SARC 321 Assignment 1 Brief

Assignment 1: Structure
Module Code: SARC321
Module Name: Construction
Due: 8 pm, Thursday, 23 July 2026
Mark:  25% of overall grade

1. Introduction

In this course you will be working on a tall building across all three assignments and producing documentation relating to the construction. The building will be retail/hospitality at the base, offices for the middle section (6 or more floors), residential apartments in the upper section (6 or more floors.)

You will be working in teams of three or four. Most teams will be composed of 2x Architecture students and 1x Building Science student, some teams have 3x Architecture students.

For documenting your building, you are to work using BIM software (Revit or Archicad) in your team and utilise shared models to coordinate your work. This will help your team’s building and documentation have consistent gridlines, levels, and common elements of structure, core, and envelope.

Treat all the assignments in this course as if they are professional tasks for a real project – this is a chance to learn construction methods, sequencing, and detailing, and to practice professional communication through drawing and reports.

1.1 The task

The Assignment 1 task is to propose, resolve, and document the structural framework of a tall building.

1.2 Architecture students

Your task is to design and produce construction drawings of the main structure for your part of the building, including the basic structure of the core.

1.3 Building Science students

Your task is to plan the construction of the whole building structure for your team and produce a construction schedule and assumptions report.

1.4 Collaboration & coordination

You need to work closely together as a team and make shared decisions about the design, construction and detailing approach for your building. Architectural drawings, Building Science project plans, and other documentation must all be coordinated and represent the same building design and construction.

Architecture and Building Science students need all to work together in your team to design, agree, and understand the proposed structure. This means regular conversations together – a key attribute of Architecture and Project Management is good communication.

2.0 Scenario / Design Brief 

2.1 Site selection

In week one, as a team, you need to select a site and design a new tall building (over 12storeys) for that site. There are no tutors in week one, your team needs to have a site and basic building design before you meet with your tutors in week two.

This is a short assignment so don’t waste time searching for a “perfect site.” Pick a suitable one and stick with it. Similarly, rapidly come up with a basic design and stick with it, this is a construction course not a design studio.

In week two (Monday!), you need to have a printed draft site plan and sketch design of your building massing and structure to discuss with your architect tutor, the structural engineer, and the project manager.

Site requirements

• Anywhere in the city of your tutorial group.
• A typical floor area of your building should be 800-1,000 m² (i.e., measured to the outside of the building envelope.) This requires an empty site of around 1,200 m².
• Draw a site plan in week one and discuss, sense-check and confirm your team’s site with your architect tutor in week two. This is your site for the rest of the course.

2.2 Building size

• Research what size building your team would like to design.
• Find precedent high quality office buildings from anywhere around the world, of 12 or more storeys, and analyse the structure and construction. Each student in a team needs a different precedent.

2.3 Structural requirements

• As a team, research and choose what materials to use for constructing your building structure o Structural material options mass/engineered timber, steel, and reinforced concrete. Hybrid structures are possible, but discouraged as it adds considerable complexity and challenges.
• Consider the carbon impact and climate change resilience of your choices.
• Please note: due to seismic issues, hollow-core slabs are not an option.

2.4 Tall Building Design guide

The following information is typical for tall buildings and may be suitable for your building design. If you’re being more creative, you may deviate from this with justification if your solutions are still practical.

• Offices: Floor to floor (vertical) dimension is typically 3,800-4,200 mm
• Apartments: Floor to floor dimension is typically around 3,200-3,400 mm
• Retail/hospitality: Floor to floor dimension is typically 4,000-6,000 mm for the ground floor. If it extends to the first floor, floor to floor dimension would typical reduce to the same as an office level.
• Floor to Ceiling height: 2,700 mm minimum to all floors, leaving the rest of the height for floor slab, structure and services.
• Slab thickness: 150 mm on top of beams (this may be different depending on your floor construction)
• Columns: allow for columns of 500-600 mm square. Refer to the relevant chapters in the textbook Tall for more information about materials. Check manufacturer’s data for size of steel beams and columns.
• Beams:
  o Primary beams are the deepest, longest, strongest beams. These will span from column to column, and bear the greatest load, straight down into the column.
  o Secondary beams are smaller beams which span between primary beams.
  o For example, on a building with columns at 12.0 m centres, allow for primary beams 600 mm deep x 300 mm wide along gridlines, with 200 mm x 300 mm deep secondary beams if needed (dependent on your chosen structural solution) across the grids with the shorter span. Use RESIST to test your building frame.
  o If there are any small trimmer beams needed between the secondary beams, these are known as tertiary beams – i.e., the third level of structure.

2.5 Project planning guide

You should use Microsoft Project or a similar project planning software to plan and document the proposed construction sequence with a Gantt Chart.

Plan out the construction sequence of from basement upwards, foundations, columns, beams, slabs etc. Show the construction of every floor and allow at least two weeks per above-ground floor for constructing just the structure. You will developed this further in Assignment 3 where you will add in other parts of the building like the core, envelope etc..

When producing your project plan, you need to write a short Assumptions Report setting out your reasons for the timescale and sequence of the chosen construction methods and materials of your team. This report should be factual and professional with graphs, diagrams, and illustrations of relevant construction processes.

The Gantt chart must be readable on A3 sheets. Sometimes this is not a simple thing to do, and so the exercise forces you to not only put the elements into the programme, but also to test what happens when you try to communicate the information. Discuss how to do this with your team, other building science students, and the project manager tutor. If your work is not readable, it will be marked down.

3.0 Scope

This assignment is just about the structure of the building.

Drawing Sheets

• All sheets should include a title block with the following: project name, sheet number, sheet name/title, scale, your name, date, north point, etc.. Everyone in the same team is to use the same title blocks Plans
• Show gridline and structure and areas for the core
• Do not detail any floor layouts for retail/hospitality, office, or apartments.

Structure

• Design and document the columns, beams, slabs, shear walls, bracing
• Remember that in most cases structure will travel straight and vertical from the foundations right up to the top of the building, i.e., columns and shear walls will be vertical.

Core

• Identify 1-2 structural bays (or approximately 20% of the floor plan) as a proposed core location and plan where any major shear wall elements might go. (Hint: if your structure includes shear walls, roughly the same amount are needed in the north-south direction as in the east-west direction.)
• Do not detail the core layout or construction at this stage (that is Assignment 2) but do indicate on your drawings the shear walls, and where the core / lifts / exit stairs are (just annotate the spaces on your plans, do not design or detail them.)
• Remember that the core will travel straight and vertical from the foundations right up to the top of the building, like the structure. Envelope
• Do not detail the building envelope at this stage (that is Assignment 3) but show it as a zone 150 mm thick around the perimeter of your building

Architectural drawings and details

The point of architectural drawings and details is to show the qualities of the architecture, space and materials, not to show the engineering. Even when the drawings are of the structure.

• Engineers will do concrete details that show the reinforcing, this is not necessary for architectural details. For instance, on architectural drawings, reinforcing can be indicative/diagrammatic only or not even drawn at all.
• An architectural drawing of the structure captures the space, the beams, the slabs, the shear walls, the external edge of the structural slab, and the envelope zone.
• An architectural detail is always cut perpendicular to structural elements, never along them. You can cut vertically and perpendicular through a beam or horizontally through a column. You never draw a detail that cuts a section through a column, in a section detail the column should be shown in elevation.

4.0 Tools

Architectural documentation

• You must use Revit, or Archicad. If you wish to deviate from these options, please see the course coordinator.
• All drawing sheets handed in must be fully produced in Revit or Archicad and printed to PDF. “Postproduction” and supplementary work on drawing sheets in other software for any purpose is not permitted and will be marked down.
• These are production tools used in practice and are capable of producing high quality, neat and clear documentation as required for this course

Building Science documentation

• Microsoft Project is available on the computers in the BBSc room. And there are other free options you can download such GantProject ganttproject.biz
• You can use any suitable software for your assumptions report
• The project plan and assumptions report and all other sheets in the deliverables must be combined and submitted as a single document.

5.0 Deliverables

All hand-ins must be uploaded to Nuku as a single PDF per student.

All students, Architecture & Building Science, in the team are to use the same cover sheet for their assignment.

The file must be named as following:

• pdf

Architecture student 1: Office structure

A set of A3 architectural drawings with the following:

Architecture student 2: Apartment structure A set of A3 architectural drawings with the following:

• Same drawings as for Architecture student 1, but for an apartment level

Architecture student 3: Retail/Hospitality structure A set of A3 architectural drawings with the following:

• Same drawings as for Architecture student 1, but for the ground level

Building Science student

An A3 project planning document with the following: