Building Information Modeling covers technology and presentation techniques. We designed a custom residential house with an accessible suite designed for aging parents of the home’s owners. Multi-family houses increase population density and thus slow urban sprawl. Overall, this home would have a smaller environmental footprint per person than a single family home.
The coursework for Sustainable Site Planning and Development covered site planning concepts and principles as well as sustainable site design principles. Good sustainability practice is to reduce urban sprawl. In this course we designed the site for a multiple residential building on an existing lot on the north shore of Kamloops. Increasing population density is important for environmental sustainability because it keeps development where land had already been developed, allowing undeveloped land to be preserved.
Building Plumbing Design focused on designing the plumbing and gas piping system for a commercial building using the B.C. Plumbing Code and Natural Gas and Propane Installation Code. In the design, emphasis was placed on installing energy efficient fixtures and using economy when designing pipe lines. Appropriate plumbing design makes an impact on the environment by using significantly less water, as well as reducing cost and materials by using economy when designing the piping systems.
Building Technology 1 took us through the start to finish process of designing a residential house. The goal for our house was to make the building as energy efficient as possible. This governed our choice of materials, the direction and size of windows and openings, even to the type of roofing that can accommodate solar panels. When a designer is able to keep the selection of building materials and building practices focused on energy efficiency, this creates buildings that have less green house gas emissions, use less natural gas and electricity and overall have a smaller environmental footprint.
In Building Design, we learned how to design a multi-residential building paying attention to site considerations, environment and region, use of building and space requirements. We learned how to make design choices to improve the mechanical features of a building to make that building environmentally friendly, net zero energy, or even net positive energy. It is possible to make a building that releases energy back into the grid, cleansed air back into the atmosphere, and cleaner water back into city’s water system.
