Design

The design of a building includes planning for several major elements that make a building work:

THE STRUCTURAL SYSTEM gives the building it is skeleton

THE ENCLOSURE SYSTEM gives the building it’s skin and insulation, and

THE MECHANICAL SYSTEM acts as a building’s lungs, guts, and veins.

Within these systems are other more subtle systems:

The way we move through a building: the way the spaces interact, along with the halls and hidden halls we use to get from point to point

The building’s personality: its colors, textures, and the way light interacts within it, and

The buildings context, or the way it relates to the world around it.

When all of these systems are integrated into a coherent whole, the building performs at its best.

Before we go down this rabbit hole, let’s address some general considerations...

Planning a build of any magnitude is a complex process. The information in this book is intended to help you move through this process in an easy-to-understand and manageable way. We will offer tips and tricks and rules of thumb to help keep things moving. There are entire books written on every subject we will cover here, so please know that our attempt at describing them is to offer a general understanding of the system and to be able to compare systems. This is in no way meant to be a comprehensive analysis of every system, though every system we cover has been scrutinized from many viewpoints to try and make things easier and get you to the right answer, sooner.

One of the most important tips we can offer here is to understand that with nearly every building material, we will be working with something called nominal and actual dimensions. For instance, what we call a 2x4 today is not a true 2x4. That is its NOMINAL size. The ACTUAL dimension of a 2x4 is 1-3/4 inches x 3-1/2 inches. Windows and doors are the same. They have an “actual opening” size, and a “framed opening” size. Most materials and products have multiple dimensions to consider. So, verify your measurements three times and cut once. Then you can save yourself the headaches of re-doing. Also, always keep in mind that it is easier to cut framing to size than it is to cut gypsum board. It is also easy to trim adobes to the size you need. Build around the easiest thing to cut to minimize effort.