Room information sheets provide an organized overview of a building’s requirements. They are vital to design, planning and project development. They aid in communication as well as quality assurance and change management.
They are usually developed during the briefing (architectural programming in the US) phases of a design project to clarify the client’s requirements for each type of space. They are then used to create specifications that assist designers and contractors know what the client wants from the space, and ensures that any proposed solution is in line with their requirements.
Typically architects create room information sheets by conducting interviews with their clients as well as other stakeholders. They are typically a work-in-progress and can be kept as an “living document” until the design team has agreed on the final design.
When creating a sheet of data for a space, it is important to classify all items as ‘general’ or “specific”. For example, a general requirement could be that an office must be soundproofed to a certain level, while specific requirements could include things like:
Layer’s digital room sheets and predefined listlists allow you to collect all the necessary information in a logical and efficient manner. This can help designers to think systematically about all possible requirements, minimizing the chance of omitting or forgetting something. In addition, when you connect your room data sheets to an IFC floor plan, you can automatically generate adjacency diagrams to see how requirements will be translated into spatial solutions.