BUILDING REGULATIONS
Architects and the R-Codes
Having recently submitted some planning applications in Western Australia, I have had to get pretty familiar with the local Residential Design Codes (R-Codes) that apply there. Not just the codes themselves, but also how they are interpreted and dealt with by local councils. At first take, the R-Codes really do appear quite progressive and thoughtfully written. However, they have been evolving and changing over many years and there is still a lot of legacy in their implementation that can make life particularly hard for an architect.
BIM and NatHERS Headaches
Given that my blog doesn't get updated much and there is no other obvious output, lots of people ask me what exactly I am working on at the moment and why it seems to be taking forever. Usually I just mutter the odd platitude, but today I thought I would combine a bit of a rant with an actual example of the kind of problems I am currently and seemingly constantly wrestling with. This one involves the ideal of determining NatHERS compliance directly from a fully integrated building information model (BIM).