Project by: Amos Dotson (9th Grade), Jakov Marohnic (9th Grade), Jett DeMattia (9th Grade)
Project Advisor: Kara Luce
Students’ Advisors: Ashely Suan(Jakov and Amos) and Antonio Valle(Jett)

Description of the Project: In this project, we all intended to learn about the basics of architecture and then focus on a specific discipline within the larger theme of architecture. Jakov chose to focus on drawing floor plans, Jett chose to focus on structural engineering, and Amos chose to focus on the intersection of budgeting and structural engineering. Though we all chose different disciplines they are all equally important to understanding architecture as a whole.

Final Product: For our Final Product we will design a dream house within a budget that we set ourselves. Each of us will take a floor to design and help each other in the disciplines that we each focused on during our research.

Update on Progress from Weeks 1-3:

Jakov: Over the past few weeks, I’ve been doing general research about architecture and focusing on my respective section, drawing floor plans. One big component of my research has been a Youtube channel called 30×40 Design Workshop. It’s run by an architect and I personally love his videos because they provide all sorts of information while still being easy to follow. Through my research, I learned that there is really no definite way an architect goes about planning and following through with a build. Ideas are always changing and the most important thing is to keep an open mind because if you stay focused on one idea who had early on, it will stop you from following through on your full creative potential. Architects start with a base idea for what they want to do but as they examine the building site, what their clients want, and come up with new ideas, the build shifts around, and things are always being added and removed.  Though that being said when drawing plans architects do have a process they use. Like I said each architect has their own thing they like to do, but typically you start off with a small fairly simple sketch. You want it to be properly scaled to some degree and you want to account for how the structure will look compared to the geography of the building site, but it doesn’t need to be super specific as the drawing will change immensely throughout the whole process. Then moving forward, when you start adding more complexities in your drawings like load-bearing walls, electrical systems, HVAC systems, and plumbing, you want to use a lot of value. Value allows you to easily convey the most important versus the least important aspects from the perspective of your drawing. Let’s say you’re sketching a blueprint for the first floor of a house. To incorporate value, you’d want to make a scale of the darkest lines in your drawing to the lightest lines. The darkest ones are used for things like exterior walls, load-bearing walls, and things that for the most part can’t be moved but have to be worked around. While you’d want your lightest lines to be small things like furniture and the placement of windows.

Jett: Over the first few weeks of our project, I have been doing general research on architecture. I have researched what an architect does and how they create their buildings. I have been using many youtube sources to learn about the design process of an architect. I also have been researching who is involved in the building process. During my research, I focused on my personal area of interest which is structural engineering. I like learning about the design phase of architecture but I am really interested in the science and physics that lets a building be structurally sturdy while adding an element of creativity and uniqueness to it. Through my research, I learned about different building materials that are used in building houses. I have also learned about the way concrete interacts with different types of pressure and why rebar is necessary to keep concrete from breaking. Through my research, I was able to find a very helpful youtube video that explained how the pressure/weight of a house gets distributed in a way where the house can stand up and not crumble. In the video, the narrator draws a diagram that shows how weight runs from the top of the house where the roof is, down to the bottom of the house into the concrete foundation. During my research, I learned about how load-bearing walls are used to help relieve some of the pressure that the exterior walls have on them to help the structure become more sturdy. I also learned that there are multiple ways to structurally design a house and each structural engineer has to consult with the architect and the client to find a design that suits the needs of the house. Another interesting concept that I came across in my research is accounting for the geographical terrain of where you are building your house. You can use different materials and styles to add support to hold up your building if you are building over a ledge or on an uneven surface. Throughout my research, one of the general ideas was to express your creativity while finding a way to create a structurally safe building. For the upcoming weeks of our project, I would like to learn how structural engineers draw these plans and how they use different design elements and strategies to create a unique but safe building.     

Amos: Throughout the first couple weeks of our project, I have been learning about the day-to-day job of an architect, as well as the time that they spend on budgeting a project. For research, I have been using many different sources on youtube, but especially one channel called 30×40 architecture. The guy that makes the videos by 30×40 very clearly lays out his design process and how he evaluates the cost of what a project will be. The first thing that an architect does when creating a budget for a project is evaluating their hard and soft costs. Hard costs refer to money you are paying for a tangible object. On most jobs, this refers to raw materials, machines, tools that are necessary for installations.  These prices can vary a lot depending on the following factors: location, the quality of materials, height of the structure, and time given to work. Raw materials end up being the bulk of hard costs in cities because large machinery can’t be used, but the money that would be spent on large machinery is spent on labor costs. Some architects choose to include labor fees/contractor fees as a hard cost but I find it easier to think about that as a soft cost. Other soft costs include any design consulting, so that means the architect’s fee, a structural engineer fee, etc… Then there is also insurance, financing, taxes, and permitting fees. Soft costs tend to be easier to calculate upfront because once plans are drawn up and contracts are signed it is hard for people who are not working hourly to ask for more money. On the other hand, hard costs are extremely hard to calculate upfront because there is always an unknown factor when building a project. The last factor that has to be remembered is land acquisition costs. Usually, this is an overlooked price but it is actually one of the most negotiable payments that the client will make. Once all of these prices are calculated the architect has a rough estimate for a client on what the project will cost, but it is important to remember that architects never give a guarantee on what a project will cost. This is because labor costs are virtually impossible to estimate and are almost never overestimated. In the next couple of weeks of this project, I hope to learn more about, architect’s fees, what an architect does day by day, and budgeting by the square foot.

Update on Progress from Weeks 4-6:

Jett: Over these last few weeks of working on our project, I have been working on sketching exterior architecture plans. I have been doing research and have been practicing drawing birds-eye views of our house as well as learning how to draw a house using a two-point perspective. As a group, we have decided on what our house will look like and are beginning to go over the details of our final project which will be a dream house. These past few weeks I have enjoyed sketching and coming up with ideas that we could implement into our final project. I have also been working on the birds-eye view of our final project and have made many different sketches of our house. We have also been discussing where our house will be located geographically as well as what the floorplans of the house will look like. For the last few weeks of our project, I will continue to sketch the house as well as start drawing and creating a floorplan for my designated floor of the house. I will also continue to do more research on how an architect draws exterior plans and floorplans.  

Jakov: At the beginning, I started to develop ideas for what the house would look like, and after input from both Amos and Jett we have finally settled on a design. We settled on a 3-floor design with a separated portion where we will most likely have space for recreational activities. I have been learning to draw in a two-point perspective to capture the realistic portion of our presentation of the design. Now I will start developing the drawing for our design. I will be polishing and perfecting it to make it represent our ideas as perfectly as possible.  Learning to draw in a two-point perspective has been hard but I think I’m getting the hang of it. I will continue to do research and try to get better but from now on my focus will be the final drawing as our deadline is coming up.

Amos: I started these past few weeks by diving into budgeting by square foot because after extensive research this seemed like the budgeting technique that would be most helpful in our final project. At the core of budgeting by square foot is assigning a value to a square foot of living room space of your property. The higher the price indicated more expensive materials being used throughout the project. Then, you make a coefficient value for each of the non-standard spaces in the property like kitchens, balconies, and rooms with vaulted ceilings. Balconies use fewer materials and less labor time so they might have a coefficient of .5 because they cost .5 the amount of money that a standard living room that size would cost. Kitchens tend to be much more expensive because of materials, electrical, appliance, and plumbing costs so kitchens might have a coefficient of 1.75. Once you have all of your coefficients selected and your price per square foot decided you multiply to find the cost of each of the rooms add them together to find the cost of the house. A different topic I learned about was Architectural fees. At the begging of a project, Architects work on an hourly fee but once the project gets underway their fees are usually 1-5% of the project’s total cost. As the project’s total cost goes up, their %pay goes down and vice versa. In the coming weeks, I will do research on what to do when a project is over budget and will work on our final project.

Update on Progress from Weeks 7-9:

Jett: As we begin to wrap up our honors project I am beginning to reflect back on what I have learned over the past few months. Going into the project I was excited to learn about how an architect designs buildings and draws out floorplans as well as the structural aspect of a building. While making our final project I got to design my own floor of our dream house as well as furnish and decorate it. Overall I feel like I have learned a lot about the day-to-day life of an architect as well as how designing buildings work. I had a lot of fun making my final floorplans and I really enjoyed planing out our final project with my group. While completing the final project I used the program floorplanner to draw the floors which helped me learn about all the different tools and functions an architect could use when designing a house. In conclusion, I really enjoyed finishing our project and had a lot of fun expressing my creativity through my floorplan.

Amos: For the last couple of weeks of our honors project I have been completely focused on designing and budgeting our dream house. To calculate an estimate for the cost of the house I created a google sheet and filled in two columns, the first containing the title of a room, and the second containing the corresponding rooms’ square footage. Then I decided on a scale factor for each room to adjust it to fit its independent costs. The method that I used to create these scale factors can be read about in my second blog update. I then came to a price per square foot of $650 for a square foot of basic room. Lastly, I multiplied the price per square foot by the adjusted square feet per room. I came to an estimated cost of $8,175,270. This however did not include some Utilities costs so I would guess it to be closer to $8,250,000-8,500,000. You can view the spreadsheet that I used to calculate this estimate here. In terms of design, I had a lot of fun designing my own floorplan because it allowed me to be hands-on in a way that the budgeting aspect of the project did not. The whole of this honors project has thought me about the importance of architects having well-rounded skills in order to have a successful project. 

Jakov: As we wrapped out our project I worked on a couple of things. I created the first draft of the floor plans just to give the group an idea of what I was thinking. From there we moved on and they created floor plans using an online software and made their appropriate adjustments and additions to the design. I think the final product is an amazing representation of our teamwork and how it really was a group project. Apart from that I also finished the 2-point perspective drawing which should be attached above. It took a few drafts and a lot of practice but in the end I feel like I properly represented everything we wanted the house to be in the drawing. I am proud of our project; both my work and our overall work as a team. We really pushed ourselves to complete this and I think the end result was everything we wanted.

 

 

Link to our slideshow that shows our project’s progress: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1iH3ISu1Unk-O4pwG8EriqvxYB-ODZ8hVFyIViUbIcmw/edit?usp=sharing