CODE CLASSIFICATIONS OF BUILDING BASIC AND TUTORIALS

Building codes usually classify a building in accordance with the fire zone in which it is located, the type of occupancy, and the type of construction, which is an indication of the fire protection offered.

The fire zone in which a building is located may be determined from the community’s fire-district zoning map. The building code specifies the types of construction and occupancy groups permitted or prohibited in each fire zone.

The occupancy group to which a building official assigns a building depends on the use to which the building is put.

Typical classifications include one- and two-story dwellings; apartment buildings, hotels, dormitories; industrial buildings with noncombustible, combustible, or hazardous contents; schools; hospitals and nursing homes; and places of assembly, such as theaters, concert halls, auditoriums and stadiums.

Type of construction of a building is determined, in general, by the fire ratings assigned to its components. A code usually establishes two major categories: combustible and noncombustible construction.

The combustible type may be subdivided in accordance with the fire protection afforded major structural components and the rate at which they will burn; for example, heavy timber construction is considered slow-burning.

The noncombustible type may be subdivided in accordance with the fire-resistive characteristics of components.

Building codes may set allowable floor areas for fire-protection purposes. The limitations depend on occupancy group and type of construction. The purpose is to delay or prevent spread of fire over large portions of the building.

For the same reason, building codes also may restrict building height and number of stories. In addition, to permit rapid and orderly egress in emergencies, such as fire, codes limit the occupant load, or number of persons allowed in a building or room. In accordance with permitted occupant loads, codes indicate the number of exits of adequate capacity and fire protection that must be provided.

THE FORM OF THE HOUSE: THE BUILDING AS AN ANALOGY

Twentieth-century architecture was influenced by a single analogy coined by the great French architect, Le Corbusier. He proposed that ‘the building is a machine for living in’. This is very far from the truth. The mistake, at its heart, is that a machine is an inanimate object that can be turned on and off and operates only at the whim of its controller.

A building is very different because, although it is true that it can be controlled by its occupants, the driving force that acts upon the building to create comfort and shelter is the climate and its weather, neither of which can be controlled, predicted or turned on and off.

Machines are fixed, static objects, amenable to scientific assessment. Buildings are part of a complex interaction between people, the buildings themselves, the climate and the environment. The view that buildings are fixed also fits well with certain types of scientific analysis, of daylight factors, energy flows, Uvalues, mechanical ventilation and so on.

But this mechanistic view finds the more dynamic parts of the system (temperature, natural ventilation, passive cooling and all the multitude of human interactions) very difficult to model and, therefore, to understand. In houses it is often these ‘difficult’ parts of the system that change a house into a home, and the building intoa delight.

Considerations of daylight, energy, thermal insulation and the use of machinery, of course, cannot be avoided – but because we can calculate them does not mean that they are our only concern. If we could see heat, as the thermal imagining camera does, we would probably treat building very differently. We would know exactly where we need to put a bit more insulation or place a sun shade, which sun shade to use or which corner of the room is cold and needs a little attention.


We have to design for the invisible as well as the visible and so how is this to be done? Buildings have been traditionally designed using accepted premises (propositions that are adopted after reasoning) as well as, of course, on premises (the building and adjuncts set forth at the beginning of a building deed). Three principles on which all building should be based are:

1 design for a climate;
2 design for the environment;
3 design for time, be it day or night, a season or the lifetime of a building and design a building that will adapt over time.

Humans have been building on these premises for millennia and have evolved house types around the world that are well suited to particular climates, environments and societies. This was done by learning from experience, and with the benefit of repetitive tools and processes that help designers and builders through the
complex range of tasks necessary to actually put a building together.

One tool of the imagination that is often used when starting a design is the analogy. An analogy is used where two forms may not look alike but they function in the same way, just as Le Corbusier described a building as a ‘machine for living in’.