Studio Exercise 1: Comparative sketching

Describe what could be easily understood and what could only be guessed at, and comment on  what this shows in terms of this issue of any specific type of information. In other words, why can we not just design and build from a set of plans, or from a set of elevations and sections, etc.

In my tutorial group (Group 1) we were given just a set of plans (including the roof plan). At first I thought it would be easy, compared to the other groups, but however after analysing the plans I got quite confused. I think the hardest part for our group was knowing the heights of each building and the levels that each building had.  It was quite easy identifying the overall layout of each building and which one was further forward or backward. After discovering that on the plans when it says 1st floor it does not necessarily mean that it is ground floor, this made us all realise that the site is on a slope. Our tutor, Vinh, helped us a lot in identifying detail and the leveling of the buildings.

It is difficult to design and build from a set of plans because we are unable to identify detail such as where the level of the building starts and the height of each building.