last weekend I ran a workshop and few of my students asked about Plan and Site Plans. What is the difference between them and what is Site Plan?
I thought it is important to write about this topic here and let others know the difference. First I would like to write about the actual word “Plan”. When you hear this word please do not think of just engineering or technical topics, it is actually used for many other topics as well. Plans are very useful for many factors and can be beneficial for everyone. For example understanding and being familiar with plans helps you to know what to buy and how to use what you have, helps you to use your space in a smart way and assist you with types of building or offices around you and their environment.
In general, plans are drawn step by step to be clear for us to follow and understand. What I mean is all the main components and locations, including the walls, floor areas are measured and written on a plan. So all is really needed is paper and a pen to sketch a plan. Due to the appearance of the room you can draw the shape of it and for each wall there is a line on the paper. Accurate measurement is needed to have dimensions on the plan. Size of each wall will be written next to them or at top of each. Basically the process begins with on of the wall in a maze and you come back to the wall again on your paper. Another important part of plans are floor profile. Each of the spaces of houses or any type of plan usually is in the form of geometric shapes square, rectangular or a combination of shapes. Depending on type of your sketch plan you will give it scale such as 1:100, 1:20 or maybe 1:50 which gives better understanding of sizes to the viewer.
The above description can be summarized that plan is a two-dimensional view from above which helps to visualize the space drawn. In architectural plans, room, walls, doors, windows and equipments are shown and communicate with each other to demonstrate space around them. Do not forget that any place regarding to the performance and features, has its own type of plan. Overall I believe a good, clear plan must contain main directions such as North, South, East or West plus Scale of the plan and Types of spaces such as Bedroom or Dining room.
Site Plans are very similar to Plans but they demonstrate the overall design of the space or a building. A Site plan can be divided in units and demonstrate characteristics of a house or commercial complex. By looking at a Site plan of a shopping centre you are able to understand the facilities and environment around it. People use Site plans more than ever and it is a must have for many types of buildings. A great example can be shopping centres. Where ever you are living, please check your favourite shopping centre’s website. Most of the shopping centres around the work have their site plans online for us to have better understanding of the environment we would like to visit. The photo cover of this article is a sketch plan of a building I sketched where gives you a clear understand of the environment around and the arrangement of spaces inside. Please let me know if you would like a tutorial about these types of sketches on Design N’ Construction YouTube channel and as always, remember to Scratch to Reality! Design N’ Construction team
References: markpoulierart
