DESIGNING CIRCULATION

There are two rules of thumb when it comes to designing circulation. The key circulation pathways should:

be clear and unobstructed;

follow the shortest distance between two points.

The reason for these two rules of thumb is fairly obvious: people want to be able to move around a building with ease and efficiency, and without feeling or being lost.

But, once you've got these rules sorted, you're welcome to break them.

Sometimes for architectural reasons you'll want to interrupt a direct circulation path with an item of furniture or a change in level to define a change in place, make people slow down, or provide a focus point. Similarly, circulation doesn't necessarily have to follow the shortest distance between two points. Rather, it can take into account the sequence of spaces, thresholds, and atmospheres encountered through movement, which prepare you for the transition from one space to the next. Circulation can be choreographed, to add architectural interest.

In this way, circulation is also intricately linked in with Programme, or what activities take place.

Efficiency and layout of circulation space:

Circulation space is sometimes seen as useless space, adding needless area and cost to a project. As a result, the word efficiency often goes hand in hand with circulation.

Commercial office buildings and apartment buildings, for example, will typically seek to minimise the amount of circulate space, and give this space back to the tenancies or apartment interiors which are leasable, and thus, profit generating. In these cases, where the buildings are often tall, the vertical circulation is often designed as a core at the centre of the building, with stairs and lifts packed tightly together, and short corridors on each level leading away from this core to the individual apartments or offices.

Representing circulation

Circulation is often represented using diagrams , with arrows showing the ‘flow’ of people or the proposed openness of spaces. You might use different colours or types of lines to describe the varying movements. Although a critical part of design, circulation is often not directly represented in a final Architectural Drawing Set - it is in the white space and gaps between structural elements. However, there are some instances where exit pathways do need to be shown, such as in the design of a public building where the routes people will take to exit the building in case of fire need to be clear for evaluation against the Building Code.

Follow the link below to view the New Zealand Building Code related to circulation:

http://www.building.govt.nz/assets/Uploads/building-code-compliance/d-access/d1-access-routes/asvm/d1-access-routes-amendment-5.pdf