4.4 WALL SECTION DEVELOPMENT
4.4.1 Lateral + Vertical Support with Attachment to Structure
Peter von Buelow
This lesson looks at different approaches to fixing the facade to the structural frame of the building. Examples of different methods using a variety of materials and attachment details are explored.
4.4.2 Facade Components + Details
Mick Kennedy
This lesson will look closer at a number of specific facade conditions such as parapets, window placement in section, slab edge details and soffits.
Examples will discuss aesthetic considerations, material details and performance of these critical areas of facade design.
4.4.3 Exercise Intro: Wall Section Examples
Mick Kennedy
In architectural practice, a comprehensive wall section embodies the most specific and informative coming together of design intentions, construction assemblies and facade performance. It is typically also the location where primary building systems: structural and HVAC are meticulous integrated into the spatial and aesthetic goals of architecture.
Exploring these wall sections can be one of the most enjoyable and informative pastimes for an architect. This lesson will introduce (or review) a range of dynamic wall section drawings in relationship their coordinated facade designs.
Intensively developed wall sections can often be an intimidating graphic puzzle—”a tangled skein of tiny lines”, in the words of a London architectural wag— for the young designer. This lesson will assist you in learning to read and understand these drawings and to glean how they reveal the actual specifics of a range of crucial and exciting design decisions by an architect.
The joy of reading and interpreting complex wall sections is a lifelong joy for the architect, as a well written legal opinion or research study might be for those in other professions.
Embracing these drawings as also an incredibly powerful design tool is the ultimate goal of the lesson. Wall section drawings are not complex documentation of other design decisions. They are the loci of the design process itself, with a clarity and efficiency not to be found in complex 3D modeling.
4.4.4 Supplemental: Building + Facade Acoustics Performance
Alaa Algargoosh
This supplemental / optional lesson on building and facade acoustics was prepared by Alaa Algargoosh, a Taubman College PhD candidate in acoustics. While only a pdf version of her outstanding presentation, we would like to share this with the class as Alaa touches on a range of topics related to improving the acoustic performance of a building at the scale of the side, with the design of a building facade and also in terms of building systems and interior applications. While this is not a presentation on interior or room acoustic design the presentation is thorough, timely and highly recommended.