SARC 321 Construction - 2023
Project 2 = 30% of your final mark
Core Construction Drawings & Services:
Core and interior construction of a mixed-use Office /
Apartment building
Background Info
• Building same as Assignment 1 - Your structure is set - now it is time to analyse the Core • Your
team will be working in 3 areas: Core, Ceilings, Services.
• Do not detail the Façade - that is the final Assignment.
Assignment requirements - What your Core needs
• Your job as a team is to take the structure of the building that you have got so far, and to develop
the core of the building. The Core is the place where vertical circulation happens - of people (stairs
and lifts), of services (water, sewerage, electricity, data, HVAC), and of structure (usually the Core
helps provide the major support to the building).
• As a team, you will design and draw up the core and add to it where necessary to provide a full set
of structure and services to the building. These will include the following:
• Structure: Assume that some of your walls are structural and some are not. Typically, an equal
amount of shear wall action is needed within the Core going from east to west, as it is going from
north to south. The shear walls should span between one column to another column, right down to
the basement and the piles underneath. Other walls can be plasterboard - but where they are still
needed as fire walls they must be fire-rated 60/60/60.
• Lifts: The Core will usually need a minimum of 3 lifts, opening into the common lobby on each
floor, and connecting level access to the street at ground level. Refer to TALL for information on size
of lifts and their lift shafts. You may want to have some lifts serving just the Office floors, and other
lifts serving just the Apartment floors
• Stairs: Every tall building should have two (2) emergency egress stairs - minimum for Fire (stair
design info NZBC clause D1 Access Routes) - this applies to all floors, whether for Offices or
Apartments. One stair should exit into the ground floor lift lobby so that people can escape out the
front door - the other stair should exit direct to the street outside. A separate stair may go from the
basement to the ground floor. In an office building the two exits are usually in one core, although
sometimes there may be a separate escape core.
Toilets. Find number of toilets needed from NZBC for Office floors - at 10m² per person, an 800m²
floor plan will be able to seat a maximum of 80 people. Assume 60/40 split for both sexes, ie if there
are 80 people on the floor, assume that 48 of them could be male (ie 60%), and 48 could also be/n• to find number of office toilets needed for these people: refer to NZ Building Code Clause G1
http://www.building.govt.nz/building-code-compliance/g-services-and-facilities/g1-personal-
•
hygiene/
•Also available to use MOBIE website: (where they have a calculator to help with this)
• http://www.building.govt.nz/building-code-compliance/g-services-and-facilities/g1-personal-
hygiene/calculator-for-toilet-pan/toilet-calculator/
Service Risers
• Electrical: Need 2 x riser cupboards 1.5m wide x 0.8m deep, to house the DB (distribution board).
This riser will have walls and a floor - any holes for cables will be simply cored through a small area
of the floor. Try to arrange these in different sides of the core for dual supply to floors. Applies to
both Office floors and Apartment floors.
• Data: Need 1 riser 1.0m wide x 0.5m - again, it will have a floor, with holes for data cables just
cored through the floor - also need one Comms room 3m x 3m on each floor - accessed from within
the core. The Comms room will be filled by racks of servers / cables, plus a PC. Applies to Office
floors only, not Apartment floors.
• Fire: Within one of the fire stairs, you will need 1 zone 0.5m wide x 0.5m, for 1 pipe to go vertically
as a wet riser, and this may also contain a pipe for the sprinklers. Applies to both Office floors and
Apartment floors. Allow for this wet riser to be within one of the Fire stairs.
• Plumbing: For the plumbing, you need to provide a 600mm min depth behind office floor WCs for
access to the cisterns and the WC soil-stack connections. This will have a solid floor - but will
culminate in a 600x300 WC riser void for the pipework to descend down to the basement. Office
floors only. All apartment floors to have 1 vertical plumbing riser, a minimum of 600x600, shared
between every 2 apartments. This should feed into the Office floor riser. Please note: plumbing from
one apartment CANNOT be routed through the ceiling of the apartment in the floor below.
Air Ducts ie HVAC systems
• HVAC-2 risers @ 2000 x 1500 min each (for HVAC air supply ducts and HVAC exhaust air ducts) to
Office floors - none to Apartment floors.
This is the key part of the assignment - allow for fresh air coming in on one side of the core, and
exhaust air going out at high level at least 6m away from the fresh air. These two ducts must be on
the outside edge of the core in order to get the air out onto the office floor. The task here is to
manage the flow of fresh air out of the core and into the ceiling. On Office floors, allow for:
• Wet Services riser: 2 risers @ 600x600 for Hot and Cold water - near the WCs.
• Kitchenette extract riser: 500 x 500 (1 kitchenette/floor)- near the kitchenette to exit at roof level
• Toilet exhaust: -2 risers @ 700 x 700 - to exit at roof level
• Staircase pressurisation riser: - 1000 x 500-one per stair, near stair.
• Ground floor retail shop riser: 2 @ 600 x 600 - to exit above ground floor retail
• Carpark extract: 1 @ 600 x 600 - to exit above ground floor retail/nAssignment deliverables - What you need to do
• Each student to produce :
• One team member to produce Office Core plan and RCP (presumably Arch student)
• One team member to produce Apartment Core plan and RCP (presumably Arch or GDDE student)
• One team member to produce Office Core / Services plan (presumably BBSc student)
• All of you should work together on the Core Design, collaboratively.
• Core Plan is to be of the CORE of the building, at scale 1:50 (no, not the rest of the building)
• No, it cannot be at 1:100 - if it is too big for one A3 sheet, use a second A3 sheet to continue.
Please do not change scales.
• All plans should show walls, dimensions, grids, materials, section lines, finishes, levels etc.
Drawings should be as close as possible to working drawing standard - refer to Dan Crooks set (on
BB) as an example.
• We are not marking the façade - this is just an exercise on the CORE.
• Ceiling plan (also at 1:50) needs to show the Reflected Ceiling of your Plan - and should show
what you can see on the ceiling - materials, finishes, heights, lights, outlets, etc. You will also be
showing the beams under the floor above, indicated by dotting on their location.
The team member doing the Services plan at the Core will need to show all the Services above the
ceiling in the core, and concentrate their details on how the Services get out of the core.
• Sections (at 1:20) are to be through the CORE of the building (all of you), and should be of a typical
floor, reaching from just below one floor, to just above the floor above. Enough so that you can see
the construction of one whole floor, and that it takes into account all or part of one of the Egress
stairs. This will fit on an A3 in height: use 2 sheets of A3 if you need to get the full width. Please be
assured that one 3.8m high section should JUST fit on an A3 sheet at 1:20 but if not, cut an area out
of the middle - show the important structure at top and bottom.
• Construction details are to be at scale 1:5 (preferable) or 1:10. Use the section to help you find the
3 design areas that will need to be described further in the detail drawings.
Please concentrate on designing the Architectural Details of the Core-ie non-structural walls.
Specify all materials and assume a high quality fitout with quality materials, and appropriate means
of fixing these materials. Both 2D and 3D details are welcome, of any parts of the core - not the
details like reinforcing, but the walls, floors, ceilings, finishes, doors, stairs, inter-tenancy walls,
services, etc. Visually describe your building through your plans, sections and detail drawings.
This is an exercise in Construction - your detail should be showing the construction. Suitable images
will include core plans and sections as well as details & 3D etc.
• Annotation on your drawings - as you know, a working drawing will have written information to
show what the lines are in the drawing. You should state materials, dimensions, grids, finishes,
levels, cross references etc. All drawn neatly and to scale. Effectively, if you draw a line, it needs to
have a note describing what that is trying to show (within reason...). Keep your notes neat and
aligned in straight columns etc. Some exemplar work will be posted up over the next few weeks./nDrawing Style (to clarify any questions):
• All drawings to be A3, and drawn as ARCHITECTURAL WORKING DRAWINGS to show construction.
• Do NOT cut vertically through centre of a column.
• Do NOT cut down the centreline of a beam.
• DO NOT BE AN ENGINEER OR A REINFORCING DETAILER - THAT IS NOT YOUR JOB.
Allow for showing a zone of 4m each side of the core showing what happens to the ceiling, lighting,
ducting and services etc.
• Above all, realise this: DO NOT COPY DETAILS OFF GOOGLE. IT IS NOT CORRECT, EVER.
• READ GUY'S BOOK, NOT RANDOM STUFF ON THE INTERNET.
• You should have a cover-page with a floor plan of the whole building, on your chosen site,
indicating position of the core/cores (this will probably be at scale 1:200) or a view of the building.
This is not marked, so don't spend lots of time on this though!
• Every page, including cover, should have your name on.
• Pages should also have the following info in a title block: scale, date, project, page number, your
name, north point, drawing title etc, as you learned in the previous assignment. Your cover page
should also indicate your Group and your tutor's name.
HAND IN - will be on Nuku.
Date as per the Course Outline, Please note:
• Extensions will NOT be issued, except in cases of major illness, applied in advance, with a Doctor's
note. If you have a cold, or your cat is sick, this does not count as an emergency.
• If you think you cannot meet the deadline, aim to ensure your work is handed in EARLY rather than
LATE, and INFORM your tutor.
Learning Objectives:
Students who pass this course will be able to:
1: Analyse the appropriateness and efficacy of common materials, systems and methods of NZ
medium scale construction
2: Apply broad principles of NZ medium scale construction to specific construction situations
3: Be able to research, analyse and solve construction issues
4: Communicate the resolution of construction problems in analogue and digital construction
drawings
5: Develop a techtonic construction strategy for the construction of a moderately complex building
This hand-in is as noted at the start of this Brief.
Do NOT use any Al in your work. Do your own work, think with your own brain.
