Height Limitations - PPP Mock Exam - Architect Registration Exam | ARE Live

• Report rights infringement
• published: 09 Jun 2016
• views: 9

15% Discount on a Black Spectacles Membership for AIA Members: Visit: http://blackspectacles.com/membership and enter code: 52516PPPTW AIA ARE Prep powered by Black Spectacles- blackspectacles.com/courses Mike's Recommended Resources to pass the ARE: http://blackspectacles.com/blog/books-need-to-pass-are-exam-resources Number five: Which of the following might be a way to review height limitations in a zoning code? Setbacks; F.A.R.; districts; D, height is controlled by the building code? The answer here is one that's the best of the answers given. Setbacks really are not going to tell us very much about heights. Setbacks are going to be like side yards, front yards, rear yards. So that's in plan away from the property line. Setbacks in less dense places, more like a single family residential would be much bigger. Setbacks in dense urban places might be as little as zero so that you have a storefront right up to the sidewalk and the buildings just bump right into each other on the side. Setback is very important to zoning codes in terms of the density and the feel of a place, but it doesn't really have anything to do with heights. Everything is going to be really understood through districts: heights, setbacks parking. You're going to have residential districts, you're going to have manufacturing districts. Just because I have a residential district doesn't mean I can't have manufacturing in it, it just means it'll be limited in some way. And just because I have a manufacturing district doesn't mean I can't have a residential in it, it means it'll be limited in some way. Each of these districts will have multiple different pieces of information setbacks, F.A.R., all those different things. The only one that is really a potential answer here is going to be B, F.A.R. And F.A.R. is the floor area ratio. That's where I have a site size. And that site, let's says it's 10,000 square feet, and if I have an F.A.R of one, that means my building can have 10,000 square feet of enclosed space. So I could have a two-story building where each floor is 5,000 square feet, for example, and that would meet an F.A.R of one. The point of the F.A.R is to control mass, which is one of the ways to control height. Let's say it's a 10,000 square feet site and we have an F.A.R. that is two, that means I can build a 20,000 square foot building. Well, just like the example I just gave, I could build a 5,000 square foot floor plate and have four floors, and that would give me 20,000 square feet. I would be maxing out my F.A.R. But in that process, I'm essentially saying that the smaller the footprint, the taller it can be. The larger the footprint, the shorter it can be. So it's a way of controlling the mass of a building, which includes the height. I could build a very small footprint and have it go much higher if there wasn't any other height restriction. A lot of zoning codes won't have any other height restriction other than the F.A.R. Some will have both, some will only have height restrictions. So, there's a lot of different ways that it can be done. But F.A.R. is definitely one of those concepts you should feel comfortable with. It's likely to show up. That, along with PUD, planned unit development, a few other things that are these zoning code issues, and you should feel comfortable with those terms. Height is absolutely controlled in the building code, although never as "This is the absolute height limit you can build." It's almost always. I shouldn't say never. Sure, there are situations where it does do that. Typically, what a building code will say is, "Given this occupancy and this construction system, here's a height limit." One of those construction systems, maybe [inaudible 00:39:14] concrete or something, will have no limit. You can build whatever you want, because it's very unlikely to burn, it's very unlikely to have any real problems, so there is no building code height limit on it. The building codes will limit things according to use and construction systems. All right, moving on.