EFFICIENT GEOMETRY AND ITS DIRECT EFFECT ON THE COST OF CONSTRUCTION

EFFICIENT GEOMETRY AND ITS DIRECT EFFECT ON THE COST OF CONSTRUCTION

Most people either immediately or eventually ask the question “how much do you charge per square foot”?  Best guess, this their attempt to rationalize construction costs in a manner that sort of reflects the way real estate is advertised and sold. The problem is the cost per square foot is the END-RESULT and is not even close to the way construction costs relate to the structure being built.

The geometry [SHAPE] of the intended project has more bearing on it’s cost to build than anything else!  For my demonstration, we will assume a client asks for a 100 square foot building and its probable cost, to keep it simple.  OK, it "seems" straight forward - - but is it?

EXAMPLE A

If I design a building for the client that is 10’x10’ - he has 100 square feet of floor space.

This building has 40 lineal feet of exterior walls 10+10+10+10=40.

EXAMPLE B

If I design a building for the client that is 1’x100’ he has 100 square feet of floor space.

This building has 202 lineal feet of exterior walls 100+1+100+1=202.

So, the differing shapes, while they have the same square footage, are vastly different in the cost to build them respectively.

Example B has more than 5X the amount of exterior walls than Example A.This means that the items directly related to the exterior walls [footings, stemwalls, exterior above ground walls, filled cells, lintels, windows, insulation of the walls, firing on the walls, stucco, drywall, plugs, lights, soffit, fascia, windows trims, baseboards, paint, roofing overhangs] all are 500% more in B than in A.Of course, there are some items that remain unaffected by the geometry, but they don’t come close to equaling the impact of the shape.In the real-world example B will end up costing at least 350% of whatever example A costs PER SQUARE FOOT!

I am not suggesting that anyone would care to live in either the box or the bowling lane – but it is very clear that the efficiency of the geometry of the building has a tremendous bearing on it’s cost to build per square foot!