Article#4How Building Design Imperatives constrain construction productivity and quality: Engineering Construction and Architectural Managment 2002

Since the early 1960’s building construction has been criticised for low productivity, it has been widely recognised that the building design has significant impact on the building construction performance. Recently there has been interest in concurrent engineering, which involves designing products and their related processes and systems coinciding with each other to achieve the best possible balance between form, function and production. Designing for maximised repetition is one way to avoid low productivity.

Design application can be a difficult one to design with maximised repetition coinciding with other buildings. If asked to design for a specific site that has existing buildings which needs to be linked would create a difficult one to reproduce if asked to place it at another location. But buildings such as port-a-cabins can be built and designed in a standard way, which makes the most of repetition between the buildings.
So market specific design results in high volume goods, where location specific designs often result in low volume goods. For example the footprint of a building is effected by adjacent buildings and natural features of the site.
Many new buildings are tailored designed because of the continuing demand for safer construction operations, such as excavation.

Customer-led designing for buildings usually leads to the architects and engineers designing for specific needs of functionality and appearance. Thus it being hard to design with repetition as components will change throughout the process, making it hard to pre-order construction components. There are too many variables such as budget, clients ideas my change during design and construction.
Customer-led design is often lead to tailored goods, whereas custom design or standard products can cater for producer-led designs.

Designers are also expected to have the latest high performance structure components which leads to every new design will be an original. These factors limit architects and engineers to design buildings, which can be built multiple times in different locations. This then limits them to work with manufacturers in the design of mass production, building specific, components.

The constant change of design when it comes to customer-led buildings means more and more products needing to be tailored for specific job. This leads to hurried production time, which leads to quality problems. In contrast producer-led market specific design results in there being high repetition, which allows computer systems to perform the component configurations.

Bricks, plasterboards, drainage pipes and heating pipes are examples of standard materials and parts. Raised floor tile system and suspended ceiling systems are both examples of custom materials, which generally are produced for stock. It is more feasible and viable for engineers to use these products in the buildings compared to specific designed products.

Looking at these aspects it appears that construction productivity and quality must be continuously improved to meet clients needs. Product-specific systems and processes are feasible and viable when it is producer-led and market specific, although often the building is customer-led and location specific.

Concept 1

Here is my idea for the facade of the warehouse and showroom. They are based on the two Glenn Murcutt buildings i have on this blog. Im not sure if i like it.
The warehouse has red colourbond on the outside and the showroom has steel grid looking thing. I wanted the facades to be different on the two buildings because using just one maybe to overwhelming. The roof shape helps to break the lateral feel of the building and gives it some shape. The wooden slates across the windows helps create some depth and interest in building and also helps protect the building from heating up to much. The basic structure will be made out of steel.

Article#3 Newcastle Steelworks- ENGINEERS MAG VOL 79

In Mayfield Newcastle a 1.5km, 49m deep bentonite barrier wall has begun to be constructed. This wall is part of a $110 million remediation strategy for the former Newcastle Steelworks.
BHP Billiton has owned the site since 1915. In 2002 the NSW government negotiated a land transfer with BHP Billiton. BHP Billiton demolished the buildings on site and RMLC staff set to work on how the site could be remediation that would be compatible with the future land use and acceptable to the environmental regulator.
A number of remediation and treatment options were discussed. Taking into account the depth of the containment it was concluded that capping and containment of containments was the best option, although more needed to be done about the control of the ground water.
This strategy had been designed to help contain the contaminated soils as well as manage contaminated ground water which it brings it into line with standard regulations which will allow the site to be used for industrial usage. This protects the adjacent Hunter River from any environmental damage.

The underground wall is being built in a water-charged area, which means it is a difficult task to build.
The construction method involved a continuous trench, which is up to several hundred metres long and only one metre wide. The trench is filled with bentonite slurry to support the trench in the water charged soil. The backfill is made up of soil and slurry replaces the bentonite at the rear of the trench to replace the slurry. The natural clay and rocks already in the soil support the lower part of the trench.
The concrete slabs that were left over from the steel works have been dug up and are ready to recycled on site. 80% of the concrete’s been crushed for use in the sub base for capping the site, while the remainder 20% will be used for the construction drains.

Article#2 Melbournes Council House 2- ENGINEERS MAG VOL 79

Melbourne’s council house 2 has been the first new multistorey building to receive a six star energy rating. The ten storey high building will during October after it has stood for a year find out whether it has lived up to its’ name.
The 77 million dollar building stands in Little Collin Street in Melbourne CBD was never designed to be a technical masterpiece. The aim of the building was not to impress by sight but to impress by proving such a building is possible. The director of the project said the aim was to set a benchmark for the rest of the industry.
This building will reduce electricity consumption by 85% and gas consumption by up to 93%. Emissions will be 20% less of the current Council House standing next door.
Some of the technical devices installed in the building to allow for these huge reductions are phase-change materials for air-conditioning, automatic windows that purge air at night, façade louvres that follow the sun and are themselves powered by photovoltaic cells, chilled panels, and plants to filter light. The building has a huge concrete core which acts as a thermal mass to assist cooling.
The building has a built in treatment system to extract the sewer running underneath Little Collins Street This system applies this treated water to such thing as toilets.
One of the difficulties when approaching this project was educating the people in the construction and building part of the project that something like this could be built and how.

Article#1 TIMBER FLOORS- THE AGE 24 APRIL

Timber flooring used to be a standard in all Australian homes, but now environmental concerns means that concrete floors are going to be the go from now on,
Changes to energy saving regulations as of next month means that there will be added pressure on builders to use concrete slabs in replace of timber floors.
The 2005 regulations excluded timber floors in meeting the five star energy rating. But next month this exclusion will disappear. Environmentalists are happy with the change, however the building industry is complaining it will add costs, hurt the industry and reduce consumer choice.
The HIA wants the concession to extend for another 12 months until new software can calculate energy use is introduced.
Builders have estimated that 15 to 20 per cent of there home designs will be affected.
Building Commissioner Tony Arnel said that timber floors can be used on top of concrete slabs to receive the five star rating.
A Gippsland builder said 100 of his 120 houses a year use timber floor because it is the best option for such a hilly area, using concrete slabs means an additional cost of up to $10,000.
The five star rating which is being used does not calculate the energy used in creating the materials, researches suggest concrete may be less energy efficient over the whole life span of the building compared to timber, an argument HIA have used against the new proposal.

Information on Glenn Murcutt

This is a quote that has been said about Glenn Murcutt "Glenn Murcutt has become a living legend, and architect totally focused on shelter and the environment, with skills drawn from nature and the most sohpisticated design traditions of the modern movement."

Glenn Murcutt was born in London but grew up in country NSW. This is where he learned to appreciate simple, primitive and basic architecture.
One of Glenn Murcutts favourite architects growing up was Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Murcutts early works strongly reflect Mies van der Rohes ideals.

He is environmentally consciuos when building and designing his houses. He believes in "touching the earth lightly".

When asked what materials he prefers to work with he said "all, you have to understand the nature and preciousness of all materials, I like a combintaiton of metals, concrete, timberm masnory and stone.
He likes the colours white, black, shades of black and nature materials colours.

Glenn Murcutt

This is the Magney House in NSW. The roof line is interesting, but it appears as though he uses the same structure as in his other houses.
From looking at these buildings im going to make the assumption of using steel construction with a mixture of colourbond and wood on the outside.