A design competition entry by Co-Arch International & Aziz Tayob Architects.

Overview provided by Haneef Tayob, of Aziz Tayob Architects (Southern African ArchiCAD GURU! , thank you to Haneef for sharing this experience with us ArchiCAD’ers)

1000 hostel type units for Pretoria University. The submissions included quite detailed documentation from complete professional teams, as well as contractors. The design drawings are developed to the level pf individual hostel room layouts.

general comments:

1. Being a competition at the end of the year, we had to plan carefully to get the maximum with as little resources as possible.  We’d like to think we were successful.
2. We used small modules for the various bedroom room, kitchen and bathroom types.
3. The modules were then placed onto floor plates.  As we updated the small modules, the floor plates updated.
4. The plates were then placed and duplicated in a main project file.  If we changed anything on the floor plates the main project file updated.
5. Module allowed us to quickly build up as well as develop the project.  We were able to from an early stage set up plans, sections and elevations.
6. We also chose to set up the 3d’s as 3D Documents.  These also updated as the modules developed.  We could then set up options of using colour, shadows, etc. Due to time constraints and a continuously developing model, we also chose to render only a few views of the individual rooms.
7. All work was done using teamwork.  We had two teamwork files set up.  One was only for the modules, the other one was for the main project file.
8. There was zero 2d work done to the drawings.  Even the tree were 3d.  For the trees we used the wire frame layer option
9. Once I had set up a structure of how we were going to draw, the design team in Jhb fed a junior architect with information. I coordinated the placing of the modules and layouts.  The junior architect then simply updated the modules.  After that it was simply a case of watching the project get completed as the days progressed.  For the last week, I added two other people to help with the finishing touches.
10. An example of a last minute change was the addition of solar panel information.  We received the solar information on the last day we had to submit the information to the people compiling the submission.  We updated the roof modules, including changing of height within two hours and were then able to generate complete updated views.
11. Had we been successful with the competition, I’m confident we would require less than a month to submit municipal drawings.

Resource comments:

1. Without teamwork and use of modules we would never have pulled it off with the few resources we had.  Perhaps if we had a few more people working crazy hours, we could have.
2. I think splitting the work into two teamwork projects was necessary.  Re-loading the teamwork project towards the end took a noticeably long time.  With the development being on two nearby sites I should perhaps have considered splitting the main project file into two.  I could easily have done it at any stage, but perhaps stubbornly held out.
3. Processing power: Towards the end I could only rely on my 8gb RAM QUad core machine to speedily generate the elevations and 3d’s.  We had lots of details, trees, vectorial hatching and shadows turned on, so it is understandable.  Even some of the pdf’s we generated could not be saved unless we turned off shadows.   (A mac which has good interface with RAM, HDD, Screen would have probably coped better).  I still think its not surprising considering we had 22 four-level buildings with student housing and facilities for 1000 students.

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