Name: Video: Disciplinas de Diseño - Arquitectura
Uploaded: 2016-03-21T17:03:29.928Z
Duration: 17 min 54 s

Greetings, everyone. Welcome to a continuing presentation on design disciplines, and today we will talk about architecture. According to the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, architecture is defined as, The practice of architecture consists of the provision of professional services in connection with town planning as well as the design, construction, enlargement, conservation, restoration, or alteration of a building or a group of buildings. So you can see in this definition that it's extremely broad in the way architecture is defined. You can start on a very broad scale with the notion of town planning, also referred to often as city planning or urban design, down to a single building or a group of buildings. And what happens in terms of the practice, it's a design, so planning and coming up with something new. Construction, so actually building it. Enlargement, so extending an existing group of buildings or a single building. Conservation, so looking at a historical building and conserving or protecting what's there. Restoration, same thing where you have a building that might be in bad shape to restore what it needs to be repaired. Or alteration, changing an existing building into something new. So all of these activities, with relation to a single building, a group of buildings or an entire town or a city, can be referred to as architecture. So you can see that it is a really broad definition for the discipline itself. Let's talk quickly about the process. So according to the AIA, which is the American Institute of Architects, they define the process of architecture as one that consists of the following steps. The first step, the first stage in the process, is what they refer to as originate. In this case, what happens is there's a client, which might be an individual or an office or a group of people, that might need some architectural services, so they originate, or start, the process. Step two is focus. This is where the definition of what exactly is needed is put in place. The client might hire an architectural firm or an individual architect, this is the focus. Step three is when the architectural office or the firm or the architect starts designing the building. They start coming up with plans, ideas, concepts, etc., for the structure itself. Step four is building it. This is when you go from the stage of design or from the drawings into an actual physical building. And finally the last stage is occupy. So this is when the individuals who have assigned the project to the architect actually move in and occupy the building. There often also is something called post-occupancy evaluation. Very often at the end of this stage, the building is evaluated and the process of design or redesign can often start at that stage. So this is the overall process of architecture as defined by the AIA. There's an architecture firm called HMH Architecture in Colorado. They have a more detailed process of how architecture happens. So now we can see in this diagram it starts on the left with the research. This is the initial phase when the program is defined as to what the building needs to do. There's an analysis of the budget. There might be some zoning requirements that may be looked at.

At this stage the client offers or gives the architect information about the property itself. They might give information about the program, they might give images. All of that happens in the first stage, the research phase of the project. Next stage is what's called the preliminary site plan. At this stage the contractor makes some recommendations, there's an initial cost estimate that's figured out. The client is at this stage required to approve some of the plans that the architect might have come up up with. Stage three is what's called outlining specifications. At this stage the architects often build three-dimensional models of the building or of the structure that is being created. There are some ceiling plans. And at this stage the client is able to approve of the actual plan for the building. Stage four is when the technical drawings are created. At this stage the design gets a lot more detailed. There's a lot more specificity that comes into the project at this stage. The things like finishes for the building, the colors, materials, etc., are figured out. The decision of appliances is figured out. And at this stage the client again has to give approval on the detailed design that the architects have come up with. Stage five is building permits. The architect needs to get approval from the city or from the municipality to go ahead and start the construction process, the contractor provides final financing, and again the client has to give approval that they are willing to go ahead with this project. And finally the last stage is observation services, where the client might have to get engaged in site meetings. The architect worked with the contractor in

finalizing some of these design decisions. And if necessary, there might be some additional drawings required at this stage as well. But this overall process is, according to HMH Architecture, the one that you go through from research through the observation services as a complete architectural process. And it gives a ton of detail in what happens exactly at each stage from the architect's side but also from the client's side.

Very often in the process of architecture, architects build models. Now here you see a model of the Acropolis made out of materials that are not the final materials but simple materials that you can build the model with, just to get a sense for the final solution of the design. Architects also build virtual models. In this case this is done in a program called SketchUp. It actually is a quick overall model that you can look at it from several sides, you can rotate it, to give a sense for what the final design will look like. And finally, architects also create lots of drawings. There's initial sketches but also lots of detail drawings of the building, of the amenities, of infrastructure that are created before the building goes into final construction.

Now in terms of the scope of architecture, as we saw in the earlier definition, it could be a single building. As in this case it could be an individual house for a single person or for a family. It could be completely completely small, as you see in this image, or it could be a massive building like you see in this image. This is the Burj Khalifa, which is now the tallest building in the world. So architects can work on something as massive and as tall as this building or on something as small as a single-family home. So what we'll do in the rest of this presentation is talk about a specific building to give you a sense for the kinds of things that architects get involved with. We'll talk about a landmark building in the US, in New York City, called Empire State Building. This is an iconic building that was built in 1930s. But let's go through the process of understanding how this building came to be and what are some the key things about the Empire State Building for us to know. So the Empire State Building is in New York City in the area of Manhattan, and for the longest time it was the tallest building in the world. It now is replaced several times over, but from 1930, when it was first built, to 1971, this was indeed the tallest building in the world. As you can be able to see in this diagram, the Burj Khalifa today is the tallest building. But for a long time the Empire State Building, which you see here, was the tallest building in the world.

You can see the building here as well. In this case you can see that it indeed towers above the rest of the cityscape. The architect for this building was William F Lamb. Now one thing to recognize in case of such large project is that while the architect does play a really important role in the overall planning and conception of the building, but there's quite a few other experts involved as well. For example, the structural engineer plays a really important role in the building. There are logistics planners, and, of course, all the people involved in actually building or constructing the building as well. But William F Lamb was the architect for the building. You can see now in this case that the building is now no longer the tallest building in the world. There are other buildings, such as the new World Trade Center, that are much taller than the Empire State Building today. Let's talk a little bit about the construction of the Empire State Building. Here are some of the interesting details about the Empire State Building. In spite of the fact that when it was built it was the tallest building in the world, it was built in a record time. It took 1 year and 45 days. Now this is phenomenal not only for that time in 1929 and 1930 but also today. If you consider the speed with which buildings are built today, it's not very easy to come up with this rate of building for a building even today. It was the first building that was more than 100 stories high. It has 102 stories. And this is also something that's really remarkable in terms of the speed with which the building was created. The workers were able to create four and a half stories of the building each week. This is quite remarkable. It's almost one or little more than one story per day. The total height of the building is 1,454 feet, or about 443 meters. It took about 3,500 workers working on a daily basis on this building to make it possible within the year and 45 days that the building took to create.

Some other key features about the building. So one of the things that happens with such large structures like the Empire State Building is that it has a substantial concrete foundation. So for example, if you think of this as the land on which the building might be constructed, clearly you know that there's a foundation that goes in, so you dig fairly deep. There's a solid concrete foundation that is built. The next step that takes after this is a prefabricated steel structure. So in the case of the Empire State Building, these steel sections were created elsewhere, transported to Manhattan to the construction site, and erected. So you see several really, really tall steel sections. Now this goes all the way from

the vertical sections as well as all the floors. So this steel structure is essentially what keeps the building up. This is the key framework for the building. And finally, these things are assembled, as you can see, with rivets and bolts, and we'll see some images later on. And the last thing that happens is there's an outer skin. So what you see on the outside of the building is an outer skin that is the external skin, or the external surface, of the building. And this is essentially how the buildings are built. So you can see in this photograph, from June 26th, 1930 to November 10th, 1930, how the construction progressed. So you can see from the initial steel structure until the external cladding or the stone of the outside was built. So what they did was as the higher floors were being constructed, they started building the external skin as well. So this happened in tandem to allow them to finish the building in 1 year and 45 days. Here you can see one of the workers on the top of the building using bolts to connect the steel framework together. You can see a few more photographs here also, a few workers on top of the building. This is a few of the 3,500 workers, they were referred to as sky boys, were up on this building, riveting and bolting the structure together. Essentially what you see here is the steel framework that was key to the structural construction of the building. And then here what you see on the outside, this is the external surface of the building, is the stone cladding that covered the steel framework on the inside.

One other important thing to discuss with the Empire State Building is Art Deco. This is a style that the building represents, and this style is something that started in 1925. Some key things about the Art Deco style. One thing is that you will see that Art Deco buildings and graphics and other forms of Art Deco expression tend to be very rectilinear rather than curvilinear. What essentially this means is that instead of seeing free-flowing organic forms, you see very square, rectangular, geometric forms. That's one key thing to think about.

And this Art Deco movement was a response to something that preceded it, which was Art Nouveau. Now Art Nouveau was a movement that we saw lots of examples in France, and that was movement in which architecture, graphics, etc., showed really free-flowing natural forms, lots of inspiration from nature. Art Deco was a reaction to that which went the other way and took a lot more rectilinear forms instead. So you see, as we'll see in the case of the Empire State Building, very strong simple shapes, very stark on geometry. And one other thing which is unique about this is that this idea of a ziggurat-type stepped tower. It is also referred to as a ziggurat pyramid. So very often when you see a pyramid, what you see often is something like this. This is a classic shape of a pyramid. A ziggurat does something else. It is a step tower so instead of, The diagonal line, what you see is this sort of blocking of forms. So you see some repetition, and this is often referred to as the ziggurat style.

Lots of repetition in forms as well as details, and we see that in the Empire State Building as well, as in case over here. So you can see that this is the base platform. You can see that this form is repeated over here, it gets smaller, so you see that repetition here. But you also see that up here. This is one form, a smaller form, a yet smaller form, and then up on top as well you see that same repetition of shapes. So this is the classic expression of the Art Deco style. What you see here is a signage for the Paris subway system, the Metropolitain. This was designed by Hector Guimard. In this case, you can see that they're very free-flowing organic forms. You can also see lots of the detailing here, over here as well. So this form of really free-flowing, organic no-straight-lines was very unique to Art Nouveau, which was not seen in Art Deco. In fact, in Art Deco did just the opposite of what you see in Art Nouveau, as you can see here. Here, too, you can see a lot of repetitions of the forms, right? You can see this form is repeated over here, it's also repeated over here. So all these block-like shapes, these rectangular sections, added up to create the overall form of the Empire State Building.

The last thing we'll talk about in terms of the Empire State Building is sustainability. There were a few key things that happened to the building in recent times. One of the things that was done is a complete window refurbishment. So the Empire State Building already had windows that were double pane. So when you have double-pane glass, it minimizes the loss of heat and loss of cooling. What they did was they refurbished some of these windows, about more than 6,500 windows in the building. They introduced a thin film as well as a gaseous mixture between the two panes of the window, thereby making it a lot more efficient and maintaining the heating and the cooling inside. Another thing that they did also recently was there's a radiator that is close to each of these windows.

What was happening in the past was some of the heat that was being generated by the building, by the HVAC system, was partly coming into the building and partly was being lost through the walls. What they did was they provided some insulation behind the radiators, maintaining a lot more of the heat, and therefore making the radiators a lot more efficient and minimizing the energy cost. They also relooked at the lighting. They made it possible to have a lot more daylight coming into the building, but also created some photo sensors and installed these photo sensors that would dim the lights if no one was using that space of the building, especially in the public spaces, and the lights came on when there actually was some movement. So they started to have some energy savings there as well. They also replaced some of the air handlers. What happened in this case was they retrofitted some of these air handlers. They changed some of the shells, they recycled them. They changed some of the parts inside. And by changing some of the air handlers it improved the efficiency and thereby reduced the energy costs of the building.

In addition, they also changed some of the parts of the chillers. Now these are the machines that cool down the building. And so by modifying some of these chillers, by changing some of the components, they made them a lot more efficient for the building. And finally, what they did also, they looked at the control system. This is the control system that manages the heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning for the entire building. They redid this whole system as well, thereby giving people a lot more feedback on how energy was being used and thereby helping them cut down costs in energy on the building as well.

So what we have talked about today overall is looking at the Empire State Building as an example of architecture. We looked at how it was constructed, so we looked at the process of bringing it into tangible form. We looked at some of the stylistic aspect of the building. We looked at Art Deco. And finally we looked at sustainability issues as well, regarding how they've been able to reduce some of the energy consumption and make it a lot more sustainable as a building. So in wrapping up, what we see with architecture is that architects focus on unique, specific buildings, but they also focus on things like the design of complete cities. So there's a broad range of what happens in architecture. And there's a very specific process that architects follow, so that the client's need, the needs of people who want these structures, who want these buildings, can be realized in tangible forms in buildings, groups of buildings, or complete towns and cities. Thank you.

Video: Disciplinas de Diseño - Arquitectura

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