidence; and

(C) siteworks associated with the building or structure;

Difficult soil types 

Termite problem

Slope of the site

Rainwater flowing into the site from neighbours - the site is lower than the surroundings 

Drainage/sewer/plumbing problem - distance 

Shape of the site and setbacks

A narrow lot

Narrow street and sharp turn

A remote place to get things needed for construction

Requiring excavation too close to neighbouring house's footing 

Trees, roots, and branches 

Rocks etc

Council's property, main water pipe, phone line, etc. in the site 

Budget is tight to have flexible ideas to design

Strict regulations 

Orientation that is disfavouring certain requirements

Difficult access from the street

Difficult to get sunlight into the living room, etc

Each issue above is quite broad. Solutions can be varied site to site. Not all designer know all these solutions. I don’t! Some are for designers to solve and some are for the engineers and specialists.

What I understand is: designing a building in a difficult site is not a big problem if a designer understands how to build it and how the builder can actually build it. In designing process, construction can be considered and solutions can be given. in the design, overusing of resources to get the building done can be an issue - this is a problem even in normal building. Spending on necessary activities is owner's responsibility though. A designer or builder might be able to minimise it. 

 Images from BCA

An Assignment Using Revit

This is the assignment required to pass (or fail) 1773 Graduate Diploma of Building Design.. That was how I spent $5000 of student loan. The course was enjoyable although we were not taught anything much but guided toward finishing a project with proper specification.

I started using Revit in 2012, but only for one small project, and then switched to ArchiCAD 14. So this project was using Revit 2014 first time. I got a lot of time to learn Revit during the course, although I wasted much time on socializing online.

What I like very much about Revit is exploded view. This view can communicate sufficiently to get the message across, about what the building is, what programs it has, etc. Its visual information is very clear and the design can be seen in enjoyable manner.

Revit has another powerful tool, rendering tool, that can make the model look real, and predict how it might look in real life. it's necessary to render often, whenever a part of building is done - in this case, it's alright to check with 'visual style: realistic/realistic with edges' 

This building was based on a site in North Ryde Station Precinct.  

Download the map and place it into the project, with the exact address, to test Building Performance. The following image is Solar Study and Overshadowing at 9am winter. Actually this is what Vasari did, not Revit. It's beautiful to use the two tools together. If you're going to use Revit LT, you do need Vasari and other building performance tools. But this building was possible only because of Mass modeling tool.  

The building is shaped that way to adapt the shape of the site, and other factors to make it a good building, with a reasonable level of Building Performance. This mass of building can be located anywhere in the site with regulation of 5m setback and no overshadowing after 9am, the shadow must move on. 

The result from using Revit in residential design. It is obvious.