Banca de DEFESA: LAURA IRIS ARAUJO DE OLIVEIRA

Architectural proposal for a vertical housing building considering risk management.

Architecture, Risk Management, Vertical Residential Building

Project management is an important means to help professionals in the civil
construction area in planning their activities and, thus, succeed in their undertakings. One of the
sectors of management that can contribute to the design process, including the architectural one,
would be risk management, since the good use of its guidelines helps identifying as well as
minimizing the effects of negative unforeseen events on the project. However, this is a branch of
management that is still not extensively widespread in the construction industry, especially in the
context of architectural projects. The lack of a significant amount of studies to address the most
outstanding risks during the conception of any architectural design leads designers to rely almost
exclusively on their intuition. As a result of this shortage of standards, changes in delivery
schedules together with budgeting mishaps are usual outcomes. In this context, the present paper
aims to help disseminating knowledge in regards to this particular subject and as a matter of fact
established a case study of a high-rise apartment building and the application of risk management
techniques and tools throughout its design process. Therefore, the main goal of this report is to
develop the architectural design of a high-rise apartment building, adopting design decisions in
response to technical risks of greater impact to the project. To develop this project some steps
were carried out: theoretical-conceptual deepening on high-rise housing and project
management; analysis of design-references studies that served as a basis for the architectural
design; application of risk management strategies in the design of a high-rise apartment building;
investigation of design constraints such as physical-environmental and by-law aspects. While
apllying risk management processes and tools, it was possible to identify the three main negative
impacts to the project: budget overrun, incorrect selection of materials, and lack of interaction
with local building methods. As a response, we applied building rationalization, optimization of
materials through research in the local market, and the application of regional building elements,
promoting their appreciation. The result is a ten-storey high-rise apartment building design,
which features as remarkable attributes the modular coordination of constructive elements in
addition to the use of local materials on its facades. It is believed that the final result of this work
achieved the stipulated goals and contributed to the maturation of the theme, especially when it
comes specifically to architectural projects.