Glossary. Architecture, BIM, planning and interior design — in plain terms.

Redesigning an existing building for a new function rather than demolishing and starting over — a residence converted to offices, an old warehouse into a studio. It demands reading the existing structure honestly, often via scan-to-BIM, before committing to a new layout, since what's actually load-bearing rarely matches the original drawings.

The final drawing set corrected to match what was actually constructed, including every site change a contractor made that never went back through us as a formal revision. Distinct from the BIM as-built model — on smaller projects without full BIM delivery, this is often just the marked-up construction documents, updated after handover.

A tall, usually skylit interior void running through multiple floors, used to bring daylight deep into a building's core and give it a shared central volume. It does real work for daylighting and passive ventilation, but it also removes floor area on every level it passes through, which is a genuine tradeoff on a tight urban plot.

The set of legally binding construction and safety rules — structural, fire, accessibility, services — a design must meet regardless of the client's preferences. We design to code from Schematic Design onward rather than retrofitting compliance later, since a non-compliant layout usually can't be patched without redesigning the plan.

Everything separating conditioned interior space from the outside — walls, roof, windows, insulation — considered together as the system controlling heat gain, moisture and energy performance, not just as separate finished surfaces. A well-designed envelope does real thermal work; a poorly detailed one leaks heat regardless of how good the HVAC design is.

The maximum permitted vertical extent of a building, measured per local byelaw (usually plinth to parapet or roof), set alongside FAR and setbacks by the development authority. It directly caps the number of floors a plot can support, so it's checked in the same early feasibility pass as FAR — not discovered at permit-set stage.

A structural element — a slab, balcony or beam — projecting outward and supported only at one end, carrying load without a column underneath its outer edge. Visually dramatic when used well, but it shifts real structural cost into the beam and foundation behind it; a cantilever is never actually free of support, just of a visible one.

The actual usable floor area inside a unit, measured wall-to-wall excluding the wall thickness itself — the number that matters most to a client asking 'how much space do I actually get,' as opposed to gross floor area, which authorities use for FAR calculations and always reads larger.

The full drawing set a contractor actually builds from — plans, sections, elevations, details, schedules — precise enough to price and construct without guessing our intent. This is where an unresolved Design Development decision becomes expensive, since ambiguity here turns into a site query or a costly assumption.

The stage after Schematic Design where the concept gets resolved into real dimensions — structural grid, wall types, window sizes, ceiling heights — coordinated enough that construction documentation can be drawn without redesigning as we go. Structural and MEP input starts landing properly here, not after.

A straight-on, undistorted view of one face of a building, showing height, window and door positions, and material changes without perspective distortion. It's a design and communication drawing as much as a technical one — it's usually the first drawing a client actually reads and reacts to.

The exterior face of a building — its material, fenestration rhythm, and detailing — that carries most of a project's visual identity and is usually where a client's aspiration and the structural or budget reality get negotiated hardest. It's also the envelope doing the real work of keeping weather, heat and noise out, not just the part that photographs well.

The ratio of total built-up floor area to plot area, set by the local development authority, that caps how much building a plot legally supports regardless of how tall or wide you'd like to go. Every massing study on a new plot starts with checking FAR, because it decides the ceiling before design even begins.

A horizontal cut through the building at roughly waist height, showing walls, room layout, doors and furniture placement — the drawing most clients actually understand and live with day to day. It's also the drawing that has to reconcile every other requirement: structure, services routing, code-mandated egress, and how a family actually moves through the house.

The total built-up floor area of a building measured to the outer face of exterior walls, including structure, stairwells and shafts — the figure development authorities actually use against FAR, distinct from the smaller carpet area a client experiences as usable space.

A wall carrying structural load down to the foundation, as opposed to a partition that only divides space and can be moved freely. Identifying which is which matters most during renovation — removing a load-bearing wall without a structural engineer's beam design is how a real ceiling ends up on a real floor.

The basic three-dimensional volume and proportion of a building — its overall bulk, height and footprint — worked out before facade material or interior layout is resolved. A massing study tests whether a concept fits the plot's FAR, setbacks and height limit at all, before time is spent designing details that might not survive that check.

Using orientation, shading, cross-ventilation and material choice to manage a building's heat and light before mechanical systems are even switched on — reducing the cooling load a client pays for every summer after handover. It has to be decided at Schematic Design; you can't add correct orientation to a building after it's built.

The specific subset of construction documents submitted to the development authority for building permission — enough drawings to prove code and byelaw compliance, not necessarily the full detail set a contractor needs. Getting this approved is a gate the project can't pass without, so it's sequenced ahead of full construction documentation.

A wide, usually taller base level — commonly parking or retail — that a building's tower or residential floors sit on top of, common in mixed-use and higher-density urban schemes. It changes the structural grid problem, since the tower's column layout above rarely lines up cleanly with the open span parking needs below.

The first design stage — massing, room relationships, and the big structural and spatial moves — worked out at a rough scale before any wall thickness or material is fixed. What we agree with a client here is the concept the rest of the project builds on; changing the layout in Design Development costs far more than changing it now.

A vertical cut through the building showing floor-to-ceiling heights, staircases, structure and how spaces stack — information a plan alone can't show. We rely on sections to catch problems a floor plan hides entirely, like a beam dropping into a doorway's clear height or a stair that doesn't actually fit the floor-to-floor distance.

The minimum required distance between a building's edge and the plot boundary, road, or neighbouring structure, set by local byelaws. It's rarely negotiable and shapes the buildable footprint before a single wall is drawn — get it wrong and CDA/RDA approval simply won't be granted, however good the design is.

The regular column-and-beam layout underlying a building's structure, set early because it constrains everything drawn on top of it — room widths, window rhythm, even where a load-bearing wall can or can't move. Changing the grid in Design Development after structure has sized against it is one of the most expensive changes a project can make.

Building traditions developed locally over generations in response to climate, available material and culture, rather than imported from elsewhere — thick mud walls and courtyards in hot, dry regions, for instance. We reference it for passive-design lessons worth carrying into contemporary work, not as a style to copy decoratively.