Sine city
For this project we had to redesign a parcel of land for the San Marcos Creekside Development Project, which is a project instated to make San Marcos a more appealing area by integrating new and more appealing businesses. In other words, San Marcos wanted to create a more downtown feeling. For our project we had to create models that met the standards and regulations set by the Creekside Development Project. For our lot, we designed an office complex where any type of office work place would be able to simply and easily integrate their work.
We began this project by reviewing over the large amount of rules and regulations for our buildings. This was a long arduous process where we had to comb through a series of complex and seemingly byzantine rules. However, we did learn a lot about what we need to do to keep our building up to code, such as the floor-area ratio, which is the ratio between all of your floors combined to the area of the land, the minimum and maximum height of the building, and the the distance we had to keep our structures away from the sidewalk. Afterwards, we worked on analyzing our area. Our area was very empty, so there was not much for us to take into account. The next step was to begin the designs of our buildings. I mostly worked on the floor plan and overall map of the area, while the rest of my group designed the models of each building. It took a lot of spatial reasoning to be able to place everything in the optimum location while still adhering to the regulations, but I managed to pull it off after a bit of work and quite a few drafts
While there was not much to measure in our area, to find the general parameters of our lot, we used trigonometry via triangulation. The wall was too long for our tape measure so we used a marker that around the midpoint of the wall, and measured the length between the wall’s edges and that point. Afterwards, we measured the angles between the edges of the wall and the marker to help us use the Law of Sines to find the length of the wall.
During the design of the building we incorporated the Golden Ratio. The golden ratio is the ratio of the sum of two numbers to the larger of the two numbers and if that ratio is the same as the ratio between the two numbers added together to make the sum. The numerical amount of the golden ratio is always 1.618… This number is known to create very attractive architecture, which is why we implemented it into our design. We did this by dividing the height of each floor by the golden ratio and using quotient to decide where on each floor windows should be placed
Overall I am very proud of this project. I put a lot of work into this project and learned a lot about architectural design and city regulations. The Habit of a Mathematician I used throughout this project was be confident, patient, and persistent, since I had to go through many different drafts and keep on working till the eleventh hour to finish my product. It was very intensive to organize everything and set up our models of the building, but being confident, patient, and persistent I managed to get through it all. My favorite part of the project was designing the general structure of the building because it involved a lot of mathematics, especially transformation and symmetry. I made sure that almost the entire lot was symmetrical, and since two of the buildings apart of the complex were the exact same that required different orientations.
Exhibition was a very fun experience. For our exhibition we had an interactive piece involving Legos that was used to teach people about the various zoning requirements one must follow when designing a building. I alternated between presenting our final product and working with the interactive piece throughout the exhibition and believe I did a good job of explaining what our project was, what our goals were, and how we incorporated math into our design.
We began this project by reviewing over the large amount of rules and regulations for our buildings. This was a long arduous process where we had to comb through a series of complex and seemingly byzantine rules. However, we did learn a lot about what we need to do to keep our building up to code, such as the floor-area ratio, which is the ratio between all of your floors combined to the area of the land, the minimum and maximum height of the building, and the the distance we had to keep our structures away from the sidewalk. Afterwards, we worked on analyzing our area. Our area was very empty, so there was not much for us to take into account. The next step was to begin the designs of our buildings. I mostly worked on the floor plan and overall map of the area, while the rest of my group designed the models of each building. It took a lot of spatial reasoning to be able to place everything in the optimum location while still adhering to the regulations, but I managed to pull it off after a bit of work and quite a few drafts
While there was not much to measure in our area, to find the general parameters of our lot, we used trigonometry via triangulation. The wall was too long for our tape measure so we used a marker that around the midpoint of the wall, and measured the length between the wall’s edges and that point. Afterwards, we measured the angles between the edges of the wall and the marker to help us use the Law of Sines to find the length of the wall.
During the design of the building we incorporated the Golden Ratio. The golden ratio is the ratio of the sum of two numbers to the larger of the two numbers and if that ratio is the same as the ratio between the two numbers added together to make the sum. The numerical amount of the golden ratio is always 1.618… This number is known to create very attractive architecture, which is why we implemented it into our design. We did this by dividing the height of each floor by the golden ratio and using quotient to decide where on each floor windows should be placed
Overall I am very proud of this project. I put a lot of work into this project and learned a lot about architectural design and city regulations. The Habit of a Mathematician I used throughout this project was be confident, patient, and persistent, since I had to go through many different drafts and keep on working till the eleventh hour to finish my product. It was very intensive to organize everything and set up our models of the building, but being confident, patient, and persistent I managed to get through it all. My favorite part of the project was designing the general structure of the building because it involved a lot of mathematics, especially transformation and symmetry. I made sure that almost the entire lot was symmetrical, and since two of the buildings apart of the complex were the exact same that required different orientations.
Exhibition was a very fun experience. For our exhibition we had an interactive piece involving Legos that was used to teach people about the various zoning requirements one must follow when designing a building. I alternated between presenting our final product and working with the interactive piece throughout the exhibition and believe I did a good job of explaining what our project was, what our goals were, and how we incorporated math into our design.