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Tuesday, November 12, 2024

Shelter Design Leadership Decisions

 

We have not been able to consistently match a given land area with desirable quantities of gross building area, floor quantity, parking, pavement, and unpaved open space to avoid the context we refer to as either “sprawl” or “excessive intensity”. Many designers have felt that building appearance could overcome the level of intensity, or balance introduced, since they are not in control of intensity decisions; but architectural success is a function of both context and appearance. It is a physical symbol of the priorities of its time, and it currently serves an emphasis on growth and consumption.

I should pause to explain a few terms used in this essay.

1)    Shelter capacity is equal to gross building area in sq. ft. per buildable acre occupied.

1)     The maximum gross building area potential of  a given buildable land area is a function of the values entered in the design specification template of a building category forecast model.

2)     Architectural intensity is equal to shelter capacity times the percentage of impervious cover planned or present divided by 10,000.

3)      Architectural intrusion is equal to floor quantity divided by five.

4)      Architectural context is equal to intensity plus intrusion.

We have never had equations and forecast models capable of accurately predicting the gross building area potential of a given buildable land area based on a comprehensive set of design value decisions and a chosen building design category. (I can’t footnote this so please see my note at the end of this essay.) This means that we have never been able to correlate population growth and shelter demand with desirable context compositions of shelter capacity, intensity, and intrusion on a given land area whose cellular growth is limited to prevent consumption of our source of life.

Context measurement and evaluation of existing design specification values related to a given project and building design category can define the parameters needed to produce the balance we seek. It can also define what we seek to avoid.

Context prediction based on a building design category and its related design specification decisions can be used to lead both public and private shelter design toward the physical, social, psychological, environmental, and economic context we seek. This leadership will improve based on the knowledge gained from context measurement and evaluation recorded in a common, comprehensive mathematical language.

Context measurement and evaluation represents knowledge accumulation and the foundation for leadership language. Its conclusions can be used to defend context prediction. The combination can improve the contribution of design to the political decisions concerned with population growth, shelter capacity, and environmental preservation.

SUMMARY ARGUMENT:

1)      The gross building area potential of a given buildable land area is based on a building design category choice, the value decisions entered in the design specification module of its forecast model, and a choice among the floor quantity options planned or permitted and entered in the model.

2)      An incredible number of shelter capacity options are available based on the building design category chosen and the design specification decisions entered in its forecast model as I have discussed in previous essays, and many of these options are undesirable.

3)       Gross building area options combine with occupant activity options on a given land area to produce public and private financial implications. These economic options also have measurable physical intensity, intrusion, and context implications.

4)      A common, correlated design language is needed to reconcile the private profit and public revenue implications of design specification decisions since they produce the shelter capacity, intensity, intrusion and context of the project spaces/places we form into neighborhoods, districts, and cities.

5)      Without a common leadership language, government will continue to pursue development, annexation and redevelopment to reconcile shelter demand and revenue deficiencies based on a strategy of hope and history. it has not proven to be an adequate foundation for anticipation. Private enterprise will continue to pursue development, annexation and redevelopment in pursuit of profit without concern for land consumption and public revenue deficiencies that may appear years after project completion and profit success.

6)      The private and public sectors do not have a common leadership language capable of reconciling private profit and public revenue objectives with the shelter capacity, intensity, intrusion, and context decisions needed to produce a desirable quality of life.

7)      Data science is needed to correlate occupant activity with the revenue results produced per sq. ft. of gross building area occupied. The revenue implications of shelter capacity, intensity, intrusion, context, and activity design decisions cannot be predicted without this information. Real estate developers have estimated the profit and expense potential per sq. ft. of activity for decades if not centuries. Government has no comparable library of knowledge that can be used to evaluate the public revenue and expense implications of a private development proposal, but it assumes these implications over the lifetime of the project when it is approved. In other words, a farmer understands the yield per crop and acre better than a city understands the yield from its activities and zones. These relationships, however, determine the quality of life each can afford over time.

The urban design objective is to correlate population growth, shelter composition and financial stability within sustainable limits that protect our quality and source of life. The objective cannot be pursued with the language of fine art. It will require the mathematics of shelter capacity evaluation. It is a tall order that challenges our parasitic growth in a Darwinian version of symbiotic adaptation. Success will not be a divine gift, however. We are expected to continue building the knowledge and understand the discipline required to shelter and survive.

Walter M. Hosack: November 2024

FOOTNOTE: Nor have we had equations capable of accurately predicting the buildable land needed for a given gross building area objective based on a comprehensive set of design value decisions and a chosen building design category.

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