Description of the Conditions that Are Prerequisites to the Construction of the Cafeteria in Berlin - Assignment Example

The Cafeteria in Berlin, Germany Answer to Question This program involves a of the conditions that are prerequisitesto the construction of the cafeteria in Berlin. These are the aspects to be put into consideration to ascertain the feasibility of the building. Example of the factors that this study will dwell on is the strength of the soil, the space and the location of the construction site. It also briefly describes the technological application during the technical architectural and building process. Also, it will describe the challenges that the construction process is likely to experience, the level of compliance to the barrier free policy in Berlin, the effects it will have on the society and the resistance to risks from external events. Considering that a cafeteria will be a public meeting place, space appears to be a critically vital aspect in this assessment. It thus calls for an establishment of whether the building can be of multiple floors. Answer to Question 2 Having considered the issue of space and from the conceptual design of the cafeteria site, it is essential to consider building the construction into more than one storey. The conditions that will determine this possibility is the strength of the ground. The strength can be determined by conduction a detailed study of the chemical composition of soil in the construction site. The type of rocks forming the soil is also an inherent indicator of the capacity of the soil to hold more floors. Thirdly, the geographical orientation of the cafeteria location will enable the building engineers to make critical decisions on the suitability of the construction in that particular site (Cousins, 2002). For example, it will be important to know whether the place has experienced effects of volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and faulting. The issue of government policies also emerges as an important factor. For example, the policy of “No barriers” has been a critical challenge in the process of planning and construction. This is a challenge that has never been given a serious consideration in the past. The building and construction process should also consider the necessary changes in the contemporary German society, including the changes in demographic composition and the future government decisions. This is the more reason for establishment of the non-barrier as the principal factor controlling the specifications of public rooms and common meeting places. The cafeteria has to consider the personal and special needs of certain categories of the society members such as people with disabilities. This will enable the constructors to determine special features of the construction such as staircases. Barrier-free policy effectively articulates the needs of people walking with disabilities. This is to ensure that even the people living with disabilities are also able to access the facilities they require. At the residual stages, other factors begin to take higher priority (Chudley & Greeno, 2010). In the present world of course, barriers affect the utilization of individuals’ personal spaces. There are people who simply get irritated by certain colour compositions and the directions that the rooms are facing. Still, there are other members of the society who can only accept certain floor coverings and the ventilation. Apart from the client specific orientations of the cafeteria site and construction, there are standard safety conditions that determine the safety of the cafeteria clients. This covers the risk management factors such as fire engineering and safety, as well as water retention capacity of the site. The building has to consider effective drainage system and emergency fire exits. Another very vital factor in the process of construction design is the freedom of movement within the cafeteria compound and inside the premises. People’s movement and liberty to make meetings in public cafeterias is a very vital client need. If the freedom of movement is restricted in the cafeteria then there is no purpose that the cafeteria serves. The facilities within the cafeteria have to be easily reachable from various approaches without unnecessary barriers. The constructors have to work with communities and special groups dealing with disabilities in order to construct a barrier free building. They also need to involve interior and exterior design specialists to make high quality finishing works. This will give a permanent impression of a suitable meeting place. Of course, the finishing works will be the most visible elements of the construction. The building and construction has to involve legal experts to advise on the local laws, policies, administrative procedures and guidelines that will make the building comply with the government requirements. The building plan also has to include applications of nature by involving gardeners and florists to make the environment friendly. Answer to Question 3 The process of constructing the structure begins from the survey of the construction site so as to establish the qualification of the site for the cafeteria construction. Once the site is approved, the next step is to perform structural, architectural and conceptual design of the not only the cafeteria building but also the entire compound. The design has to be accurate since it presents the geometric dimensions of the cafeteria. The government authorities have to approve the designs before moving to the next phase, which involves physical measurements and marking the foundation of the building (Emmitt & Gorse, 2010). The next step is to avail construction materials and begin the foundation works. The foundation has to be deep enough to hold the strength of many floors. The corners have to be supported with strong pillar designs. The constructors at the same time have to create allowances for open spaces that will be used for entrances. Each room has to be accessible and in compliance with the barrier-free policy. The foundation has to be able to hold the wall whose construction follows immediately after the foundation. The wall ought to be raised above the height of an average adult for a client to be able to walk freely. All walls that exceed the height of eight feet have to be properly reinforced to protect them from collapsing. The choice of foundation material is very critical. The constructors have to use permanent and strong materials because the building has to be permanent. The walls have to be of minimal cinstruction loads in the concrete structure. This is to prevent the overload of the pillar sections while at the same time maintaining the strength of the construction. The directives on the construction of the foundation ought to come from the information acquired from a qualified expert in the field of structural design or civil engineering. The structure should be able to hold all the weight applied to it. The constructors should obey fundamental rules such as not allowing the casual workers to operate under concrete buckets while the buckets are in motion. This construction work takes the longest time and requires keen involvement. It involves the design, fabrication and erection of frameworks that are able to hold the entire construction. All loads that press from above and side-ways are usually less than the foundation weight (Emmitt & Gorse, 2012). The main objective or aim is to make sure that the stones get adequate support for its load and side-way weights. The decision on the strength of the concrete depends on compliance level with certain basic regulations. One of the rules is that the concrete has to be tested in a universally acceptable standard of testing for example the American Society Testing standard (Berge, 2009). The materials testing standard has to apply to indicate the compressive and tensile strength of the foundation concrete wall to hold superimposed weights. After the foundation is complete, the constructors can determine the dimensions of the roof. The walls have to be put using light materials that can prevent overheating of the rooms during hot sunny seasons. They are supposed to reflect light inside the rooms to eliminate darkness. Part of the roofing work is to use light materials in fixing ceilings. After the foundation work is complete, what follows is the establishment of the measurements of slabs to place on the floor. Answer to Question 4 This area deals with the relationship between the strength of the soil to the loads that the wall has to hold. It also has to prepare documentation of the construction work, with a report of the materials used, the dimensions measured and the cost of construction. The study of the soil and the strength of the walls and foundation is important in determining how sate the occupants of the cafeteria will be (Apel, 2005). This study also gives the details of the space of the building, the location of the cafeteria and the general construction procedure of the construction. The report gives illustrations of the structural and conceptual designs of the building. It illustrates both the interior and exterior dimensions of the building. It will simply give the description and illustration with appropriate labels that are easy to understand. It will make use of the graphical representations of the external junctions from related literature. Answer to Question 5 The building construction has to hold two fundamental types of load. First is the compression force which tends to push the pillars and the walls downwards. The second type of load is the tensile loads, which tend to pull parts of the structure apart. The illustrations of the forces are provided below. The weight of the roofing materials pushes the walls downward making the wall to bend outwards (Riley, 2009). The adjacent sides of the walls tent to stretch towards the outward falling walls, making a tendency of an extension of the building materials. The first way to minimize the effects of the loads is by transferring the forces to the subsoil by use of reinforcement on the walls. The reinforcement holds the walls from falling outwards, and protects the roof from falling downwards. The other way to minimize the effects of the loads is by using light materials on the roof. This is a strategy to build strong structures with light weights. The walls do not therefore have to hold unnecessarily heavy weights. Every structure and construction therefore has to take care of the expected loads by maximizing on reinforcement and minimizing materials weight. The sidewalks of the construction should have enough width to enable an occupant of the building to walk freely and for a disabled person to drive a wheel chair. In essence, multiple users should be able to use the passages between the walls without any challenge. The walls have to be thin, not occupying unnecessary spaces. Usually, a width of one and a half meter of walking space is adequate (Riley, 2009). The building can best be constructed using strong hollow metals for the wall, wooden materials for the construction of the roof and iron sheets or asbestos for the roof covering. The wall can be covered using wooden materials or glasses to make the wall light. The objective is to reduce the load on the walls and to make them thin. Answer to Question 6 The Eaves details between the junction of the roof and the wall helps in the reinforcement of the building structure. The structure of a building construction usually has several forces moving in different directions and need to be managed by reinforcement. Figure1: The forces acting on a building construction. The Cill or the external wall junction is supposed to protect the wall from crumbling under the weight of the roof. It is placed to manage the outward tensile forces on the wall of the building and at the same time the compression weights from the downward moving load. The soil on the ground in which the construction rests must be examined to know the strength before the foundation is set. This is a critical factor that indicates whether the construction will stand or not. Space is also an important factor because the number of clients who visit the cafeteria can vary. For a start, the space in the cafeteria should be able to accommodate at least one person per square meter (m2). This allows clients and all the occupants of the cafeteria to move freely and comfortably within the construction. The space has to consider the issue of ventilation and be able to eliminate any amount of suffocation. Again the space has to give priority to the safety of the occupants of the cafeteria. There should be enough fire exit routes in the building such that in the event of fire, emergency exits can allow quick escape. In connection to that, there has to be a free assembly area where people can assemble in the event of fire or natural disasters for accountability and event reporting purposes (Riley, 2009). A firefighting and safety engineering program has to be followed in the entire process of the building design and construction. The same is applied in the processes of renovation work that may arise. It must provide for effective carriage of firefighting equipment to minimize the amount of delays, and the all the fire hazards that occur from time to time. Fire safety equipment has to be placed in a strategic space where they are readily and easily accessible at any instant. There should be enough space to do periodic inspection of the firefighting equipment to ensure they are in the right operating conditions. The construction planning has to take care of the presence of an emergency alarm system within the cafeteria so that clients, the employees and the fire marshals can be notified whenever a fire incident or any other emergency occurs. The space has to take care of parking and recreation area. There has to be at least a space of 10 by 6 square feet allocated to every car, and for about 30 cars concurrently. The recreation area can be an open space of about one acre of land where clients can have some choices of body exercise games. The best way for the cafeteria management is to make use of the available space by increasing the number of storey’s upwards for in-house facilities, leaving adequate space for open air facilities. Apart from fire safety, the cafeteria has to set areas within the compound where garbage dumping takes place. Being a cafeteria, one expects a lot of waste materials to be disposed, such as left food remains, waste containers, papers and fuel products. The dumping site has to be located at least 100 meters from the area where food is served. Apart from considering the number of clients that the cafeteria intends to host, it is important to realize that there will be internal staff members who equally have to occupy space (Riley, 2009). The location of the cafeteria is also very vital. Even though it seeks to get as many clients as possible, it doesn’t have to be placed in the centre on Berlin City. This is because of the safety of the clients and freedom from congestion in the city. Secondly, the location has to take care of the soil strength. The cafeteria has to be located in a place where the soil tests have confirmed to be sufficiently strong for the foundation and the entire building. The location has to be in a suitable terrain where the natural and physical geographic features are attractive to the viewers. At the same time it has to avoid slanted slopes and areas prone to soil movements such as mud slides and falling rocks. Certain locations are extremely unsuitable for the cafeteria location. For example, beaches can easily suffer from the effects of strong sea waves. The building and construction and construction have to wait until a suitable location is identified and the space is confirmed to be able to accommodate the vital facilities (Riley, 2009). The cafeteria has to be located close to a major road or a high way for easy accessibility. It is also vital for fast access to vital resources and transportation during emergency. This is also vital during the construction phase because it aids the constructors in accessing the building materials. The location should be in quiet environment, far away from industrial plants. This keeps the cafeteria away from unnecessary noises from the industries. It should be able to provide the clients with a peaceful moment away from the interferences from residential areas and the city centre. At the same time, the location has to be in places where drainage system is conducive to the environment. The land survey has to locate the closest water supply in the location before approving the construction procedure. The demographic factors of the locality, specifically based on the latest population census are a very important factor for setting up the location. This enables the cafeteria to have an assurance of a good number of clients during the operation of the cafeteria (Riley, 2009). References Apel, M. A., 2005. Careers in the Building and Construction Trades. London: The Rosen Publishing Group. Berge, B., 2009. The Ecology of Building Materials, (2nd Ed.). Burlington: Elsevier. Cousins, K., 2002. Polymers in Building and Construction. New Delhi: iSmithers Rapra Publishing. Chudley, R., & Greeno, R., 2010. Building Construction Handbook (8th Ed.). Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. Emmitt, S., & Gorse, C., 2010. Barry’s Advanced Construction of Buildings. New York: Blackwell. Emmitt, S., & Gorse, C., 2012. Barrys Advanced Construction of Buildings. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Riley, M., 2009. Industrial and Commercial building. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Read More