AMBER PA EXAM QUESTIONS WITH CORRECT ANSWERS LATEST UPDATE 2026
Gross floor area - Answers In matters of code, gross floor area is measured from the inside face of
exterior walls. In other matters of programming and analysis (programming, pre-design, schematic
design, or cost estimating), gross floor area is measured from the outside face of the exterior walls. It
is a value used in the denominator of economic efficiency proportion measures like "net-to-gross"
(interior area, excluding corridors, lobbies, elevators, bathrooms, and stairs, divided by gross floor
area). "Usable area," is like net area, except that it includes corridors. "Rentable area" is like usable
area, except that it includes bathrooms and lobbies. "Grossing factor," is rentable area, divided by
usable area. To make these concepts even more difficult to remember, their specific definition varies
somewhat by region and industry, so you might have correctly heard one of these terms used in
another way. Argh. Try not to stress and do your best based on these definitions.
Having trouble remembering the order of these names? From largest to smallest floor area, use "Go
RUN". . . Gross, Rentable, Usable, Net.. . . Rentable and Usable are the tricky ones to keep straight, so
remember that Rentable doesn't include building volumes that are common to multiple tenants AND
extend between floors (stairs and elevators).
Catchment areas - Answers In a discussion of stormwater runoff, the catchment area is the region
from which rainfall flows into a stream, culvert, catch basin, or roof drain.
The field of building feasibility study reappropriated the phrase "catchment area" from the
stormwater people as a useful parallel. It is the region from which residents are expected to visit your
building. When siting a school, how many children live in an area bounded by the midway points
between your site and other schools? When siting a hospital, what proportion of residents within X
miles are over the age of 70 and how many of them have health insurance? For your proposed indoor
pool site, it is unlikely that residents will drive past another, more proximate, indoor pool to visit your
spot further away. Your proposed corner store will have a catchment area of no more than six blocks
because it relies on pedestrian customers. In this way, to judge the feasibility of building here, we'll
map a catchment area based on demographics, commerce, geography, and human habit to describe
the area from where your building will draw people. See here for an example.
Where is the most effective location for an outdoor noise barrier? - Answers If you have a noise
source (truck) and a receiver (person with ears on a balcony), the least effective place for an outdoor
noise barrier is halfway between them. The most effective location is as near as possible to the noise
source or as near as possible to the receiver. The image is from my book, Architectural Acoustics
Illustrated (Wiley 2015)
What is a population pyramid? - Answers To own the concept of the population pyramid, see this
Hans Rosling video (already at the relevant time stamp). If you want to see more content by this
recently-deceased Swedish physician, public health champion, and "person who thinks graphically like
an architect," go here. I can also highly recommend his books. For those of you who are pessimists, a
warning that you will come away with a feeling that humanity is doing well. For those who like data,
demographics, or the illustration of data in novel graphic formats, you'll love his stuff.
Positively- and negatively- pressurized locations in a building with open windows. - Answers
Positively- and negatively- pressurized locations in a building with open windows.
"Ideal" structural parti for seismic design - Answers Uniform loading of structural elements (stress
connections from non-uniform loading- for instance, cantilevers- are weak points in an earthquake)
Low, wide buildings (prevents overturning)
Equal floor heights (means fewer stress connections)
Symmetrical plan shape (minimizes torsion/twisting)
Shear walls or bracing at the perimeter (more efficient at resisting torsion/twisting than shear walls in
the core)
Short spans (less stress on members and more columns provide redundancy if some are lost in an
earthquake)
Minimize openings in floors and roofs (more efficient diaphragms)
Extend shear walls continuously from roof to foundation
Why avoid cantilevers, irregularly-shaped buildings, re-entrant corners (L- or T- shaped plans) when
designing in seismic zones? - Answers There are two reasons to avoid re-entrant corners (and other
irregularly-shaped buildings) in your parti:
First, like any irregular shape, they produce differential motions between different wings of the
building, stressing the re-entrant corner (interior notch)
,Second, these shapes create torsion in the building that is difficult to predict
The problem with re-entrant corners in earthquakes - Answers Each portion of the building twists out
of phase with the other
Solutions for the reentrant corner problem in seismic design - Answers Separation, strengthening, or
stiff wall elements
Irregularly-loaded buildings and seismic failure - Answers Irregularly-loaded buildings and seismic
failure
Failures in earthquakes from:
Soft story problem (tall first story with slender columns and not much lateral bracing). This issue, top
row, is the most common and causes the most death and destruction.
Weight irregularity (More weight in the top floor, shown in red)
Shear wall doesn't extend full height of the building
Shear wall not continuous over full height of the building
One story weaker than the others
Jutting building elevations (click here)
Irregularly-shaped buildings and seismic failure - Answers Irregularly-shaped buildings and seismic
failure
(you don't have to memorize these names. . . understand the concepts)
Does this mean you can't design an irregularly-shaped building in an earthquake zone? Of course not.
Herzog and de Meuron built the de Young Museum in San Francisco. It just means that irregularly-
shaped buildings are less efficient, and therefore in need of extra care (bracing, etc.).
When the shear wall is overly-perforated with apertures or doesn't continue uninterrupted all the
way from roof to foundation: - Answers When the shear wall is overly-perforated it fails to bestow the
benefit of a shear wall. It no longer protects the building from failure under a lateral load like an
earthquake.
Can foundations bear on loam? - Answers Yes, loam can support a building. It is a combination of
sand, silt and clay.
Gravel, clay, shale, sand are okay; rock (bedrock, limestone, sandstone) is great for supporting
foundations of heavy buildings.
Organic soil and peat (dark brown or black and easily compressible) are not competent soils.
Image: peat, not competent enough to support a building, being harvested for use in gardens.
What is the difference between a Phase I and Phase II Environmental Site Assessment (ESA)? -
Answers A Phase II ESA is more thorough than a Phase I ESA.
Any property owner, regardless of fault, can be held liable for releases of hazardous materials from
their land. However, if you purchased a property and can prove you performed appropriate
environmental due diligence, but found no environmental red flags before the purchase, you are
granted protections from that liability should toxic sludge be found later to be leaking from your land
into the river. The Environmental Site Assessment (ESA) has become an established standard for this
type of before-you-purchase-land environmental due diligence, and is used by the buyer and lender
to both assess risk and protect from future litigation.
A Phase I ESA includes site inspection by an environmental professional, a historical records review of
the property, and interviews with owners, occupants, neighbors, and local government officials. If a
Phase I ESA turns up a recognized environmental concern (REC), then the environmental professionals
conducting it will recommend a Phase II Environmental Site Assessment (ESA).
Unlike a Phase I ESA, a Phase II ESA is invasive, involving soil testing, groundwater sample testing and
testing of building materials.
Best location in a warm climate? Best location in a cold climate? (Site A or Site B) - Answers Site A:
cold climate; Site B: warm climate
Body of water provides clearing for direct (and reflected) southern solar gains - Answers Site A: best
location in a cold climate
, Body of water provides clearing for direct (and reflected) southern solar gains - Answers Site A: Best
site for a cold climate
Trees provide shading from southern sun - Answers Site B: Best location for a building in a warm
climate
Trees shade (at least a portion) of southern sun - Answers Best location for a building in a warm
climate
According to the building code, a courtroom has an occupancy classification of _______ . (You may
use the Amber Book Case Study material or the internet to look this up.)
Assembly (A)
Business (B)
Institutional (I)
Mercantile (M) - Answers Answer: a courtroom is classified as Assembly (A).
See a list of code occupancies here. In the exam, you'll want to be sure to use the search function to
find the appropriate occupancy: in this case you'd search for "courtroom" and find it under occupancy
classification A-3. These four classifications—Assembly, Business, Institutional, Mercantile—plus
Educational (E), can mislead you if you try to guess instead of search. For instance, a medium-sized
university lecture hall is not considered Educational, it is Assembly instead—Educational occupancy is
reserved generally for K-12. A bowling alley, funeral parlor, and restaurant seem like they'd be
Mercantile, but the code also considers them Assembly spaces—Mercantile is reserved for places
where things are sold, like markets or department stores, without the density of a restaurant. You
might assume that museums and libraries are Institutional occupancies, but they are also Assembly—
Institutional as an occupancy is not about government and civic institutions, but rather for buildings
like hospitals and jails where people may not be able to leave on their own in a fire. Generally, if your
building has a high density of visitors, it may be an Assembly occupancy, even if it doesn't feel like a
theater or banquet hall. Business occupancy includes spaces for lawyers and architects where people
work every day (and know their way out if the lights fail and the corridor fills with smoke).
According to the building code, a bank has an occupancy of _______ .(You may use the Amber Book
Case Study material or the internet to look this up.)
Assembly (A)
Business (B)
Institutional (I)
Mercantile (M) - Answers Answer: a bank is Business (B) occupancy.
Why is a bank, post office, or barber shop considered a Business and has the B classification—while a
courtroom is considered an Assembly, and has the A classification? They both have papers in storage
and visitors. I suppose some threshold of people per square foot is crossed when you move from bank
to courtroom on the density scale. In any event, that is why when faced with this kind of question on
the exam, you'll be sure to search the case study for "bank." Don't memorize these; use the search
function instead because occupancy questions will almost surely come within a case study, and even if
they don't come in the case study section, you can often still look up the answers later in the case
study section.
You are designing a health clinic in Zambia on a remote site. A well is not an option here, so water will
be delivered to a tank. No pump will be used in the building's plumbing because the clinic is off-the-
grid and only has power through photovoltaic panels on the roof. The pressure at the faucet is not
sufficient. This can be best rectified by _______.
Increasing the diameter of the pipe
Increasing the height of the water storage tank
Swapping out for a larger tank with a larger diameter
Utilizing pressure-increasing valves - Answers Answer: Increasing the height of the water storage tank
Building foundations should rest on _______.
Shallow soils in temperate climates (less than 2 feet deep)
Peat
Sand
Topsoil - Answers Answer: Sand
Gross floor area - Answers In matters of code, gross floor area is measured from the inside face of
exterior walls. In other matters of programming and analysis (programming, pre-design, schematic
design, or cost estimating), gross floor area is measured from the outside face of the exterior walls. It
is a value used in the denominator of economic efficiency proportion measures like "net-to-gross"
(interior area, excluding corridors, lobbies, elevators, bathrooms, and stairs, divided by gross floor
area). "Usable area," is like net area, except that it includes corridors. "Rentable area" is like usable
area, except that it includes bathrooms and lobbies. "Grossing factor," is rentable area, divided by
usable area. To make these concepts even more difficult to remember, their specific definition varies
somewhat by region and industry, so you might have correctly heard one of these terms used in
another way. Argh. Try not to stress and do your best based on these definitions.
Having trouble remembering the order of these names? From largest to smallest floor area, use "Go
RUN". . . Gross, Rentable, Usable, Net.. . . Rentable and Usable are the tricky ones to keep straight, so
remember that Rentable doesn't include building volumes that are common to multiple tenants AND
extend between floors (stairs and elevators).
Catchment areas - Answers In a discussion of stormwater runoff, the catchment area is the region
from which rainfall flows into a stream, culvert, catch basin, or roof drain.
The field of building feasibility study reappropriated the phrase "catchment area" from the
stormwater people as a useful parallel. It is the region from which residents are expected to visit your
building. When siting a school, how many children live in an area bounded by the midway points
between your site and other schools? When siting a hospital, what proportion of residents within X
miles are over the age of 70 and how many of them have health insurance? For your proposed indoor
pool site, it is unlikely that residents will drive past another, more proximate, indoor pool to visit your
spot further away. Your proposed corner store will have a catchment area of no more than six blocks
because it relies on pedestrian customers. In this way, to judge the feasibility of building here, we'll
map a catchment area based on demographics, commerce, geography, and human habit to describe
the area from where your building will draw people. See here for an example.
Where is the most effective location for an outdoor noise barrier? - Answers If you have a noise
source (truck) and a receiver (person with ears on a balcony), the least effective place for an outdoor
noise barrier is halfway between them. The most effective location is as near as possible to the noise
source or as near as possible to the receiver. The image is from my book, Architectural Acoustics
Illustrated (Wiley 2015)
What is a population pyramid? - Answers To own the concept of the population pyramid, see this
Hans Rosling video (already at the relevant time stamp). If you want to see more content by this
recently-deceased Swedish physician, public health champion, and "person who thinks graphically like
an architect," go here. I can also highly recommend his books. For those of you who are pessimists, a
warning that you will come away with a feeling that humanity is doing well. For those who like data,
demographics, or the illustration of data in novel graphic formats, you'll love his stuff.
Positively- and negatively- pressurized locations in a building with open windows. - Answers
Positively- and negatively- pressurized locations in a building with open windows.
"Ideal" structural parti for seismic design - Answers Uniform loading of structural elements (stress
connections from non-uniform loading- for instance, cantilevers- are weak points in an earthquake)
Low, wide buildings (prevents overturning)
Equal floor heights (means fewer stress connections)
Symmetrical plan shape (minimizes torsion/twisting)
Shear walls or bracing at the perimeter (more efficient at resisting torsion/twisting than shear walls in
the core)
Short spans (less stress on members and more columns provide redundancy if some are lost in an
earthquake)
Minimize openings in floors and roofs (more efficient diaphragms)
Extend shear walls continuously from roof to foundation
Why avoid cantilevers, irregularly-shaped buildings, re-entrant corners (L- or T- shaped plans) when
designing in seismic zones? - Answers There are two reasons to avoid re-entrant corners (and other
irregularly-shaped buildings) in your parti:
First, like any irregular shape, they produce differential motions between different wings of the
building, stressing the re-entrant corner (interior notch)
,Second, these shapes create torsion in the building that is difficult to predict
The problem with re-entrant corners in earthquakes - Answers Each portion of the building twists out
of phase with the other
Solutions for the reentrant corner problem in seismic design - Answers Separation, strengthening, or
stiff wall elements
Irregularly-loaded buildings and seismic failure - Answers Irregularly-loaded buildings and seismic
failure
Failures in earthquakes from:
Soft story problem (tall first story with slender columns and not much lateral bracing). This issue, top
row, is the most common and causes the most death and destruction.
Weight irregularity (More weight in the top floor, shown in red)
Shear wall doesn't extend full height of the building
Shear wall not continuous over full height of the building
One story weaker than the others
Jutting building elevations (click here)
Irregularly-shaped buildings and seismic failure - Answers Irregularly-shaped buildings and seismic
failure
(you don't have to memorize these names. . . understand the concepts)
Does this mean you can't design an irregularly-shaped building in an earthquake zone? Of course not.
Herzog and de Meuron built the de Young Museum in San Francisco. It just means that irregularly-
shaped buildings are less efficient, and therefore in need of extra care (bracing, etc.).
When the shear wall is overly-perforated with apertures or doesn't continue uninterrupted all the
way from roof to foundation: - Answers When the shear wall is overly-perforated it fails to bestow the
benefit of a shear wall. It no longer protects the building from failure under a lateral load like an
earthquake.
Can foundations bear on loam? - Answers Yes, loam can support a building. It is a combination of
sand, silt and clay.
Gravel, clay, shale, sand are okay; rock (bedrock, limestone, sandstone) is great for supporting
foundations of heavy buildings.
Organic soil and peat (dark brown or black and easily compressible) are not competent soils.
Image: peat, not competent enough to support a building, being harvested for use in gardens.
What is the difference between a Phase I and Phase II Environmental Site Assessment (ESA)? -
Answers A Phase II ESA is more thorough than a Phase I ESA.
Any property owner, regardless of fault, can be held liable for releases of hazardous materials from
their land. However, if you purchased a property and can prove you performed appropriate
environmental due diligence, but found no environmental red flags before the purchase, you are
granted protections from that liability should toxic sludge be found later to be leaking from your land
into the river. The Environmental Site Assessment (ESA) has become an established standard for this
type of before-you-purchase-land environmental due diligence, and is used by the buyer and lender
to both assess risk and protect from future litigation.
A Phase I ESA includes site inspection by an environmental professional, a historical records review of
the property, and interviews with owners, occupants, neighbors, and local government officials. If a
Phase I ESA turns up a recognized environmental concern (REC), then the environmental professionals
conducting it will recommend a Phase II Environmental Site Assessment (ESA).
Unlike a Phase I ESA, a Phase II ESA is invasive, involving soil testing, groundwater sample testing and
testing of building materials.
Best location in a warm climate? Best location in a cold climate? (Site A or Site B) - Answers Site A:
cold climate; Site B: warm climate
Body of water provides clearing for direct (and reflected) southern solar gains - Answers Site A: best
location in a cold climate
, Body of water provides clearing for direct (and reflected) southern solar gains - Answers Site A: Best
site for a cold climate
Trees provide shading from southern sun - Answers Site B: Best location for a building in a warm
climate
Trees shade (at least a portion) of southern sun - Answers Best location for a building in a warm
climate
According to the building code, a courtroom has an occupancy classification of _______ . (You may
use the Amber Book Case Study material or the internet to look this up.)
Assembly (A)
Business (B)
Institutional (I)
Mercantile (M) - Answers Answer: a courtroom is classified as Assembly (A).
See a list of code occupancies here. In the exam, you'll want to be sure to use the search function to
find the appropriate occupancy: in this case you'd search for "courtroom" and find it under occupancy
classification A-3. These four classifications—Assembly, Business, Institutional, Mercantile—plus
Educational (E), can mislead you if you try to guess instead of search. For instance, a medium-sized
university lecture hall is not considered Educational, it is Assembly instead—Educational occupancy is
reserved generally for K-12. A bowling alley, funeral parlor, and restaurant seem like they'd be
Mercantile, but the code also considers them Assembly spaces—Mercantile is reserved for places
where things are sold, like markets or department stores, without the density of a restaurant. You
might assume that museums and libraries are Institutional occupancies, but they are also Assembly—
Institutional as an occupancy is not about government and civic institutions, but rather for buildings
like hospitals and jails where people may not be able to leave on their own in a fire. Generally, if your
building has a high density of visitors, it may be an Assembly occupancy, even if it doesn't feel like a
theater or banquet hall. Business occupancy includes spaces for lawyers and architects where people
work every day (and know their way out if the lights fail and the corridor fills with smoke).
According to the building code, a bank has an occupancy of _______ .(You may use the Amber Book
Case Study material or the internet to look this up.)
Assembly (A)
Business (B)
Institutional (I)
Mercantile (M) - Answers Answer: a bank is Business (B) occupancy.
Why is a bank, post office, or barber shop considered a Business and has the B classification—while a
courtroom is considered an Assembly, and has the A classification? They both have papers in storage
and visitors. I suppose some threshold of people per square foot is crossed when you move from bank
to courtroom on the density scale. In any event, that is why when faced with this kind of question on
the exam, you'll be sure to search the case study for "bank." Don't memorize these; use the search
function instead because occupancy questions will almost surely come within a case study, and even if
they don't come in the case study section, you can often still look up the answers later in the case
study section.
You are designing a health clinic in Zambia on a remote site. A well is not an option here, so water will
be delivered to a tank. No pump will be used in the building's plumbing because the clinic is off-the-
grid and only has power through photovoltaic panels on the roof. The pressure at the faucet is not
sufficient. This can be best rectified by _______.
Increasing the diameter of the pipe
Increasing the height of the water storage tank
Swapping out for a larger tank with a larger diameter
Utilizing pressure-increasing valves - Answers Answer: Increasing the height of the water storage tank
Building foundations should rest on _______.
Shallow soils in temperate climates (less than 2 feet deep)
Peat
Sand
Topsoil - Answers Answer: Sand
