First Draft of Construction Documents Complete
As graduating Master of Architecture students at the University of Cincinnati in 2010, my classmates and I were responsible for producing our own thesis projects that not only included a comprehensive building design, but a written document of approximately 100 pages supporting a position related to the field of architecture. The writing requirement, which I believe has since been dropped from the UC curriculum, was especially burdensome for my studio mates and I, who were not at all accustomed to writing in such large quantities as a means of expressing our ideas. That said, the writing product and process proved to be a great parallel and pre-cursor to the construction document process many of us would ultimately undertake on a regular basis as architects with both being highly iterative in the way they take on the forms of multiple drafts prior to publication.
This past weekend, I was able to complete my 'first draft' of the construction documents for the Starter Home 2.0 Oakley house, which much like the thesis document, has an index and series of different sections that elaborate on the specifics of the various disciplines of the project. Similar to the writing process, once the first draft version of the drawing sheets are completed, the next phase, which I will be focusing on in September is editing and making revisions to the overall set. This often takes the form of adding support material, deleting unnecessary and redundant information, and modifying the details to clarify and simplify the construction of various elements. For me, I want to focus primarily on comparing my specifications and details to those of the manufacturers for the building materials I am incorporating into the design and also running some questions past my builder for feedback on the preferred methods of construction they have on some different assemblies that can be constructed in a few different ways. More updates to come in upcoming weeks.
