Architectural Planning .

The architect usually begins to work when the site type and cost of a building have been determined.

Planning the environment. The natural environment is at once a hindrance and a help, and the architect seeks both to invite its aid and to repel its attacks.To make buildings habitable and comfortable, he must control the effects of heat, cold, light, air, moisture, and dryness and foresee destructive potentialities such as fire, earthquake, flood, and disease.

The placement and form of buildings in relation to their sites, the distribution of spaces within buildings, and other planning devices discussed below are fundamental elements in the aesthetics of architecture.

Orientation. The arrangement of the axes of buildings and their parts is a device for controlling the effects of sun, wind and rainfall.

Within buildings, the axis and placement of each space determine the amount of sun it receives. Orientation may control air for circulation and reduce the disadvantages of wind, rain, and snow.

The characteristics of the immediate environment also create shade and reduce or intensify wind, while bodies of water produce moisture and reflect the sun.

Architectural forms. Planning may control the environment by the design of architectural forms that may modify the effects of natural forces.

Colour. Colour has a practical planning function as well as an expressive quality because of the range of its reflection and its absorption of solar rays. Since light colours reflect heat and dark colours absorb it, the choice of materials and pigments is an effective tool of environmental control.

Materials and techniques. The choice of materials is conditioned by their own ability to withstand the environment as well as by properties that make them useful to human beings. One of the architect’s jobs is to find a successful solution to both conditions; to balance the physical and economic advantages of wood against the possibility of fire, termites, and mold, the weather resistance of glass and light metals against their high thermal conductivity, and many similar conflicts.

Vocabulary:

# aesthetic - естетичний;

# hindrance - перепона, перешкода;

# to repel - вiдбивати (напад);

# moisture - вологiсть;

# to foresee - передбачати;

# earthquake - землетрус;

# flood - паводок;

# arrangement - розподiл;

# axis (axes) - вiсь (oci);

# device - засiб;

# to modify - видозмiнювати;

# to withstand - протистояти;

# mold - (тут) плiснява;

# resistance - спротив, протистояння.

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