Why we draw the section first
A plan shows where things are. A section shows what it is like to be there. We start with the section because the height of a room decides almost everything else.
By Astrid Kjeldsen. . 2 minute read.
Most projects at Fold begin with a section. It is a habit, and I can give you three reasons for it.
A room is mostly its height
When someone describes a room they like, they rarely mention its floor area. They talk about the ceiling, the light from above, the way the space opened as they came in. These are all properties of the section. A plan can be perfect and the room still feels like a corridor, because it is two and a half metres high and the window starts at a metre.
In the House on the Dune the whole design came from one decision, which was to let the ridge rise to 5.4 metres over the living room and fall to 2.6 at the north eave. We drew that before we had drawn a wall.
It forces the real questions early
A section has to say how thick the roof is. It has to say where the insulation goes, where the water runs, how the floor meets the ground, and what happens at the eave. If we leave those questions until later, they are answered by the builder under time pressure.
On a section at 1 to 50, a junction that does not work is visible as a pencil line that cannot be drawn. We prefer to find that in September in the studio than in March on site.
It is the cheapest drawing to change
A plan change moves walls and often moves the budget. A section change usually moves a line by 20 centimetres, and tells you at once whether the room still works. We draw ten of them for every one we keep.
How we do it
We draw by hand, on tracing paper, at 1 to 50. When the section holds, Jonas builds it as a clay model and we look at it from the side with a torch, the way the sun will come across it. Only after that do we draw the plan.
If you are starting a project, the most useful thing you can bring to a first meeting is not a plan. It is a description of one room you like, and how high the ceiling is.