Dai-ake Residence Project Reflection
Major Steps
My main goal for this project was to make the rooms proportional and properly sized. Each room needed enough space to have an optimized walk path and work triangle. I got a lot of inspirations from rooms in my own home such as; the entertainment room, kitchen, living room, and basement. These areas are similar to my home and therefore I used similar sizing to make the rooms in the Dai-ake residence. Furthermore I also wanted the residence to consist of two buildings. The first building has the entrance, a balcony, an entertainment room, and two smaller bedrooms. The second building however is the main hub of the home. Within it, you could have a kitchen, dining area, living room, stairs to the second floor, master bedroom and bathroom, and the secondary bathroom. The main purpose of the two building design was to separate the entrance of the home with the rest of the home to give it a comfier feeling. Everyday activities and the most popular walk paths would be away from the entrance, giving the home a comfier feeling. The main theme for this project was to make a Vernacular home. The Dai-Ake residences colors are very earthy and blend in with the surrounding forest and mountain side. The homes roof is also slanted unlike a contemporary pointed roof, this was specifically done so that the home fits more inline with the mountain instead of sticking out like a thumbtack.
Important things I learned
For the boardwalks I really wanted to learn how to make a custom roof from placing mass. I googled some tutorials and followed the basic procedure, and followed it to make my own designed roofs. Each boardwalk has a unique roof that helps flow rainfall off of the home and down the mountain. I really enjoyed learning the conceptual mass tool and learning how to generate mass and import it into my project because it is a really helpful tool for designing buildings that do not follow conventional structures. I also explored with elevations and created a dipped room in the main building. For the main building I really didn't like the pre-made stairs that revit creates so I decided to also google some tutorials for making stairs with custom paths. Revit's pre-made stairs consists of only risers but I decided to also add a landing pad in the stairs. I also noticed that I could edit a lot of the components that I got from revit city.
My best
I feel like I organized the rooms pretty well to give the house comfortable walk paths. A lot of the paths are well optimized and does not have any loops that need to be done. Not a lot of the areas are obstructed by walls or furniture and allow the residents to easily be able to walk through. I also really liked the composition of the boardwalks and the roofing for the boardwalks. The boardwalks add a nice outside area between the homes that can have a mini garden attached to them. The boardwalks also serve as a nice hallway between the buildings without having the narrow features of a hallway.
What did I enjoy
The main thing I enjoyed about this home and architecture in general is the design process, the work that is put into the project, and then seeing the finished product including the renderings and floor plans is really rewarding. Designing the home and being able to customize every single detail is extremely fun and really introduces an entire environment of full creative potential that really helps make my ideas a reality. After the entire revit process, rendering and editing the renderings in Photoshop is also extremely fun. Learning the programs is also really fun, the limitless potential with Photoshop gives a lot of opportunities to make your project better than what it already is.
Wishes
I wish that I paid more attention to the material properties instead of just the material appearance. The ceilings do have the hardwood interior finish but because of the laminate finish they are very reflective and resemble a dark colored mirror.
Frustrating moments
Some of the most frustrating moments were: developing the custom stairs, and arranging the floors and ceilings for different elevations. The top portion of the stairs are disconnected from the stair pad, this results in a little gap between the pad and the first riser. The other frustrating thing was arranging the elevations. The living room is dipped down 3 feet causing a gap between the first floor and the living room floor.