Q5.7: Does the specifications for the buildable and non-buildable only apply for structural members and properties of the building? Or does it also apply for architectural designs, etc.

Answer: The specifications for buildable and non-buildable areas of the model must be followed for all elements of the balsa wood model.  If a team chooses to add architectural components to the physical model itself, those must be within the buildable areas.  Any architectural elements in renderings and images of the tower used in the […]

Q5.8: In the rules it says, “Occupants on the rentable floor must be able to access any area of the rentable floor through at least one access point or doorway originating from the interior of the structure”. So does this mean we do not need to have any access points to the atriums since they are not our rentable floor area?

Answer: No access points to the atriums are needed since they are not rentable floor areas.

Q5.9: In the rules it states, “Maximum rentable total floor area: 1915 in^2”. When we calculated it we got the Maximum rentable total floor area to be 1801.5 in^2. Do we also include the ground floors of the atriums as rentable floors?

Answer: No atriums can be counted as rentable floor areas since they are not buildable areas, even for ground floors. The maximum rentable total floor area in the official rules is calculated as: Max rentable floor area for floors 1-7: 12 x 12 – 6 x 6 = 108 in^2 Max rentable floor area for […]

Q5.6: I wanted to know if I can vary the plan area of the structure to give it an irregular shape, or if I can only add ruffles and thus give it a irregular shape to structure. Another question we have is whether we can use the ROBOT program to model the structure.

Answer: You may vary the floor area of each floor as long as it is within the maximum floor plan boundaries set by section 5.6d. Your floor area does not have to occupy the maximum floor plan. You may use whatever structural analysis or modeling program you choose, although CSI is providing SAP2000 or ETABS […]

Q5.5: What are the correlation boundaries between the real building model with the balsa wood model? Does the balsa wood model have to be exactly the same with the real building model or there can be certain adjustments because we find the contents of the proposal that we have to identify the soil characteristics and how they affect the structure above. But the shaker of the building will be represented by a flat plank not the real soil condition, isn’t it kind of biased or is there something we misunderstood?

Answer: For the geotechnical portion of this project, we are asking teams to consider the effects the soil would have on the “real” building with “real” foundations, although the shaking will occur on a fixed base during the competition. Architectural components should also correspond to the “real” building. The structural parts of the project should […]