Thursday, July 7, 2011

What makes good Architectural Design


Award winning Designs

In my mind, good design is a design that is eco-friendly, looks nice and does what its supposed to do.

Eco-friendly
A building should be good for the environment because buildings use up energy and we are all moving into cities. This will cause there to be more buildings and less greenery, so buildings must be eco-friendly to accomodate this change.

Nice Look
Buildings must look nice to attract customers, so obviously having a nice interior and exterior is a must. This also ensures sanitary as dirty things will not look very nice.

Utility
A building must be able to do what its supposed to do and do that well. The building must also be easily navigable and have readily available help and instructions.

Comparison
The first mall is not very green but it has a nice look and good utility.
The second building is quite green and looks nice on the exterior, but since I could not find any pictures of the inside of this building, I do not know about its interior or its utility.

Multifunctional:

The design of the building should be able to accommodate more than 1 type of usage. It is important as a building in this time and age where land space is limited and thus any building or structure constructed requires it to be able to be used for more than single cause.


Easily Adaptable:

The structure or building designed must be easily adaptable to different types of usage. Similar to the point above, the building or structure should be able to convert itself with minor fuss to another use.


Sustainable:

The structure should be long-lasting without fear of the foundations collapsing on itself. The materials put into use for the construction of the building should be able to withstand intense use. Sustainability of the structure is probably the most important factor to take into account when designing a building. Without it being long-lasting, resources, time and money would be wasted for reconstruction and repairs.


Convenience for users:

Features such as parking lots, restaurants, and parks should be situated around the structure to ensure convenience, no matter the purpose of the structure. If it is not convenient for users to travel there and back, no one would frequent the building no matter the aesthetic appeal or service.



Criteria:
- Appealing to the eyes(It should not look very chunky, like a normal HDB flat, and should be special compared to them.)
- Creative(Shouldn't look like a building that has already been done before, and it should have some part where it would cause some "wow!" reaction.)
- Spacious(The interior of the building should be spacious, not look too cramped.)
- Not too squarish(It should be a little curvy, mainly less squarish, since nearly everything is blocky, like HDB flats.)
- Coherence(It should also be coherent to the surrounding buildings, not look very different from the other surrounding buildings.)

Example:













Group Members: Guang Jun, Grace, Cheng Ngee, Mayur, me
Sources:

No comments:

Post a Comment