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Design+ Building code app benefits for designers

Table 4. (Continued)
Parameters/questions Themes Codes Example
Museum “Student last spring was designing a museum... and she wanted to, she wanted
to know whether her exits were far enough apart.”
Row houses “One project that we commonly start looking at code is a row house.”
Applying codes Fire codes “Taking things into consideration like evacuation and fire safety plans.”
to design
ADA “Wheelchair accessibility, making sure that doors are wide enough, there’s
enough room, and around furniture to maneuver around it safely and sit
comfortably.”
Egress “One project where we start to look at this type of egress component for the code.”
Lighting allowance “So make sure that after they design the electric lighting system, they don’t exceed
the allowance for the load and do the same thing in a comprehensive way.”
Comprehension “Come back with some sketches that show they understand corridor
dimensions, for example, and basic egress components.”
Code checklist “The students go through all those checklists and complete all the checklists as
they pertain to the project.”
Design critiques “Every week when we’re doing design critiques, looking at how their design is
meeting different building codes.”
Documenting “Go out and actually document and build sort of a little library of all of the
backup code documents that pertain to the information that they’re pulling
out in the code checklist.”
Progress “So, we started them off fairly small scale, little problems in their second year,
just to get their brain around, determining occupancy.”
Code teaching Rules “I really love having rules that guide the design.”
experience
Challenging “Okay, these are the parameters, and now how can I be creative and inventive
creativity within those parameters?”
Research driven “Very research driven, that the students have to really, you know, understand
their project, and they really have to research the codes that are applicable to
their project type.”
Subjective versus “So, it’s much more concrete, and, you know, definitive, and not as subjective
objective as a lot of other things that the students are considering when developing their
design projects.”
Understanding Hands-on teaching “I asked students to go to the bathroom and... ask them to check the accessible
codes one, and I asked students to bring a tape measure, and ask them to measure
the actual dimensions, because they cannot visualize.”
Connections with “Kind of connecting that idea of social behavior to practical applications
real-world applications through what the code outlines.”
Assistance “Helping them understand feels kind of rewarding to me because then they
can take that and kind of grow with that.”
Relevance “I think it’s nice when they realize that the point is to make people safe, and
you feel good when they finally realize that that’s something worth doing.”
Applying knowledge “Enjoy making them learn about it and see them apply what they know.”
Students learning Embrace rules “Then they start getting more responsible and really embracing the rules, because
experience they become liable, but that liability is not apparent to them at the beginning.”
Reference “They spend a lot of time and gather a lot of information, and then they have
Resources that information to reference.”
Confidence Code competence “I think that sense of knowing and competence is the reward for them.”
Future career “I hope they find some usefulness in it, and they gain confidence in their ability
to design structures and understand what their job in the future is going to be.”
(Cont'd...)

Volume 2 Issue 3 (2025) 13 doi: 10.36922/DP025190025