The Scenario:

You are working for Brookes Abodes Limited who are building a new residential development in Oxfordshire.

A percentage of the development must be affordable housing. These affordable homes must comply with a number of standards:
1. Meeting the floor area requirements and number of bedrooms for the number of people specified.
2. Meeting standards for room layout and usability as set out in the Housing Quality Indicators (HQI) document.
3. Meeting the Lifetime Homes 16 design criteria.
4. Design and materials used must be sympathetic with the local architectural style for the area, as described in the Local Design Guide

You work in the design office and have been asked to produce to planning application standard, the floor plans, roof plan, elevations and a basic working drawing section for ONE dwelling meeting these above requirements (set out in detail in the accompanying Checklists)

Brookes Abodes Limited have specific in-house drawing standards which you must use. You have already been trained to follow these standards in your Manual Drawing and AutoCAD workshops. A list of the standards and expectations will be provided (see Checklist).

You will be provided with the following specifications:
- Name of the local area where the affordable house will be located
- Number of bedrooms
- Number of occupants (people)
- Number of storeys
- Required internal floor area (guidance about what this floor area does and does not include will be provided in the Housing Quality Indicator document)

You will be provided with the following reference documents:
- Housing Quality Indicator Document
- Lifetime Homes 16 Design Criteria Document
- Local Area Design Guide
- Drawing Checklist
- Coursework Marking Criteria (See Module Handbook)

It is now down to you to produce a design to meet the requirements and ensure a successful planning application for your company!

1. Begin by drawing a basic rectangle meeting your internal floor area requirement. Since you are drawing a two storey house, split this rectangle in half and you have a very basic outline for the internal area of Ground and First Floor. Note: you may for example decide to make the Ground Floor bigger than the First Floor and can then take some area from the First Floor and add it to the Ground Floor

Eg: Your internal floor area is 80m2, draw a rectangle 8000mm x 10000mm, then split in half so you will have two rectangles 8000mm x 5000mm. This is how you start to draw your ground and first floors.

You will then need to build up your external walls around the outside of these rectangles.

2. Draw up the WC and Bathroom as a block to place into the floor plan - there are very specific HQI and Lifetime Homes guidelines which will dictate your Bathroom and WC layouts and allow very little design flexibility. Remember, you can download CAD plans and elevations for the bathroom suite of your choice by following this link to the Blue Book.

3. Consult the HQI and Lifetime Homes Documents and draw up all the furniture, activity zones and turning spaces you will need for each room (remember you can download sanitaryware from the Blue Book.

4. Start by calculating the width required for hallways/landings and stairs (as set out in the Lifetime Homes criteria), before you place the rooms. You will need to experiment with different layouts in order to meet all requirements for HQI and Lifetime Homes. This part is a jigsaw puzzle!

5. Note: you are allowed to design an open plan Living/Dining or Kitchen/ Dining area but ensure that each ‘zone' still meets HQI furniture and turning/activity space requirements for your number of bedspaces.

If designing any Ground Floor open plan areas, please ensure that you are still providing sufficient internal walls to support the First Floor!

6. When laying out your Kitchen, cooker, fridge and sink are typically laid out in a triangular configuration to allow easy movement from one appliance to the next.

7. You can use the floor levels provided for Manual Drawing

8. For the Section use the example drawn in the AutoCAD workshops as a starting point. How the roof is represented will depend on where the section has been taken (eg along the apex of the roof lengthways or slicing through widthways). The following book provides useful diagrams of roof make-ups: Marshall, D., Worthing, D., Dann, N. and Heath, R. (2013) The Construction of Houses, Abingdon: Routledge

9. Assume north is pointing upwards on the drawing: ie: the Front Elevation is south-facing and the Rear Elevation is north-facing

10. You do not need to draw a garage. Just indicate using a simple rectangle where the car would be parked and draw the outline of the path leading to the front door. Indicate a garden boundary with a simple line (see General Drawing Requirements Checklist, item 15 (part of the Coursework Brief))

11. Please note that the plot you are building on is flat. There is no gradient to worry about when drawing the path to the front door.