Circulation area is the space in a building that provides access to all areas and must meet safety and accessibility regulations. It includes hallways, elevators, and loading docks. Ceilings and width requirements must be met. It cannot be sold or leased and is important for square footage calculations and government requirements. Blueprints and CAD drawings can estimate the space and help with building code compliance.
Circulation area is the square footage in a building that provides people with access to all spaces within the building. In many regions of the world, there are specific circulation area regulations that are designed to ensure that this space meets accessibility and safety requirements for building users. The percentage of the total square footage taken up by this area depends on a number of factors including building layout and building size.
Some examples of things included in circulation area include: hallways, corridors, elevators, stairways, lobbies, escalators, walkways, and any other part of a building designed to create access to a room or area within the ‘building. Portions of loading docks, for example, may be defined as part of this area because they provide people with access to and from the loading dock and building. The circulation area can be changed by activities such as moving partition walls and creating walkways.
To qualify as part of the circulation area, an area must have ceilings high enough to allow for passage. For accessibility reasons, there may also be width requirements designed to accommodate people using mobility devices such as wheelchairs and walkers within the building. Security can also mandate enough width for people to evacuate quickly, along with multiple entry and exit modes so that people can still exit if part of the building is cut through or damaged.
When people make square footage calculations, circulation area is one of many areas that can be considered in the calculation. Square footage distribution can be important for some types of projects and to meet government requirements. Governments can mandate that a certain amount of square footage be put to specific uses for security reasons, for example. Circulation area is square footage that can’t be sold or leased, which means it can be accounted for differently in taxes and other types of financial calculations.
Blueprints and CAD drawings of a building can highlight circulation area and provide square footage estimates that allow people to see whether or not a building will meet needs and requirements. These estimates can also be used when packaging a proposed design for review, so the people conducting the review can have this background information at hand when evaluating the proposed building or proposed changes. Executors of various building codes may take special interest in this stage to determine whether or not the building meets government requirements.
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