Rectangular Floor Plans Research Articles

Daylight in atrium buildings: Geometric shape and vertical sky components

This study investigated the impact of well geometry on vertical sky components in atria with square and rectangular forms under a CIE standard overcast sky. By comparing scale model measurements and analytical theory the vertical sky components, calculated using Radiance, were validated. More simulated data of vertical sky components for a very wide range of atrium geometries are given. From the results the attenuation of the vertical sky component on the wall of a square atrium is explained and some empirical functions are derived. In addition, the results from atrium models with rectangular floor plans show the relationships between the vertical sky component and the plan aspect ratio. Some guidelines for design are presented.

Effects of infill walls and floor diaphragms on the dynamic characteristics of a narrow-rectangle building

Most buildings in Singapore are lightly reinforced concrete structures, which are mainly designed for gravity loading only, because Singapore is an island country located in a low-to-moderate seismic region. The dynamic properties of a typical high-rise residential building with a long, narrow rectangular floor plan are studied using both experimental and numerical methods. The effects of the brick infill walls and the flexible diaphragms on the dynamic characteristics of the building are discussed in detail. The results from the ambient vibration tests are correlated with the numerical results of three different finite element models with different levels of sophistication. They include a bare frame model, a frame model with brick infill walls, and a frame model with both brick infill walls and flexible diaphragms. The dynamic properties of the third model match very well with the measured results in terms of both the natural frequencies and the mode shapes. The correlation results demonstrate the respective effects of the brick infill walls and the flexible diaphragms on the dynamic characteristics of the narrow-rectangle building structure. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Dynamic insulation in multistorey buildings

Dynamic insulation permits the movement of air and moisture through the external walls of a building to reduce heat loss and achieve high indoor air quality. The present paper details a pilot study carried out to examine the influence of fire safety requirements and external wind on the performance of naturally ventilated multistorey buildings in which the external envelope is dynamically insulated. The theoretical foundation is outlined for a spreadsheet model used to simulate prototype 3-, 4-, 5- and 10-storey buildings all sharing the same rectangular floor plan, with fresh air drawn into the building through the envelope by depressurisation using a fan-driven, ducted extract system. From the analysis, the effects of wall porosity, depressurisation level, extract system deployment, occupant density and distribution, and building orientation have been quantified, confirming the practical feasibility of such a system.

EDGE COVERING OF COMPLEX TRIANGLES IN RECTANGULAR DUAL FLOORPLANNING

Rectangular dual graph approach to floorplanning is based on the adjacency graph of the modules in a floorplan. If the input adjacency graph contains a cycle of length three which is not a face (complex triangle), a rectangular floorplan does not exist. Thus, complex triangles have to be eliminated before applying any floorplanning algorithm. This paper shows that the weighted complex triangle elimination problem is NP-complete, even when the input graphs are restricted to 1-level containment. For adjacency graph with 0-level containment, the unweighted problem is optimally solvable in O(c1.5 + n) time where c is the number of complex triangles and n is the number of vertices of the input graph.

Refuges d’illusions techniques : deux salles de cinéma de Paul Auscher

Houses of scenic illusion : two cinemas built by Paul Auscher. The architecture of cinemas at the beginning of the twentieth century was still close to that of meeting rooms or concert halls. Their owners were not always convinced that the new entertainment form would be a lasting success and wanted to be able to reconvert the premises should the cinema prove to be a flop. But this situation evolved very rapidly. The new cinema built by Auscher in 1913 in Paris (rue La Condamine, in the 17th arrondissement, today demolished) had a rectangular floor plan with rows of seating in line. The creation of a balcony supported by reinforced concrete pillars is an innovation compared to traditional theatre architecture. In 1919, Auscher’s second cinema building, the « Marcadet-Cinéma-Palace », in the me Marcadet in the 18th arrondissement (also demolished today) had a trapezoidal plan with seating layed out concentrically. The theoretical treatises on cinema architecture dating from before the First World War and just after it allow the technical specificities of the new building type to be remarked upon, particularly in the way they differ from buildings for other types of spectacle. The place of the orchestra, the visibility of the screen, security measures against fire risks are some of the problems calling for new solutions. Similarly, the importance of the vestibule, the foyer-bar and the cloakroom are not the same in a cinema as elsewhere. Auscher’s solutions to these problems are interesting ones and his façades reveal a significant evolution from the point of view of their ornamentation. His first cinema is richly decorated, corresponding with a desire for an «advertising » façade. The formal simplification of the years 1910 to 1914 is to be seen in the façade of the « Marcadet-Batignolles-Palace », Auscher’s last building which also demonstrated his skill in putting the resources of reinforced concrete to work.

Knowledge‐Based Approach to Overall Configuration of Multistory Office Buildings

A knowledge‐based system (KBS) is described that generates space layout alternatives for multistory office buildings taking into account flexibility and functionality, as well as constraints imposed by the owner and codes. A methodology for the generation of rectangular floor plans at different levels of detail is also presented. The layout alternatives generated include information regarding the number of stories, dimensions of a typical floor, and the size and location of the service core, with space allocated for different components such as elevators, mechanical risers, and the service area. Multidisciplinary design criteria, such as flexibility of rental areas, compatibility with structural system, general energy efficiency, etc., are extracted from a variety of sources in the literature and considered in the generation and evaluation of layouts. This KBS module for space layout is part of an integrated design system for multistory buildings to assist at the preliminary design stage.

A theory of rectangular dual graphs

Arectangular graph is a plane graph where all regions are four-sided and all edges are oriented in either the vertical or the horizontal direction. In addition the graph enclosure must also be rectangular. Given a plane graph representing a desired component connectivity, itsrectangular dual can be used to build afloorplan. This indicates that a system implementation can allocate rectangular floorplan regions to components that can be pairwise connected through common borders.

Building Rectangular Floorplans–A GraphTheoretical Approach

Rectangular dualisation is a technique used to generate rectangular topologies for use in top‐down floorplanning of integrated circuits. In order for this technique to be used in a floorplanning system, its input, the connectivity graph representing an integrated circuit has to fulfill a number of conditions. This paper presents an efficient algorithm that transforms an arbitrary connected graph, representing an integrated circuit, into another graph that is guaranteed to fulfill these conditions and to admit rectangular duals. Effectively, the algorithm solves the global routing problem by using three techniques: passthrough, wiring blocks and collapsed wiring blocks. Resulting floorplans may be passed to a chip assembler and detailed router package to complete the layout. This paper also introduces a novel technique to transform a tree of biconnected sub‐graphs into a block neighbourhood graph that is a path.

Finite element approximation for low-frequency sound in a room with absorption

The two-dimensional flow of acoustic energy is calculated in a room with parallel ceilings and floors and of a rectangular floor plan in the finite element approximation. The interior surfaces of the room are assumed to be reverberant, with the exception of a locally reactive vertical strip of impedance Z=0.7 ρc located on one of walls. Solutions are obtained for a vertically oriented acoustic line source with volumetric flow rate Q per unit length and frequency ω that intersects horizontal planes in the room at the point (x(s),y(s)). The frequency response is calculated by expanding the acoustic Green’s function as the direct product of the damped room eigenmodes, as approximated by the finite element analysis. This approach allows calculation of the room response for various frequencies and source locations in the post processing phase of the finite element solution.

Rectangular and Orthogonal Floorplans with Required Room Areas and Tree Adjacency

A rectangular floorplan can always be found to satisfy area requirements for each room and adjacencies between rooms represented by a given tree, T. The branching index and embedding index of a tree are defined. If, further, each room is required to be external, then the existence of a rectangular floorplan is dependent upon the embedding index of T. Orthogonal floorplans in which each room is rectangular or L-shaped are always possible under the same conditions. Extensions to some other nonrectangular floorplans are given.

Algorithms for floorplan design via rectangular dualization

A rectangular floorplan construction problem is approached from a graph-theoretical view. The study is based on a reduction of the rectangular dualization problem to a matching problem on bipartite graphs. This opens the way to applying traditional graph-theoretic methods and algorithms to floorplanning. Another result is a method for generating alternative rectangular duals, such that a proposed floorplan can be optimized by a sequence of iterative transformations. This approach is made more practical than others, by assuming that the given structure graph can be modified to force it to admit a rectangular dual. Algorithms that introduce edges and vertices into the given graph until a rectangular dual can be constructed are also presented. >

Nonexistence of a certain rectangular floorplan with specified areas and adjacency

In facility layouts—the designing of floorplans with certain rooms adjacent to each other—there are often area constraints for the rooms. Robinson and Janjic showed that, if areas are specified for rooms with a given maximal outerplanar adjacency graph, then any convex polygon with the correct area can be divided into convex rooms to satisfy both area and adjacency requirements. If the perimeter and rooms must be rectangular, undimensioned floorplans can be found to fit any maximal outerplanar adjacency graph with at most four vertices of degree 2. It is shown that in some cases it is not always possible to satisfy the area constraints.

A comparison of the transient acoustical response of Symphony Hall, Boston, Massachusetts and Memorial Chapel, Schenectady, New York utilizing an anthropometric manikin

An anthropometric manikin has been employed to record acoustical transient response in Symphony Hall in Boston, Massachusetts and in Memorial Chapel on the Union College campus in Schenectady, New York, two buildings that appear to have many common architectural parameters and similar architectural histories. Reverberation time curves for the two halls indicate a great similarily in their quality of reverberation. Minimal differences in T60 are observed and mid‐frequency reverberation times (the average of T60 at 500 and 1000 Hz) are found to be 2.64 and 2.95 s for Symphony Hall and Memorial Chapel, respectively. Acoustical comparisons between the two halls are also made for three temporal energy levels: Definition, LD [R. Thiele, Acustica 3, 291 (1953)], Clarity, LC [V. L. Jordan, R. Swed. Acad. Music, Stockholm (1977)], and Schultz's parameter, LR [P. J. Schultz, IEEE Spectrum (June 1965)]. As a result, it appears that certain time windows associated with specific temporal energy levels are better suited than others for acoustical comparisons. Similar curves for LR, coupled with similar reverberation curves, rectangular floor plans, and building materials suggest a good possibility that these two halls have a great deal in common acoustically.

Turning a graph into a rectangular floor plan

This paper presents a systematic pathway for the design of a floor plan when given the list of cells, the required dimensions of each cell and the matrix of required adjacencies between the cells. The first step is translating the given adjacencies matrix into a graph. The proposed algorithm deals wioth planar adjacencies graphs only. The graph representing the required adjacencies is either originally planar, or should be elaborated into a planar one. This graph is devided into two subgraphs by use of a colouring technique. Dimensions are applied to the two subgraphs using the PERT algorithm. As a result, various alternative plans are generated, composed of rectangular cells, dimensioned according to the given data and maintaining the required adjacencies. At the end, a fully elaborated example is given.

Note on “Synthesis and Optimization of Small Rectangular Floor Plans” of Mitchell, Steadman, and Liggett¶

This note comments on the dimensioning aspect of small rectangular floor plans that is described by Mitchell et al (1976). It outlines the requirements for an optimization algorithm to be used for dimensioning architectural plans and shows that dynamic programming satisfies the requirements. It demonstrates that dynamic programming can handle the integer nonlinear programming problem to produce the global optimum and that the algorithm used by Mitchell et al cannot. Stability and sensitivity considerations are discussed and it is stated that, through the use of the concept of invariant embedding, all feasible assignments may be imbedded in a single dimensionless representation which may then be operated on directly by dynamic programming.

Synthesis and optimization of small rectangular floor plans

This paper describes a set of algorithms for the production of a certain class of architectural plans. Each plan is made up from rectangular rooms arranged within a simple rectangular overall plan shape. The effective upper limit on the number of component rectangles which may presently be treated is eight. Given certain specified requirements as to which rooms shall be adjacent, the algorithms produce exhaustively all topologically distinct arrangements of rooms in which those requirements are satisfied. Constraints on the dimensions and areas of each room may then be introduced. Several approaches for the dimensioning of the rectangular arrangements have been explored. In certain cases, appropriate dimensions may be found by solving simultaneous linear equations. Under special conditions linear programming may be used to find that assignment of dimensions to rooms which gives least cost—where cost is for example calculated as a function of the enclosing surfaces. A more general solution may be found wit...