Room information sheets provide an organized overview of a building’s needs. They are crucial in the design, planning, and project development. They facilitate communication, quality assurance, and change management.
They are typically created during the briefing (architectural programming in the US) phases of a project to communicate the client’s requirement for each type of space. Then, they are utilized to create a specification that helps design teams and contractors understand what the client expects from the space and makes sure that any proposed solution meets their expectations.
Architects create room data sheets via interviews with stakeholders and clients. They are typically work-in-progress and can be a «living document» until the design team has agreed on the final version.
When you are creating a room information sheet the most important thing to keep in mind is to list all the requirements according to the type of space, and then categorize each requirement as either ‘general’ or ‘specific’. One general requirement could be that an office must be soundproofed up to a certain level but specific requirements could include:
Layer’s digital room sheets and predefined picklists allow you to gather all needed information in a systematic and efficient way. This allows designers to think systematically about all possible requirements, while reducing the possibility of not noticing something. When you link your data sheets to an IFC floorplan it is possible to create adjacency charts that show how requirements are transformed into spatial solutions.
