430
Design Development
431
BUILDING CONFIGURATION (PRELIMINARY BLOCK LAYOUT
STUDIES)
431.1
GENERAL BUILDING CHARACTERISTICS
The study of building configurations establishes a basic building design
concept which defines the general characteristics of the building in terms
of massing, height, location on site, overall organization, growth potential,
etc., and which is an essential preliminary to establishing block layouts.
The use of planning modules enables the designer to interrupt the
program requirements at the level of gross area allocations and desirable
departmental relationships and to quickly translate these requirements into
a number of alternative configurations. These configurations can then be
related to the site and their comparative merits evaluated against
considerations of access, views, orientation, topography, soil conditions,
etc. Thus, all the relevant design factors can be brought together and
reconciled on a broad conceptual level at a very early stage.
431.2
SPACE MODULE SELECTION
431.2.1
Basic Considerations
The space module in conjunction with the structural subsystem and the
service bay (Section 251.3) defines the assembly characteristics of the
service module in the bed-care portion of the hospital. Space module
selection and the development of configuration options should be pursued
simultaneously. Building program definition at this stage may be
legitimately quite sketchy, containing only enough information to establish
gross configuration.
The general medical and surgical (GM&S) nursing unit should be used as
the basis of selecting the appropriate space module types. This is due to
the large proportion of the bed-care program represented by these units
and their high degree of organizational predictability.
The considerations identified below may be applied in various sequences,
and some may need to be applied in several cycles as the selection
process narrows. The relative importance of the considerations will vary
with the conditions encountered on each specific building project. An
example of one application is contained in Section 733.
1 - 237
Previous Page
