Detailed Design And Elevations

The construction of Deakin, a 10-storey student accommodation in Geelong involves a construction from the car park basement building which had earlier been proposed and built by the designers. During the construction of the car park, the designers managed to set up a basement car park plan, a ground floor plan as well as, a proposed student accommodation however; the designers had not yet started working on the 10-storey student accommodation construction. The construction of the car park building consumed a lot of space since the structure was also to be used in building the storey. The proposed plan also suggests that in the next 10-15 years, the 10-storey student accommodation would be used for something else where it would be then converted into a building office. As a result, when designing the structure, the architects should have a rough draft on how the structure should look like before implementation thus serving three purposes, firstly serving as a car park, secondly, serving as a student accommodation building and lastly in ten to fifteen years the building would be converted into a building office.

Methods for construction

During the conversion of the car park building site to a 10-storey student accommodation, there are various structures that the architect will design while others will be removed. For example, structures such as gymnasium, shops, mail room, shopping centre as well as, computer rooms will have to be designed within the ground floor. In addition, the designer will also use various tools and equipments during elevation processes. Given that, only the designers and architects have the ability of fixing and seeing whether the structures are proportional, it is their responsibility to ensure that they implement a structure as proposed by the client in the proposed layout plan. Elevations are essential when constructing the lift core, stairwell, kitchen design and many others. Therefore, without proper elevation drawings, the designer may not be able to design and see the details of the new designed structures. When constructing a storey building, the designers should make sure that they start putting the structure by constructing a basement to give the building a strong and firm foundation. In this case, converting a car park into a 10 storey student accommodation is not a hard work; however the designers should have a proper plan on how they can put this to work out.

Starting from the lowest ground, the proposed building should have at least two basement floors which will provide enough car park spaces for the students who own vehicle and a front desk for reception since the storey will still be used as office in the coming 10-15 years. The proposed building should also have at least six residential floors which will be used for accommodating the students and later be used as offices. Enclosing the building within a floor area is also an important factor to be considered when putting up the structure. A good building structure should be enclosed within a floor area of 2500m2 at each floor which will include the two basements proposed in the plan to split the amount of car parks given that each residence will be designed in a way that it can receive a designated car spot.

Conversely, there will only be one gate which will serve as the entrance for the people and cars parked in the basement. And since this will be a 10-storey building, the lift core will be designed in the centre of the floor plan in order to gain a fair access from all the residence. However, stairwell should also be designed for evacuation processes and hence can be used by the residence in terms of emergencies such as when there is power outage, and this should be designed just a few meters from the lift core. In each residential floor, kitchen and open plan lounge should be located to the right of the lift core that will feature a double-door opening. The 10-storey Deakin building will be designed in a way that it maximizes its standards of sustainability eco-friendly factors, where services for toilets will be designed and shared among the residence instead of individually since this will save maintenance as well as labor.

Ground Floor Plan

Ground floor of a storey building should be properly planned for easy designing. When constructing a 10-storey student accommodation, the designer or the architect should have some structures like shops, computer rooms or mail rooms designed at 200m2 by 200m2 just a few meters from the stairwell and lift core. Since this is a big building, the designer should have at least five shops with a proposed a shopping centre within the ground floor. The designed mail room will be efficient and convenience to the students because this will reduce the time they would have used from moving from the building to another one. The architects on the other hand should design a gymnasium of about 420m2 on the ground floor. This is important because most students are young people who wish to have a good health and this can only be done if they are capable of going to gymnasium and doing practices to keep them physically fit.