Legittechstars' Account

Thanks again for providing dimensions. I had a little time after work to look it up, and I think you would have a difficult time making your second floor out of concrete without having columns to support it in the middle of the space below. I would recommend using parallel chord trusses in either wood or steel if you wish to avoid having columns.

I like your description of your final design. Some very good ideas and thank you for providing dimensions. You had an interesting way of stating your dimensions, and I understand it. Typically in practice, we would say that your cafeteria is 18' high by 138' long by 126' wide, and that you're representing it at 1/6"=1' scale.

I really hope you are going to post some images to go with your description. Images are the most important part of understanding how a design works. When I was in architecture school I often would describe to people what they would understand better in pictures. I never quite realized the importance of pictures until I started trying to understand the work of other architecture students. Images really do make a difference.

Thank you everybody that took the time to look at our project and comment on it, it really did help us in making our project more successful.

How can this be used to bring in community to make full use of the facility? Besides "eating" there--what about a demo kitchen for students and community members to learn how to cook? A demo kitchen or demo kitchen stations would be interesting. People would need to be able to see how food is prepared, etc.

Also--how can this continue to have an "international" feel?

What about an organic garden, recycling stations, and composting stations?

We did take that into consideration to add accessible stairs and an elevator but we did not add it to our sketch up. If you look closely to our recent sketch up we do have stairs on the outside to the second floor.

Thank you for your help in making our project more successful.

We like your idea of having more than one story to the cafeteria, and we think it is great that you are making the second floor a lounge area for seniors. This seems like an amazing place for students to enjoy their lunch. Many people would love to spend time in this new building. However, we would like to know how you are supposed to enter the second floor, because it isn't clear where the stairs or elevator are located.

Thank you for all of your helpful comments. Alot of the things said will be taken into consideration to make these helpful changes. We understand that we have a lot of work to do and will post our changes as soon as possible.

We have made many changes to our first floor seating area, and will continue to impove our design to maintain seating and traffic flow throughout the cafeteria. The facility is friendly to the larger community because we were able to provide a rooftop garden that is open to the public on weekends and holidays. The main floor is also open for organized business seminars and college fairs.

We have made many changes to our first floor seating area, and will continue to impove our design to maintain seating and traffic flow throughout the cafeteria. The facility is friendly to the larger community because we were able to provide a rooftop garden that is open to the public on weekends and holidays. The main floor is also open for organized business seminars and college fairs.

A couple more suggestions:

1) This website has some relevant information if you haven't seen it yet:
http://tah2.org/think/site
The sections on climate, vegetation, and circulation look like they could be helpful to you in your analysis.

2) You should put some dimensions on your plans. At a minimum, it would be good to know the length and width of each of the floor plates. Also start to consider what building materials you are using, and think about how that second level is being supported.

If you tell me each of the following:

-the floor structural material
-the horizontal structure thickness
-the method of support, showing dimensions in plan

I can tell you whether or not your structure works and provide alternative designs if it doesn't work. This is often how real architects and structural engineers work together.
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The following can help your decision process for (2), but please don't get overwhelmed or bogged down in it.
It's good to have an idea in mind - the simplest structural solutions at present are:
a) a really deep and strong horizontal structure (slab or deck + maybe beams or trusses) that can span from wall to wall
b) a shallower horizontal structure, but with columns supporting it every so often

The deeper your horizontal structure (which I'll call "floor" from now on), the fewer columns you need.

Architects often want fewer columns intruding on the space below, because columns can interfere with aesthetics, space usage, and traffic patterns.

On the other hand, architects also often desire a shallower floor, because minimizing floor thickness allows the rooms to feel taller, or allows for the entire building to be shorter, and this can result in huge material savings, especially in exterior walls, which are costly to build.

The following is a little technical, but also fascinating:
There is a direct mathematical relationship between how deep a floor is and how far it can span without vertical supports. There are two criteria which need to be satisfied: strength and stiffness.

Strength:
(essentially, we don't want the floor to collapse and kill everyone on it and under it)

-the strength demand on a beam is proportional to the weight it supports (w) times the square of its span (L^2).

-the strength capacity of a beam is proportional to its material strength (f) times square of its depth (d^2).

Stiffness:
(essentially, we don't want the floor to change shape too much when a lot of people are standing on it...this could cause discomfort to the people, or crack materials attached to the floor)

-stiffness demand on a beam is proportional to the weight it supports (w) times its span raised to the fourth power (L^4).

-the stiffness capacity of a beam is proportional to its material stiffness (E) times the cube of its depth (d^3).

It's really cool that in both cases, there is a direct relationship between beam depth and beam span. Also in both cases, capacity also depends on the material used. In general, steel can span really far without any columns. Concrete and wood can't span quite as far as steel without special innovation. Of course, steel, concrete and wood are not the only 3 structural materials, but they are the ones most commonly used.

Happy designing!