100 Years of Architectural Drawing

During this modern era of computer-generated architectural drawings, a design and architecture historian has come out with a book that speaks of hand sketches of architectural drawings. Titled '100 Years of Architectural Drawing', the book is authored by Neil Bingham who is the consulting curator of architectural drawings at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. The book highlights 300 architectural drawings from the 20th century that illustrate the evolution of the form.

“From our perspective today, in which the computer-aided design [CAD] drawing dominates,” Bingham writes, “the twentieth century appears as the golden age of traditional architectural hand-drawing.”

The book is divided into 5 chronological sections that are prefaced by short essays that highlight the trends and styles of that period. Each drawing is captioned with key information about the architect, the project, and the drawing.

“In this survey of architectural drawings, we can trace the historical visual narrative of 20th century architecture in design and draughtmanship,” Bingham writes. “One of tradition, experiment and beauty.” The book will appeal to all students and practitioners of architecture as well as anyone with an interest in the subject.

Why Build Green?

Good for environment, energy conservation and the world, green buildings are environmentally responsible and resource-efficient throughout it's life-cycle: from siting to design, construction, operation, maintenance, renovation, and demolition. So, if we put into the practice of 'green' when we build or renovate any building, then we can significantly contribute to the health, wealth and well-being of our self, the families for whom we build, our community, and the world.

You'll be surprised to know that that worldwide, buildings consume nearly 40% of the world's energy, 25% of its wood, and 15% of its water! By adopting green building strategies, we can maximize both economic and environmental performance. Therefore, we make smarter choice when we decide to go green.

Benefits of green buildings

There are numerous Social, economic and environmental benefits for building green. Below we are highlighting only the economic benefits (compared with normal buildings):

• 88% reduction in lighting consumption

• 35% reduction in potable water use

• 20% of the building’s energy requirement is provided by photovoltaics

• 15-20% less load on AC thanks to aerated concrete blocks used in facades 

• 80% of materials used are either recycled or recyclable

• 90% of building daylit

• Zero water discharge building

• 75% of occupants have outside view

• 50% savings in overall energy consumption

Solar is Green: Where to put Photovoltaic Panels?

The new 'mantra' is to build "zero energy" homes or offices. This can be achieved by combining green-building techniques with active solar systems. A "zero energy" building is one that produces as much energy as it consumes over the course of a year. Making use of solar energy using Photovoltaic Panels is at the heart of sustainable building. But it is important to understand that where should these Photovoltaic Panels placed.

A small amount of shade covering the panel can reduce the panel performance by 80%. Therefore, the most important point to remember is that when choosing a location for your Array is shading obstacles.

Find out which month has the least amount of sun on average. Determining this month is particularly important if you intend to use or constructing a system that will be used year-round. Similarly, if you want to use it for summer or winter, you will have to find month with least sun during months that you will use the system.

It is also very important to estimate the availability of sun and the cloud cover. Obtaining this information may be little difficult. Sometimes you can get this information on the web otherwise you may contact concerned authorities in you town/city.

You want to choose a location that is on or near the place where you loads will be. The array should be free of shade (during each month in use) from 9 am to 3 pm. This is the optimum time-frame a panel has to receive light and is called the “Solar Window".

Architecture is about teamwork!

Few days back while accepting the 'Woman Architect of the Year Award' at London’s Langham Hotel, the Dutch architect Francine Houben said, 'Architecture is about teamwork, about being supportive and visionary at the same time'. We, at Design Atelier, too strongly believe that architecture is about teamwork, about being visionary and supportive at the same time. 

Architecture is actually a teamwork. It is a group of people who are working towards single goal- the project. Working as a team, we have one common goal - to serve our community and clients through architecture. It is important to have contributions from everyone. And therefore, we value each other and need everybody's perspectives.

Design Atelier boasts of a highly qualified team whose expertise matches the project scope and consists of multidisciplinary staff and technical partners. We have highly qualified professionals in the areas of Architecture, Landscape, Urban & Environmental Design, Strategic Planning & Communication, Structural Engineering, Air Conditioning, Electrical Engineering, Civil and Public Health Engineering, Project & Construction Management.   

We continue to expand our multi-disciplinary teams and technical partners of over 50 professionals to solve design challenges.

Meet the people

Aashish V. Karode

Sushil L. Karer

Pawan Bangali

Jaspal Singh

Vivek K. Srivastava

Prosenjit Banerjee

Madhvi Gogia

(Read more at: www.architectsda.com/team.html)

We want to leave good marks on the earth and would like to measure our work by the pleasure of the lives lived in our buildings and projects.