Buildings & Living Spaces

Begin with activities and the conditions they need, rather than selecting a building product first.

Include children, older people, disabled people, visitors and changing household or workplace needs in the brief.

Distinguish what occupants experience from technical measurements and from demonstrated compliance with applicable requirements.

Follow boundaries from one room to shared walls, common services and the surrounding site.

Locate design, construction, verification, operation, maintenance and adaptation in one building lifecycle.

Record activities, schedules, assistance needs, privacy and storage before drawing a preferred solution.

Separate essential access or safety requirements from preferences that can be negotiated through alternatives.

State the available area, budget, permissions and responsible people; identify assumptions that still need checking.

Use a few checkable criteria to compare privacy, access, daylight, resource use and maintenance tradeoffs.

Explain why an option fits the brief and identify information that could change that judgement.

Recognise each system’s main job and the interfaces where one system depends on another.

Draw a simple flow from source to route to destination, including unwanted leakage or transfer.

Look for interfaces around openings and service routes where continuity and responsibility must be specified.

Treat occupancy, equipment use and control settings as conditions that affect measured building performance.

Trace how added insulation or changed ventilation can alter comfort, moisture, energy use and maintenance needs.

Relate a top view, a cut-through view and an outside view to the same space.

Use stated units and a consistent scale; label approximate dimensions and information copied from records.

Read a legend before interpreting symbols and keep hidden services or structural functions marked as unverified.

Draw activities and routes through a room without assuming every occupant has the same reach or mobility.

Record date, version and assumptions; a sketch cannot verify structural capacity, hidden conditions or code compliance.

Use accessible records and ordinary visual observations; avoid opening live equipment, disturbing suspect materials or entering unsafe areas.

Record location, time, instrument limits and conditions; protect occupants’ privacy when documenting a used space.

Recognise structural, electrical, gas, fire, hazardous-material and height-work boundaries; request the appropriate qualified assessment.

Find the applicable local authority and technical requirements; distinguish adopted rules from voluntary guidance and regional examples.

Use local emergency and building-management procedures for immediate hazards; document uncertainties without diagnosing a building from one sign.

Set a reading goal and constraints in an ordinary room, including clear exits, stable furnishings and the occupant’s access needs.

Mark furniture, routes, daylight direction and reported glare; separate observed conditions from guesses about hidden services.

Compare a chair facing the window with a side-facing arrangement against reading, glare, access and shared-use criteria.

If suitable and permitted, try a safe furniture arrangement; otherwise use the paper model and ask the occupant to review it.

Use feedback to revise the layout, explain unresolved limits and repeat the same cycle with a different room or activity.