Time Crunch

So now im starting to get into the habit of creating blogs everytime I work on my capstone. Today i worked even more on the research paper. I got my intro paragraph done but I may want to add a few more things to it. Due to the time crunch of doing all my work and trying to graduate on time, I am going to have to cut the Revit M.E.P portion of my whole project. So now I am going to have just the Revit model. I am having a small problem managing my time right now so its getting done but bit by bit.

Revit Ideas

Hmm, my school will be drawn into revit as soon as I decide on how will my school look. Once I have decided which shape to use for my classrooms, and how many rooms will there be in my school exactly, I will start putting my designs into Revit. Before I do though, I was planning on using a room placing method that I aquired while workng on the Ghana competion my architecture class is working on. I am planning on drawng just the class rooms to a scale, cut them out and arrange them untill I find an arrangement that I like. So before I said that I was going to use Revit M.E.P along side Revit to add the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing fixtures. That plan might not follow through as I hoped. I have done most of the tutorials and realiized that it is really hard to do. Don't get me wrong, I am still going to keep trying, its just may not make it into my project. Hmm, what else. Oh, since my school will also be a green school, I am going to include solar panels for energy. An eco roof for heat, and alot of windows for light. When I attended the career day at ZGF at their new location, I learned how they would have a natural way of cooling and heating. They would have these floor vents that would be under their desks and could control how much air would be cooling or heating. I may include that in my school as well but I need a bit more information so that will be what I may study next. The next thing for me to do, is to try and visit the site and do a little soil test, and also some water run off tests too.

Sketches and Room Shapes

Lets see today I was working on and off on my capstone. I didn't do any research today. I focused on mainly the class room shapes today. I also sketched out some building shape ideas for the over all view of my school. I really wanted to make a design that my school would have created and could be seen from bird's eye view but it would not come out the way I wanted it to. Right now I have sketched out little cubes that would represent two-four class room depending on the shape of the class room. My choices for class room shape are semi circles, 'L' shape, tradtional squares, and traditional rectangles. I remember reading articles that mentioned how classroom shapes sometimes affect the learning abilities positivly. I also read an article that recomended the use of 'L' shapes, the only downside was that it may create "dead space". A dead space is an empty space which is blocked from the rest of the room. However these spaces are created by the occupator, in my case the occupator would be the teachers. What I have also planned is to have the classrooms make a cube and those cubes will be placed on top of each other. So the "hallways" will be open spaces. The whole school will have at least 32 rooms which include 2 rooms for each grade (k-8), a music room, gym, offices, and bathrooms. I am going to try and up load some of the initial sketches tomorrow so you all can get sort of a better picture of what I am tring to explain.

Failed attempts

Well in my excrutiating battle to stand out i decided on taking my capstone designs a bit further. Instead of just putting it in Revit 2010, I am going to try to put in the Mechanical, Electrical, and Plumming using Revit MEP. Today I tried to accomplish the first tutorial, but for some reason it wouldn't want to load correctly. After I finished reading the first tutorial I decided to expiriment in Revit MEP. So I uploaded a house design i created from last year and tried putting in some electrical fixtures and plumming. It was a matter of trial and error really, but when something didnt work i quickly made a note of it and tried again.
So far to this point i have my proposal in, researched a bit of some articles, i have also turned in my thesis statement which is the following:

My essay will be an compare/contrast essay
Traditional schools built from the past are creating a concern on their energy usage and on the learning/ teaching environment of students and faculty members. Newer schools not only provide a healthier environment, but they also create an effective learning/teaching environment too.

So far i have been reading alot of the tutorials but not actually doing them because they don't want to load correctly. To this point I still need alot to get finished....so to work i guess i go.

Intro

Ok, so my project is based on green design. I am designing a k-8 grade school that has a green concept. So the problem that my project solves is school attendence. Trying to keep students in school based on the building itself. This will be fun since i am all about education! I am currently working with Mr. Heinz Rudolph, the architect of many green schools!