I am curious how architects get the design considerations for different kinds of projects. I know some requirements would come from a client, but assuming a client doesn’t know all the requirements themselves to instruct you, where do you get this info? I’m not an architect or a student at this time, but have done some drafting and like designing.
For example, if i wanted to get into designing a malls, or airports, or industrial plants, how do I figure out all the rooms and other requirements those structures would need. These are just samples, I’m not currently exploring these specialties.
For residential, I learned a lot by studying house plans and got a good idea of flow and such from that, but other building types don’t exactly have freely available plans to learn from.
Sometimes there are books such as the Arch graphics standards that I have, or for hospitality design, there is a book I’ve used to give some basic recommendations such as, include this kind/ size of office if your structure has X number of rooms.
I used that book when I designed this resort concept in my 12th grade drafting class. But looking at it now, I realize I’m missing a lot to make this functional, such as loading docks, and other service areas.
But without something to study, I’m left with my own experience walking through the public areas of building types in question for inspiration. But I may not know that airports require huge amount of behind the scenes offices, and baggage sorting areas, or that some industrial plant requires x amount of space for efficient operations.
Do architecture schools offer courses for different specialties?
