- Acoustic Comfort
- Aesthetic Challenges
- Aesthetic Opportunities
- Balancing Security/Safety and Sustainability Objectives
- Designing Buildings to Resist Explosive Threats
- Distributed Energy Resources (DER)
- Facility Performance Evaluation (FPE)
- Form
- Life-Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA)
- Microturbines
- Mold and Moisture Dynamics
- Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM)
- Retrofitting Existing Buildings to Resist Explosive Threats
- Sustainable O&M Practices
- The Changing Nature of Organizations, Work, and Workplace
Functional / Operational
Last updated: 11-15-2012
Within This Page
Overview
A clear understanding of the functional and physical requirements of a project is essential to ensuring its success. A client's / owner's intent to develop a project is derived from a need, a purpose or mission, and a desired result. When the design of a facility satisfies the emotional, cognitive, and cultural needs of the people who use it and the technical requisites of the programs it houses, the project is functionally successful. Program and functionality are also characterized by building type. A building that functions as it is intended is the underpinning of a quality "whole" building. The qualities of such a building may not even be noticed or recognized, but a poorly functioning building can be costly to correct, if the opportunity to correct ever becomes available. When designs fall short of this goal, the cost can be modest to extreme, but the failures are generally noted more significantly than the expected successes.
Left: Exterior lateral bracing created open interior spaces at the John Hancock Building—Chicago, IL
Courtesy of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill LLP
Right: CalPERs Headquarters Complex daylit interior atrium space in the building's core
Development in the building sciences in the late 1900's has pointed to the need to refocus on programming, designing, constructing, and operating facilities that function well, while at the same time incorporating new technologies, and creatively meeting other design objectives: sustainability, accessibility, safety, aesthetics, cost effectiveness, productivity, and historic preservation. Addressing these design objectives while achieving energy savings, and improving environmental quality is paramount in designing the "whole" building. Facility Performance Evaluations have shown that early programming and design decisions have significant impact on the functional quality, and long-term efficiency and effectiveness of buildings, initially and over their life cycle, such as:
- Adaptability: decisions at the inception of project design to incorporate elements and concepts that will assist with future adaptations to a building can facilitate change in the future:
- Building for horizontal and vertical expansion
- Determining building structural grids and floor-to-floor heights that allow for flexibility in internal layouts
- Functional Quality: decisions to incorporate the use of hard walls for offices and workspaces vs flexible 'furniture' systems have a significant impact on functionality of a building.
Adopting an integrated design approach and quality assurance processes that extend through all of the phases of design and construction of a project, from pre-design through owner occupancy and operation to disposal, with checks at each stage of the process will help ensure validation of decisions to meet the owner's program and design requirements. Buildings that are more functionally successful also create more inspiring safe and productive environments that enhance work and/or livability.
A building is considered to perform at a high level when all key design objectives are considered from the early project development phase, rather than focusing on one design objective while others are trivialized or overlooked all together. For example, most projects have both sustainability and security goals that must be met. Discussing these early on can help ensure a project's functionality goals are met as well as its productivity goals. The ability to measure the performance of sustainable buildings can also help achieve the functional and productive goals of the project.
This branch of the WBDG is designed primarily to help those not familiar with architectural and engineering design understand the basic process, technique, and language by which functional decisions are made.
There are three overarching principles associated with ensuring functional building design and operations:
- Account for Functional and Psychological Needs
Identifying the spatial requirements and psychological needs developed in the functional program is a primary element of the planning process that translates to an owner's spatial and service requirements for a building or facility. Key tasks in this process are: problem definition or statement, establishing goals, collecting and analyzing facts, establishing functional relationships, and uncovering and testing concepts. There is also a need to design for flexibility of programmed space. - Ensure Appropriate Product / Systems Integration
A successfully designed building that functions properly in all respects is composed of building systems, materials, and technologies that are selected and integrated to be mutually supportive as a cohesive "whole" system. - Meet Performance Objectives
Meeting performance objectives is not achieved simply by a "Final Inspection" of the finished product, but is a sustained effort from inception and planning through turnover and operation to assure the delivery of a project that satisfies all of the owner's functional, psychological, and operational requirements for the project. There are many aspects involved in assuring performance objectives are met, from assembling a qualified project delivery team; to adequately coordinating team member roles and responsibilities; to instituting systematic quality assurance programs, like Building Commissioning.
Relationship of Function / Operation and Cost
Care should always be used when undertaking cost management practices (i.e., Value Engineering, cost cutting, etc.) not to compromise the functional or operational performance of the interrelated and often interdependent systems.
Design Lessons Learned
Key to improving the facility planning, design, and delivery process is continual improvement of team performance through learning from and avoiding repeated design errors, omissions, or flaws in project execution. "Lessons Learned" is a common term that refers to an organization's compilation and publication of the lessons for the knowledge and benefit of future project teams.
Design of facilities that meet or exceed the functional expectations of owners and facility managers will require the application of these principles as well as thorough understanding of historical precedent and knowledge of current design practices for the building type.
Note: Information in these Functional pages must be considered together with other design objectives and within a total project context in order to achieve quality, high performance buildings.
Major Resources
Codes and Standards
- Facilities Standards for the Public Buildings Service, P100, GSA—Establishes integrative performance standards for federal facilities.
- Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED®) Green Building Rating System™ is a program of the U.S. Green Building Council.
- Standards for Whole Building Functionality and Serviceability, 3rd Edition by ASTM. 2000. ASTM Stock #: WBDG2009, ISBN13: 978-0-8031-8006-2.
- Standard 189, Standard for the Design of High-Performance Green Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings, jointly developed by ASHRAE, USGBC, and IESNA, 2007. A proposed new minimum standard to mainstream high performance building practices.
- Assessment to the U.S. Congress and U.S. Department Of Energy On High Performance Buildings PDF 600 KB, 35 pgs, by the High Performance Building Council of the National Institute of Building Science, 2008.
WBDG
Building Types / Space Types
Applicable to all Building Types and Space Types
Design Objectives
Accessible, Aesthetics, Cost-Effective, Productive, Safe / Secure, Sustainable
Publications
- Architectural Graphic Standards, 11th Edition
by Charles Ramsey and Harold Sleeper. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2007—The most widely recognized reference manual for architectural design guidance on planning, design standards, building systems, materials, methods, and construction techniques.
- The Architect's Studio Companion: Rules of Thumb for Preliminary Design, 4th Edition
by Edward Allen and Joseph Iano. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2006.
- ASHRAE Handbook of Fundamentals by ASHRAE Handbook Committee. Atlanta, GA: American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, Inc. 2009.
- ASHRAE Handbook of Systems and Equipment by ASHRAE Handbook Committee. Atlanta, GA: American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, Inc. 2008.
- Mechanical and Electrical Equipment for Buildings, 11th Edition
by Ben Stein, John S. Reynolds, Walter T. Grondzik, Alison G. Kwok. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2009.
- Time-Saver Standards for Building Types, 4th Edition by Joseph DiChiara and Michael J. Crosbie. New York: McGraw-Hill Inc., 2001—A comprehensive reference for building type design guidance, including sample projects with plans and illustrations of functional features and details.
Associations
The following are major associations representing design professions that publish resources and set practice standards for the planning and design of facilities.
- The American Institute of Architects (AIA)
- American Planning Association (APA)
- American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)
- American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE)
- American Society of Interior Designers (ASID)
- American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA)
- American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)
- Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
- International Interior Design Association (IIDA)
- National Research Council of Canada, Construction Division
- SAVE International