Architectural design decisions play an important role in the earthquakebehavior of buildings. However, architects are very unfamiliar withearthquake response concept. Earthquake resistant design (ERD)initiates generally during the architectural design stage to adhere tothese principles. This study was focused on plan geometries,architectural design and structural system configurations for structuralearthquake responses. A general-purpose finite element program wasused to evaluate several irregularities and their correspondingearthquake responses. In the first phase of the study, the projections inplan view and projection ratios were compared from a torsionalresponse perspective. In the second phase, nonparallel axes areinvestigated. In the last phase, the effects of shear wall arrangement ontorsional irregularity response were analysed by considering 4 differentconfigurations in a school building failure during the recent earthquake(2011) in the city, Van located in the east of Turkey. The number of storyswas chosen as a parameter for the latter phase. The mode superpositionmethod was preferred for the linear dynamic analyses. According to theresults of the study, the torsional rotation was found to be proportional to the projection ratio in plan. For non-orthogonal cases, structure withan inclined axis more than 30°, torsional irregularity factor exceeded thecode-defined limit. Beneficial observations and conclusions were drawnfor both architects and structural engineers’ perspective.