Plan vs the Experienced Elevation

 The question of whether the elevation or the plan was more important when we design was the heated debate in class that I didn’t expect and really had me thinking about how we experience architecture. As an architecture student I’ve always gone through the spatial planning with bubble diagrams and relied on the plan to generate the design. Even working in reverse, when I am trying to understand a building by surveying it I always start with the plan first before even thinking about documenting the elevations. It never occurred to me that not everyone understands buildings this way. 

However, our whole architectural experience primarily takes place in elevation. I have never had the experience of looking down at the plan of a de-roofed building.  If you asked someone to draw a building, 99% would draw a facade and not a plan. We are always seeing buildings in elevation, many which we will never explore the interior to even understand their plans. 

In our code review class, we discussed The Station nightclub fire and looked at the plan diagram of the exits. The fire killed 100 people and injured 230 but  it did meet code by having the appropriate number of exits. However everyone bottlenecked at the main entrance and the other exits were obscured. This tragedy (among several other modifications to fire code) show that architects can’t only think in plan, but must think about the user and the user experience. I don’t think anyone who is not an architect has ever looked at a building’s fire evacuation route because that is not how are brains work; certainly not when we are in panic mode. Most people to exit a building will retrace their steps to the door they entered or rely on the presence of glowing exit signs. As sad as this example is, I think it underscores the dominance of elevations in our spatial understanding of a place.