Category Building and Construction

AN AMALGAM OF THE EAST AND THE WEST

Chettinad art and architecture is distinct for its unique mix of European and Indian styles.

Tiled carpets

One can find many gems of Indian art and culture in Tamil Nadu’s renowned Chettinad region. Known for its distinct style of architecture, Chettinad’s temples and stately mansions testify to the prosperity and artistic traditions of the local Chettiar community.

The village of Athangudi, here specialises in the manufacture of handcrafted tiles. The Chettiars, who travelled overseas, for trade, in the 19th century, were inspired by European ideas of interior decoration and infused them in their homes. The Athangudi tiles are an expression of this unique blend of the east and the west.

Elaborate

Making these tiles is a time-consuming process. Each tile is made individually on a square sheet of glass. A metal stencil, with the desired motif, is placed on the glass. A slurry of cement and coloured oxides is poured into the spaces of the stencil and spread evenly. The workman, then removes the stencil and sprinkles a layer of dry sand on it after which he lays a thick layer of a wet mixture of cement, sand and small stone aggregates or jelly. The tile is dried in the sun before immersing it in water for several days. When the tile dries out, the glass sheet slips away. leaving behind a smooth, glistening tile with a colourful ornate design.

Athangudi tiles are usually in geometric or floral designs in earthy colours such as red. blue, green and ochre. When laid out, they look like an exotic tiled carpet.

Mosaics of Ravenna

The port city of Ravenna was the seat of ancient Italy’s Byzantine Empire. An immortal legacy of that era is the city’s collection of exquisite mosaics of early Christian art, said to be the best examples of Byzantine art outside of Istanbul. UNESCO has granted World Heritage status to eight early Christian monuments of Ravenna, each of which boasts of outstanding mosaics dating back to the fifth and sixth centuries. The mosaics in the Basilica of San Vitale, depict figures from the Old and New Testaments along with the reigning monarchs, archbishops and bishops of the time. Interiors with richly decorated motifs of angels, flora, and fauna, a great triumphal arch embellished with mosaic medallions depicting Jesus Christ and the 12 Apostles, are but some magnificent fixtures found here.

In the Basilica of Sant Apollinare Nuovo, Jesus is portrayed as a Byzantine emperor. The ornate panels describe his miracles and parables, as well as the Passion and Resurrection.

The Mausoleum of Galla Placidia has the best preserved mosaics in the area. The most famous of them is called Christ as the Good Shepherd. It shows the haloed figure of Christ draped in gold and purple tending to his flock.

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Which types of buildings are called Skyscrapers?

Skyscrapers are very tall buildings, usually more than 20 storeys high. Their weight is supported by a steel frame rather than outside walls. They are a feature of many large cities, especially in North America and East Asia, where the high price of land leads developers to build tall, thin buildings that occupy the minimum amount of land space, rather than low-rise, sprawling ones.

The first skyscraper, the Home Insurance Building, was built in Chicago in 1884 following a fire that devastated the city. Soon, skyscrapers started to appear in New York as well as Chicago, often being built higher and higher in competition with one another. In recent years, Japan, Malaysia and China are among nations that have joined the race to build the world’s tallest buildings.

The John Hancock Center in Chicago, USA, was completed in 1968. A skyscraper with both offices and residential apartments; it is the tallest multi-purpose building in the world and the seventh tallest skyscraper of all. It is 344 metres high but its twin antennae add a further 105 metres, making it a total of nearly 450 metres. It has a hull and core construction—a strong central concrete core with an open space between it and the steel frame. The frame has a triangular grid to give the structure maximum strength.

The John Hancock Center is like a city in a tower. It has shops, a bank, a post office, a restaurant, a swimming pool and a fitness centre. There are 50 lifts (it takes only 39 seconds to ascend to the 94th floor). A car park with spaces for 1200 cars takes up the first seven floors. Cars drive up a spiral ramp to get to it.

The building has more than 2000 kilometres of electric wiring, carrying enough electricity to supply the equivalent of a city of 30,000 people. More than 2.75 million litres of water are consumed each day. Computers warn of any fault in the skyscraper’s service systems.

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What are various types of construction of Building around the world?

People have constructed buildings from ancient times as homes to provide shelter, monuments or places of worship. Earth, wood and stone have always been used as building materials. Bricks, hardened clay, were first used in the Middle East in about 3000 BC. Concrete is made by mixing sand, cement and water. Reinforced concrete dates from the late 1800s. Often used in modern buildings, it contains steel wires or rods to provide extra strength.

Buildings belong to one of two types. The first type has solid walls, called load-bearing walls that support the floors and roof of the building. The second type has a framework of wood, steel or concrete that bears the weight of the building.

Most buildings need foundations (a solid base) to prevent them from sinking into the ground or falling over. Foundations can be footings (underground walls), flat rafts, or underground supporting pillars called piles that are driven into the ground.

TALL STRUCTURES

The Great Pyramid at Giza in Egypt was the world’s tallest structure for nearly 4000 years, until the great age of cathedral building began in medieval Europe. Lincoln Cathedral in England, which was built in 1311, had a great spire that made it slightly taller than the pyramid, although it was blown down in a storm in 1549. The Washington Monument in Washington, USA, became the world’s tallest structure in 1884, before the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, almost doubled the record five years later. The skyscrapers of the 20th century claimed the honour until the CN Tower, still the world’s tallest self-supporting structure, was built in Toronto in 1976.

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HOW ARE SKYSCRAPERS BUILT?

Skyscrapers have a frame, usually made of steel or concrete, to support the floors and walls, which are attached to the frame. The frame is rather like the skeleton inside a human body. It is not designed to be completely rigid, but to sway a little in high winds, thus reducing the force of the wind upon the structure.

A skyscraper is a continuously habitable high-rise building that has over 40 floors and is taller than approximately 150 m (492 ft). Historically, the term first referred to buildings with 10 to 20 floors in the 1880s. The definition shifted with advancing construction technology during the 20th century. Skyscrapers may host offices, hotels, residential spaces, and retail spaces. For buildings above a height of 300 m (984 ft), the term supertall skyscrapers can be used, while skyscrapers reaching beyond 600 m (1,969 ft) are classified as megatall skyscraper.

One common feature of skyscrapers is having a steel framework that supports curtain walls. These curtain walls either bear on the framework below or are suspended from the framework above, rather than resting on load-bearing walls of conventional construction. Some early skyscrapers have a steel frame that enables the construction of load-bearing walls taller than of those made of reinforced concrete.

Modern skyscrapers’ walls are not load-bearing, and most skyscrapers are characterized by large surface areas of windows made possible by steel frames and curtain walls. However, skyscrapers can have curtain walls that mimic conventional walls with a small surface area of windows. Modern skyscrapers often have a tubular structure, and are designed to act like a hollow cylinder to resist wind, seismic, and other lateral loads. To appear more slender, allow less wind exposure and transmit more daylight to the ground, many skyscrapers have a design with setbacks, which in some cases is also structurally required.

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IS CONCRETE A NEW BUILDING MATERIAL?

Concrete is a mixture of sand, water and cement, a powder made of lime and clay. Far from being a new material, concrete was used by the Romans in the first century AD to build the dome of the Pantheon in Rome.

Concrete is a friend of the environment in all stages of its life span, from raw material production to demolition, making it a natural choice for sustainable home construction. Here are some of the reasons why, according to the Portland Cement Association and the Environmental Council of Concrete Organizations:

Resource efficiency. The predominant raw material for the cement in concrete is limestone, the most abundant mineral on earth. Concrete can also be made with fly ash, slag cement, and silica fume, all waste byproducts from power plants, steel mills, and other manufacturing facilities.

Durability. Concrete builds durable, long-lasting structures that will not rust, rot, or burn. Life spans for concrete building products can be double or triple those of other common building materials.

Thermal mass. Homes built with concrete walls, foundations, and floors are highly energy efficient because they take advantage of concretes inherent thermal massor ability to absorb and retain heat. This means homeowners can significantly cut their heating and cooling bills and install smaller-capacity HVAC equipment.

Reflectivity. Concrete minimizes the effects that produce urban heat islands. Light-colored concrete pavements and roofs absorb less heat and reflect more solar radiation than dark-colored materials, such as asphalt, reducing air conditioning demands in the summer.

Ability to retain storm water. Paved surfaces tend to be impervious and can block natural water infiltration into the soil. This creates an imbalance in the natural ecosystem and leads to problems such as erosion, flash floods, water table depletion, and pollution. Pervious concrete is a special type of structural concrete with a sponge-like network of voids that water passes through readily. When used for driveways, sidewalks, parking lots, and other pavements, pervious concrete can help to retain storm water runoff and replenish local water supplies.

Minimal waste. Concrete can be produced in the quantities needed for each project, reducing waste. After a concrete structure has served its original purpose, the concrete can be crushed and recycled into aggregate for use in new concrete pavements or as backfill or road base.

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WHAT DO AN ARCHITECT’S PLANS SHOW?

An architect’s plans give all the information needed to build the structure shown. The plans show the materials to be used, how they fit together, and all the measurements necessary to complete the building. Plans usually show several elevations (different views) of the structure, including a floor plan and a plan of each side of the building. Nowadays, computers are increasingly used to draw up plans. They can provide lists of the materials and equipment needed as the plans are drawn, and work out costings.

Building plans are the set of drawings which consists of floor plan, site plan, cross sections, elevations, electrical, plumbing and landscape drawings for the ease of construction at site. Drawings are the medium of passing the views and concepts of an architect or designer into reality.

Site plan

Site plan is comprehensive detailed drawing of the building or an apartment representing whole plan of a building. It shows property boundaries and means of access to the site, and nearby structures if they are relevant to the design.

For a construction project, the site plan also needs to show all the services connections like drainage and sewer lines, water supply, electrical and communications cables, exterior lighting etc.

Its a first design that is made for any project before going into detailing process. Drawing up a site plan is a tool for deciding both the site layout and the size and orientation of proposed new buildings.

These drawings should comply with the local development codes, including restrictions on historical sites. It acts as a legal agreement for the permission of construction from the government body. For this, it is required that the site plan is made by a licensed professional like architect, engineer, landscape architect or land surveyor.

Floor Plan

A plan means, top view of any building or object. Floor plan is the most fundamental architectural diagram, a view from above showing the arrangement of spaces in building in the same way as a map, but showing the arrangement at a particular level of a building.

Floor plan view is defined as a vertical orthographic projection of an object on to a horizontal plane cutting through the building. This shows the walls, windows, door and other features such as stairs, fittings and even furniture too.

Cross Section

Geometrically, a cross section is a horizontal orthographic projection of a building on to a vertical plane cutting through the building. Cross section is vertical cut section of any building which shows the details of dimension, thickness of any component of a building. It also represents the sill height, lintel height, floor height and other minute details of a structure.

The section plane where the plan is vertically cut is represented in the 2d floor plan by a bold dotted straight line.

Elevation

An elevation drawing is an orthographic projection drawing that shows one side of the house. The purpose of an elevation drawing is to show the finished appearance of a given side of the house and furnish vertical height dimensions. Majorly it is divided into 3 types.

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