Out of Pod Experience

oooh never took arch, I took engineering so I wouldn't really be able to help ya out much. Looks interesting tho!

Very nice mate. A little feedback:
-I like all the windows and balconies. The windows give a roomy, airy feel. And the balconies add space to the habitat. You know, you have your inside living space, plus an outside living space. Breaks up 'living in a box.'
-The exterior design reminds me of some architecture seen in Japan. Actually having the first floor as commercial space and upstairs as living space is Japan-like. NYC has that too, though. Maybe all older big cities-- I don't know.
-I agree with the poster who said the coffee shop space doesn't seem quite cozy enough. For a coffee shop, I'd want to give the feel of having many "private" spaces, but at the same time having openness so there's a "community" feel. (Know what I mean? People spend time reading, texting, whatever in private in coffee shops. So they want a space of their own. But they also like being among other people, so they want openness for a semi-social feel). Then again, I realize the image is done showing the space mostly unfurnished. Maybe adding some lighting would be good? The image seems kind of shadowy, like the electricity hasn't been turned on yet.
-The front apartment dining room-- I'd probably take out the long piece of furniture. It's a nice design, but it emphasizes the relatively narrow proportions of the space.

Good call on putting your work out there and open to criticism. That's always tough, no matter what the genre (art, design, writing, whatever). But any kind of work that's supposed to interact with people is going to cause people to have opinions. So I've found that's it's helpful to get people's honest opinions before one finalizes the work. Good luck!

Sweet, I finally have a moment to write a long winded response.

Lighting - I don't know if this is common with all versions of Revit or just student versions, or just my copy, but I've noticed that internal lightning generally provides jack all to the actual lighting during the render. My bedrooms and bathrooms, even with a window (and believe me, my windows are not small), usually come in near pitch black regardless of lights. My options for the lighting however are limited to 0 and 1 (off or on). The only thing that I can do, and have been including in some of the later pictures, is upping the brightness of the exposure

Ceilings - Level 1 ceiling was actually intentionally set high as I wanted an open feeling within the building, though I did have to drop it a little to work better with the hanging lamps. However, I did place in 8' ceilings for all of the rear rooms (office, storage, restrooms, walk in cooler, maintenance.
For level 2 I was attempting to go for vaulted ceiling to give the illusion of more space (which goes hand in hand with the huge open windows). However, I haven't figured out how to manipulate the ceilings from their standards horizontal flatness so I agree that the upper ceiling can easily be dropped by almost half which will also lower the roof. I won't be able to do it before final as it would require a re-render of EVERYTHING and I would only have 1 hour between work and class to do it. Each of these renders takes between 1-18 hours to complete and that's on a decent laptop. I'd hate to know what it would take on the generic school computers.

Coffee Shop - Is there any particular furnishing that feels out of place? I'm just curious as I am somewhat limited on booths but I can easily find more chairs and tables. My original concept I had thought about running a counter top along the curved wall glass and placing chairs so that customers could look out but then I switched over to tables so a more face to face feel. The 3 couches and coffee table is actually inspired by my cafeteria here at work. We have a similar set up sitting right next to the starbucks and every morning when I go get my Macchiato I always sit and catch a couple minutes of news. The lower tables are just the standard generic that comes with the program. Note: I had also intended to place tables outside as well but I got caught up inother things.

Roof - As for this I agree that it's just the standard 9/12 Hip design. This is a common design out here in the West and all 3 apartment complexes around the 'site' that I'm building for has them which is why I stuck with it. One thing that I'll note though is that the roof must be sticking 18" over the building where mine is not. Maybe I'll get a chance to fix that before class or during lab when we get to make last minute corrections.

The shared balcony idea is actually kind of shocking to me because I have never seen that before, unless you mean balcony that is separated by a divider. To accomplish this I would really have to rework the apartments because with their design now everything is pretty much mirrored with the mstr beds being on opposite sides of the building (looking at the overall building picture, the wall next to the wall glass is one staircase and you can see the door to the other staircase on the opposite end of the building. Esch staircase leads up to the living room.)

I see...

So, if that diagram is north-south/top-bottom...one of the apartments would have a balcony that faces NE, whilst the other one has a SW facing balcony that is big and spacious - but on the inside they are very similar. And the one with the larger balcony has the general public to contend with directly underneath their balcony?

This would affect the value of each domicile hugely and if that were the case I wouldn't wish to live directly above the coffee house, but would not wish to have poor light for the majority of the year, and certainly not get any awesome sunsets.

The other issue I forsee (once people move in) would be the 'middle of the night' problem, where you got a bedroom on each domicile right next to the kitchen of the other. Someone gets up in the middle of the night to grab some juice, stumbling around, knocking over kettles and pots and pans in the process, is gonna wake up their neighbors.

Then you got the other problem of people up late watching television - especially if it's MTV...and you got high ceilings, which make the rooms huge and the sounds therefore amplified.

And I'm not sure if I could take a relaxing bath if I could hear my neighbor 3 inches away doing the same thing..it's irksome.

Shared balcony. Yeah. Some sort of frosted glass will do it, or a low level wall with potted plants to mark the distance.

I perhaps would have had two units for below, although I think you said it had to be one - just makes more sense to have a business which can be open later than a coffee shop normally would, so another smaller unit for perhaps a convenience store. Otherwise you got one business which needs to pay for something large which can not be used all hours...not sure they'd be able to get their ROI for that.

Overall [and please bare in mind I know nothing other than what I've looked at when choosing a property for myself] I really feel your floorplan should have been more mirrored, or symmetrical - with either a balcony at each end [west/east] and the entrance to the coffee shop directly in the middle [south], not below the balconies [although a small Juliet balcony per apartment might have worked in that instance] or a shared balcony in the middle [south] looking outwards and the entrance to the coffee shop at both ends [west/east] of the structure.

Anyway, just some thoughts.

AK

Stevie G naked Pictures

That's what he said!

Looks pretty good, nice job

pretty impressive overall... my only critisism tbh is the kitchen ... it looks too dark and clostraphobic for my taste .. its almost like an unused corridor that needed to be filled with something ...which happend to be ...the kitchen ... it prolly doesnt make sense to anyone other than my self but hey ... just my opinion.


but overall i pretty much like it .....