Designing Elevations

Designing Elevations
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lifeofanarchitect.com
Bob Borson
Which came first the chicken or the egg? Everyone knows the correct answer is the egg and by
egg I mean floor plans.
I posted a sketch last week of an elevation study and was asked a simple question: do I design the
floor plans first, or the elevations? The correct answer is that the floor plans get developed first, but
there is still a lot of give and take when it comes time to develop the exterior elevations. I generally
have something in mind when I am putting together the plans on how I want the elevations to look
but the plans are the first piece of the puzzle.
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9/26/16, 8:45 PM
For me, I start with the generic concept of how I want the building mass to work. I think about the
forms and the shapes, and I think about how the space around the forms is going to work. Questions
like:How does the approach to the house feel? or What sort of living spaces will be a part of this
view? are the considerations for how the building massing will work and what sort of views I want to
create from within the house. Other than that, the initial floor plan concepts are about getting the
programming, room sizes, and adjacencies correct.
See that computer drawing above? Its pretty nasty, isnt it? Ive seen potato salad left out in the sun
that looked better than this elevation but thats okay this isnt a design elevation, its a study on
massing and it is only the very first step of many that are about to happen. I had the floor plan I
sketched entered into Revit (because Im not a caveman) and had the exterior elevations blocked out.
I gave direction on vertical heights and roof slopes and the image above is what I got.
Clearly, it needs a whole lot of attention.
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9/26/16, 8:45 PM
So here is what you get after a few quick passes a lot of scale and proportion rework. The scale was
all kinds of wrong, and the first thing to do was change the roof pitch. I also started to consider where
I was going to put in windows and what sort of composition I was going to try to achieve with this
elevation. The clients want a modern house, but they live in a development that has aesthetic
requirements that slant a bit more towards the traditional. As a result, I was going to try to find a
balance between designing a house that was rooted in traditional massing and proportioning, but also
had more modern elementsto it. In my mind, this meant channeling my favorite Arts & Crafts
architect, Sir Edwin Lutyens, so that I could bridge the gap between styles and use
asymmetricalhierarchy to achieve my intended result.
I know Asymmetrical hierarchy is the most architectural thing Ive ever said on this site.
Asymmetry simply means that the massing will not be symmetrical although there will be balance
thats where the hierarchypart comes in. Hierarchy in this case simply means that there will be
items (windows, doors, etc.) that are placed within the building massing with different level of
importance.
I included the video above to give you an idea of what the overall floor plan looks like at this stage of
development. I will end up going back and forth between the floor plan and the elevations as each is
developed with growing clarity.
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9/26/16, 8:45 PM
Now that Ive blocked out the massing for the building, its time to start sketching in openings like
doors and windows. You might have noticed that I didnt draw in any windows into my floor plans in
the beginning its because I wanted to wait and see how the exterior elevations would be developed.
I had an idea of where windows would go, but I waited until I could see how the proportions and
massing of the elevation came together. If you are really clever and observant, youll notice that there
was one significant plan change between the plans and the sketches for the exterior elevations.
Do you see it?
So this is one of the elevation studies I produced. Truth be told, I have about 15 or 20 of these sorts of
studies. This is the sort of thing I always think about whenever I get comments from people who think
I am wasting my time sketching rather than simply drawing these elevations directly into the
computer. Each one of these studies took me a few minutes and I dont care how fast you think you
are at AutoCAD or Revit whatever, you arent faster than me when I am sketching. It would be one
thing if I was completely ignorant to how the drafting process worked, but Im not. At this stage, I am
looking at big picture items massing, scale, proportion, even materiality. When it comes time to
actually draw this in a manner where the size of the windows course out with the building siding
matters I will defer to CAD.
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9/26/16, 8:45 PM
As the exterior elevations are being developed, changes to the floor plan naturally occur. The
significant plan change I mentioned earlier did you find it? If not, it was the massing at the front
entry. I needed to change the footprint of the building so that I could change the scale and massing of
the front approach. As a result, I added a small covered entry porch at the front door a move that
will allow me to change my roof line and bring the scale of the approach down to a more human scale.
Here is my final sketch for this particular scheme its not a presentation drawing, its for
communicating within the office on how we want the direction of the house to develop. The people
who will be helping me on this project will take this sketch and start inputting it into Revit to make
sure that the scale of my sketch considerations translates to actual building materials. We will also
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need to extrapolate these ideas and start working our way around the other sides of the house which
will be relatively easy since weve now worked out a concept for how the building will appear.
So back to the original question which comes first, the floor plan or the elevation? The floor plans
always come first, but there is an ebb and flow between both the floor plan and the elevations that will
require most designers to be somewhat fluid in their design process.
Cheers and happy designing.
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9/26/16, 8:45 PM

Designing Elevations

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Designing Elevations

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Designing Elevations

Clearly, it needs a whole lot of attention.

Do you see it?

Cheers and happy designing.

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