Repositioning a garage and corner office

Project A Task 3: reposition the garage and the corner office from the bottom right of the plan to the bottom left, keeping the rest of the layout as intact as possible. Each design consideration is taken one at a time as the work proceeds, and the result is verified at the end.

The first consideration is minimal intervention. Only the areas being relocated should change; the rest of the house stays intact. To achieve that, both the office and the garage are treated as separate modules that can be moved and edited independently. First, copy the entire plan and place it beside the original.

The copy keeps the original available as a reference. Revit warns because dimensions and elements are attached to the initial plan; since this is a working copy, those can be ignored.

Copy both the office and the garage out to the side, where each can be cleaned up into its own module.

Delete the room tags first. Tags define room boundaries, so keeping them while the geometry changes raises unnecessary warnings. Select everything, open Filter, uncheck all, then tick room tags and rooms, and delete.

Clean the office space. Remove any walls or doors the module does not need, then align the common walls — the top entrance wall — with AL, from both sides. The aim is a closed module.

The external wall is shared with the garage, so use the Split command, SL, to divide it where the two walls intersect and delete the central portion. That lets the wall work independently for each space.

For the closet area, place a matching door on the interior side: select the door, right-click, Create Similar — which keeps element types uniform across the model. The arrows flip the door orientation, so it opens into the wall rather than into the adjacent space, and the unnecessary external door is deleted.

The office is now a clean module, so group it with GP. Grouping means the module can be edited in isolation without affecting the rest of the model.

Build the garage module the same way. Delete anything that does not belong to it, then align the exterior wall to the corresponding interior wall with AL, and repeat for the top left wall.

The garage is a clean module too, so group it with GP. Both spaces are now defined as modules.

The next consideration is spatial quality and model integrity. The relocated spaces should fit their new position without leaving overlapping, floating or redundant walls behind.

Looking at the original plan, the office moves to the opposite corner. Position it there and resolve the geometry against what is already in that part of the plan.

Circulation and privacy come next. The relocated office should have a clear, practical entrance without compromising circulation through the dining and foyer areas.

The gallery already reaches the office, but a separate entry from the circulation point improves connectivity — someone coming to the office can enter directly rather than crossing the main living area. That keeps the room accessible while maintaining privacy. Create Similar places a door on the right exterior wall.

Now the garage. Before moving it, study the new location: a closet projects from the bedroom above, with a connecting door to the main space. The garage has to keep a practical connection to the exterior and driveway without taking from the foyer or clashing with that closet.

Delete the internal walls and room tags of the old office space to clear room for the garage module, along with the door opening into the foyer, since a connecting door already exists.

Delete the external office walls, which would intrude into the garage space, then align the exterior walls with AL against the foyer wall and the closet wall.

Take the garage module and mirror it with DM so the driveway faces the exterior after relocation. Because the closet projects into this area, the main car entry must not clash with the closet wall — so use the main garage wall as the reference and move it towards the closet reference, which leaves enough clearance for a car to enter.

That leaves many overlapping walls. Double-click into the garage group and remove what is no longer required in the new position — the top right corner walls, the top wall, and the wall extruding into the foyer space.

Align the wall with the foyer and drag it up to meet the main entrance wall, delete the overlapping exterior door, and drag the wall down to match the closet external wall.

Since the door connecting the garage to the exterior was deleted as an overlap, add one on the bottom wall to restore that connection. Exit the group, select the door, Create Similar, and place it. The arrows change orientation — here it is kept on the inside facing the external wall.

Both the garage and office modules are updated, so they can be ungrouped.

The final step is verifying that the relocation met the design requirements. Delete the old room tags and place new ones to avoid discrepancy, then compare the office and garage areas against the original values.

From the property tab, the office was 157 square feet and is now 194. The garage was 590 square feet and is now 553. The room programme is unchanged, circulation and privacy are maintained, and no overlapping, floating or duplicate walls are left in the model.