Pattern:Building Pattern

Description

An English description of the definition (what distinguishes this sense of the term?).

The Building pattern defines the concepts to capture information about individual buildings, thus describing land use from a different perspective and at a finer level of granularity than typical land use classifications. The Infrastructure Pattern is reused here, as Buildings and Building Units are defined as types of (subclasses) Infrastructure Elements. The Building pattern also reuses the Spatial Location pattern in order to capture the location of a building. While we expect the address of a building to remain constant its exact location can change over time, as in the case of a remodeling or extension. The possibility is supported by the Building pattern, which also reuses the Change pattern and captures the location as a variant property. Other attributes of a building are also captured, such as the type of building, units contained in a building, their monetary value, and so on. The Mereology pattern is used to capture the disaggregate parts of a building, and the Units of Measure pattern is required to capture attributes required for land value considerations, such as sale prices and square footage.

Key Concepts and Classes

A Building is a structure with some location in the urban system. The location of the Building in space may change (e.g. due to construction). – this may be described in terms of both actual (e.g. 2D and 3D space) location occupied by the building and associated locations (e.g. a point coordinate). There are different types (subclasses) of buildings, such as House, Apartment Building, Office Building, and so on. A Building has a market value. A Building contains one or many units. A Building has some height, some footprint area, and some floor area. The floor area is often greater than the footprint area as it accounts for the area of each floor of the building. However, floor area excludes unoccupied areas such as basements. A BuildingUnit has a size (square footage, number of rooms). A Building or BuildingUnit may contain some Facility(s), e.g. kitchen, bath, or air conditioning. Note that this is distinct from the notion of including amenities that are not a physical part of the Building (or BuildingUnit), but which may be part of the Tenure. A BuildingUnit has an address. A BuildingUnit has a value and may have some rental fee. Different types (subclasses) of Building may be defined as required. It is recommended to avoid confusing type of building structure with building use. For example, a “Detached House” is a type of building whereas an “Office” is not. A Building also requires some degree of permanence; a “Duplex” or a “Garage” may be defined as types of buildings, whereas a tent may not. Also note that a Building refers only to the structure, not the surrounding area; an airport terminal is a building, an aircraft hangar is a building, but the entire airport complex is not. A Building (or class of buildings) may be described as having some associated use and/or function. The values of a building’s use or function properties may be populated according to one or more existing classification systems. In this way it is also possible to extend the pattern with various subclasses of Building, as required for a given application.

Has Class(es)

BuildingUnit, Facility, 5087-2:Building

Status

Pending Approval

Supplementary Figures

Figure	Caption