Ever wondered how some architectural practices manage to turn around their school design projects so quickly with a seemingly restrictive budget?

What if I told you that a number of these practices are out-sourcing the classroom space planning and layout to school planning specialists, allowing the practice the time to focus on the real design?

Every project comes with complexities and variations, there is no such thing as a “standard” school design project, and that’s why it’s so important to make sure your school space planning team understand the industry standards and expectations.

As a recommended service provider to architects, our latest case study saw the team working closely with Bouygues UK (BYUK) and HLM Architects. We provided architecural support services during the design and construction of the Queens Road School, Waltham Forest.

Tasked with simplifying the school plans and layouts, CADS Space Planning produced a single set of revised and coordinated FF&E drawings, together with the elevation drawings (C Sheets) of 117 rooms. Once elevated all fixed items were attributed with setting-out dimensions for use on-site by the contractors.

Our team are also Codebook pros, and we’ve helped BYUK to consolidate the education specific FF&E 2d block library used across their current projects.

You can download the full case study here: CADS Space Planning School Case Study_2011.

Ross

BSEC 2011 has finally been and gone! There were not the number of people expected (in comparison to last year) but we did see a variety of people visit our stand.

One topic that was the basis of many enquires regarded library creation, in particular for a BIM environment. These enquires came from a variety of specialist areas from furniture manufacturers to architects.

In my opinion, graphic libraries and library creation are a vital tool in space planning, but they are often overlooked due to the initial costs. A good graphic, which depicts the item correctly and has as much detail as possible, (whether it is a plan, elevation or 3D rendered block) can make the difference between a room looking like it should, or looking like a room filled with building blocks.

Of course, some of us do get carried away! The skill in creating graphic blocks is in knowing when to stop – drawing all the keys on a laptop might look really good zoomed in, but at 1:50 scale – it’s just a blob!

Over the years, we have steadily put together a generic 2D CodeBook Healthcare library, where the simple rectangle is banished and every item is represented as it would look. Now that it’s built, we can draw on this library as and when necessary. 

We are now looking at building up our generic school library but have hit upon a dilemma – do we go 2D or 3D? Do we create the blocks in Revit ready for BIM or in AutoCad so it can be used in non BIM projects?

As we also use CodeBook, we need to make sure that whatever library we create can be used within this environment too.  The data that can be stored behind a family item in Revit is amazing and turns a simple graphic into an intelligent graphic. What are your thoughts on graphic libraries, and the BIM environment? I’d be interested to hear other people’s take on this one.

I’m sure these questions are being asked by other people out there – evident by the enquires we had at the BSEC event. Whichever route we decide to go down, the importance of good libraries should never be underestimated.

Jo

Space Planning Section Leader – CADS Space Planning