Design
You would pair a wall base of this material with a terrazzo floor.
What is a terrazzo?
Leaving a blocked out space, or chipping away a space out of the concrete slab, is required to install this piece of door hardware.
What is a floor closer?
This fundamental architectural drawing type provides a view of the ceiling as if it were projected onto a mirror on the floor, used primarily to coordinate lighting, sprinklers, and HVAC diffusers.
What is a Reflected Ceiling Plan (or RCP)?
While standard buildings are designed primarily to support gravity, supertall skyscrapers must be uniquely engineered to resist these forces, which include wind and seismic activity.
What are lateral loads?
When coordinating the different utility systems present above ceiling, the position of this system is commonly located first.
What is the Ductwork?
This is the maximum riser height and minimum tread length required for commercial projects.
What is a 7" riser and 11" tread?
To comply with the IBC, a standard guardrail protecting an open-sided walking surface (such as a balcony or mezzanine) must stand at least this minimum height above the finished floor.
What is 42 inches?
What US based organization provides standardized templates as the most common starting point for the industry's professional services contracts.
What is the The American Institute of Architects (AIA)
Completed in 1974, this 110-story mega-tall skyscraper in Chicago held the undisputed title of "World's Tallest Building" for nearly 25 years and remains a defining symbol of SOM's skyline-defining legacy.
What is the Willis Tower?
What is the Sears Tower?
This legendary SOM New York partner served as the chief master planner and architect behind One World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan.
Who is David Childs?
This is how many different enclosure styles should be present on a singular architectural volume.
What is one?
What are the two primary styles for holding glass in a typical exterior mullion?
What are SSG (structural silicone glazed) and captured mullions. In SSG the silicone adhesive holds the glass in the mullion. In the latter, the glass is mechanically fastened to the mullion with the capture plate.
This cornerstone drawing sheet or schedule categorizes stud sizes, gauge thickness, gypsum board layers, insulation requirements, and STC (acoustic) ratings for every wall assembly in the project
What is the Partition Schedule (or Wall Type Schedule)?
This is the technical term for a coordinated opening engineered into a structural member to accommodate the passage of utilities such as ducts and piping.
What is a Beam Penetration?
This type of operable door should be located in an otherwise inaccessible ceiling anywhere there is an operable component of a utility system (like a pipe valve or duct damper) above it.
What is an Access Panel?
A building is considered a high-rise when the top-most occupiable space is this distance from the lowest fire department vehicle access point.
What is 75-feet?
To allow a wheelchair user to make a complete 360-degree turn, accessible restrooms, dressing rooms, and alcoves must accommodate a clear floor space matching this minimum diameter.
What is a 60-inch circle?
This category of project costs—which includes client-requested travel, professional renderings, or massive plotting fees—is tracked entirely separate from architectural labor and is billed directly back to the owner.
What are Reimbursable Expenses?
In 1942, the U.S. Government secretly hired SOM to completely master plan and design this entire "Secret City" in Tennessee to house 75,000 workers for the Manhattan Project.
What is Oak Ridge, Tennessee?
Before leaving the firm in 2006 to launch his own highly successful practice, this longtime SOM design partner spent 38 years at the office, leading the design of global landmarks like Shanghai's Jin Mao Tower and Dubai's Burj Khalifa.
Who is Adrian Smith?
This long thin panel is applied to accessible ceilings between typical panels to organize ceiling devices and create a visually lordered ceiling plane.
What is a tech strip?
This organization offers a certification credit for mandating smoking stay at least 25 feet from a building entrance.
What is the United States Green Building Council (USGBC)
If you are editing project manuals or drafting details for roofing insulation, sub-grade waterproofing, or a complex vapor barrier, you will look under this MasterFormat Specification Division.
What is Division 07 (Thermal and Moisture Protection)
To achieve incredibly thin floor plates with long spans, engineers specify this type of concrete.
What is post-tensioned concrete (or PT)?
The acronym FACP stand for this.
What is a Fire Alarm Control Panel?
Rank the (3) fire wall assembly types from IBC Chapter 7 from most stringent to least.
What are FIRE WALL, FIRE BARRIER, and FIRE PARTITION?
To protect visually impaired individuals utilizing a circulation path, wall-mounted objects located between 27 inches and 80 inches above the floor must not protrude more than this distance into the corridor.
What is 4 inches?
Before transferring live Revit or CAD models over to a contractor, client, or third-party consultant, a PM must execute this specific legal agreement to protect the firm from liability if the digital files are corrupted, altered, or misused.
What is an Electronic Data Release Form? (Also accept: Digital Data Transfer Agreement / AIA C106).
Featuring 17 striking, 150-foot-tall spires made of steel frames and aluminum-clad tetrahedrons, this iconic, controversial, Colorado Church was designed by SOM in the late 1950s.
What is the United States Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel?
Working closely with Gordon Bunshaft to deliver completely integrated modern environments, this legendary designer pioneered custom furniture design at SOM and established the firm's formal Interior Design department in the 1950s.
Who is Davis Allen?
To maintain a crisp, minimal transition where a finish like GWB meets another finish or surface, designers specify this recessed detailing element to create a deliberate, continuous shadow line.
What is a shadow reveal (or reglet)?
Phase at which a structure is tested for Air Infiltration (Static Pressure), Water Penetration (Static Pressure), and Interstory Drift .
What is the performance mockup?
This is a label that refers a viewer of a zoomed-in detail, section, or elevation back to the exact location it originated from on a main floor plan or overall elevations or sections
What is a back reference?
Frequently deployed in towers like Shanghai's Jin Mao, these massive multi-story structural steel trusses tie a building’s central core directly to its perimeter columns, engaging the entire footprint of the tower to resist overturning wind forces.
What are outriggers (or outrigger trusses)?
Accessible sidewalks, building entrances, and parking all depend on careful coordination of these 2 annotations or elevation indicators, commonly found in civil and architectural drawings, respectively.
What are site grading contours and finished floor elevations?
This is the allowable floor net square footage allowed per occupant in a CLASSROOM type occupancy.
What is 20 square feet?
While unsprinklered buildings are tightly restricted to a 20-foot limit, a standard Group B (Office) or Group R (Residential) building fully equipped with an NFPA 13 sprinkler system is permitted this maximum length for a dead-end corridor.
What is 50 feet?
This foundational legal concept dictates that an architect is not contractually bound to deliver a flawless building, but must perform their work with the same level of skill and care ordinarily exercised by a reasonably prudent architect under identical circumstances.
What is the Standard of Care?
This 1958 landmark was the first major skyscraper built in Chicago's Loop after the Great Depression, famously placing its structural columns entirely on the exterior to achieve a completely column-free interior floor plate.
What is the Inland Steel Building?
This brilliant SOM partner famously developed "Field Theory"—a complex design methodology using overlapping, rotated geometric grids to plan projects like the UIC Campus and the Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel.
Who is Walter Netsch?
This two word phrase is the basis for our rigor and the goal every project chases.
What is Design Excellence?
This organization establishes quality standards or materials and installations of Division 06 casework, wall panels, lumber, and wood finishing
What is the Architectural Woodwork Institute?
Frequently utilized by SOM for custom exterior facade assemblies, this type of specification defines the required structural, environmental, and thermal criteria of a system, leaving the exact fabrication engineering up to the manufacturer.
What is a Performance Specification
When wind hits a slender skyscraper, it creates alternating low-pressure eddies on past faces that cause the building to sway violently side-to-side, perpendicular to the wind direction. This critical aerodynamic phenomenon is known as this.
What is vortex shedding?
This type of diagram is commonly found in MEP, TN, TY discipline drawings, to show how equipment and devices are connected and in what sequence. It doesn't show things at true scale and doesn't show the architectural background, though it may show floor levels or select room names.
What is a Single Line Diagram?
The maximum flame spread index for interior wall and ceiling finishes for Class A, B and C are as follows.
What is 20, 75 and 200?
The Baseline Reference: The index is calculated based on the ASTM E84 (Steiner Tunnel) test. The scale is anchored by two benchmark materials:
0 = Inorganic reinforced cement board (which does not burn).
100 = Select red oak flooring (a standard baseline for combustible material).
This highly effective egress strategy uses a minimum 2-hour fire-resistance-rated wall to split a massive floor plate into separate, safe refuge compartments, but by code, it cannot provide more than 50% of the building's total required exit capacity.
What is a Horizontal Exit?
When a fast-paced project needs to kick off immediately but negotiating the massive final contract is taking too long, a PM will secure this interim, legally binding document from the owner to legally clear staff to start charging time.
What is a Letter of Intent (LOI)? (Also accept: Memorandum of Understanding / MOU).
In 1962, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) created this prestigious annual honor to recognize an entire office producing consistently distinguished architecture, selecting SOM as its very first recipient.
What is the AIA Architecture Firm Award?
Specializing in complex urban design and large-scale transportation infrastructure like JFK Airport’s Terminal 4, she broke a massive corporate barrier in 2001 by becoming the first female Chairman of SOM.
Who is Marilyn Jordan Taylor?
Standards for testing paints and coatings against the loss of film integrity, chalking, fading, non-uniformity, corrosion and the overall performance of color of the PVDF coatings are administered by this organization.
What is the American Architectural Manufacturers Association (AAMA)
This dynamic computer simulation is used in building science to evaluate how heat and moisture move through walls, roofs, and other building assemblies.
What is a WUFI analysis?
This NFPA Standard Number is associated with Portable Fire Extinguishers.
What is NFPA 10?
Mandated by IBC Chapter 4 for mega-high-rises, buildings with an occupied floor greater than 120 feet above fire truck access must provide at least two of these specialized vertical circulation elements, enclosed in a 2-hour shaft, specifically designated for emergency responders.
What are Fire Service Access Elevators (FSAE)?
After escaping the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, this legendary engineer—celebrated as Hungary’s first-ever female structural engineer—moved to the US and became a senior structural engineer and Fellow in SOM’s New York office, calculating the frameworks for iconic mid-century towers.
Who is Eszter Pécsi?