BUILDING CONSTRUCTION & MATERIALS

PROJECT 1

Famous Architect’s Building: Application of Architectural & Structural Materials

The very first project of this construction module was a set of two presentation boards. We were required to look at a prominent architect's building, identify and analyze 5 architectural materials and 2 structural materials (which could be the same), and compile the results into the boards along with additional info such as the architect's background, history of the building and so on.

Reflection:

Presentation boards at this point were standard procedure for me, but the more interesting part of this assignment was choosing the building and the analysis of the materials. Our tutors advised us to select a building that had varied materials to ease our investigations, and I ended up choosing Kenzo Tange's Yoyogi National Gymnasium as it was able to satisfy that quality as well as just being a very well-designed structure. Learning about the history of the gym and how its iconic suspended profile was designed made this assignment a lot of fun. Distinguishing architectural and structural materials was simple so most of the work involved understanding how the properties of those materials influenced their application into the gym's construction. All in all, a fun introduction to this module.

PROJECT 2

Construction Detailing of Building Elements

This was the second and final project of the BCM module, with the rest of the grade being made up with our final exam. We were to produce a set of construction drawings and sketches based on the floor plan of a real house in Malaysia, covering the standard orthographic drawings as well as door/window/staircase details and sketches of how the house was constructed. Our group was tasked with making specifically a timber construction.

Reflection:

I was extremely blessed to have mostly competent and communicative teammates who I quickly got along well with due to their approachability and friendliness. They were quick to take initiative and host the necessary meetings to discuss the distribution of tasks amongst our group, when we needed to have our progress sketches done and also asked questions when there was confusion. (Impressively, they were also juniors which made them even more rare.)

We learnt how to draw construction drawings based on the previous tutorials we had done throughout the module, referring to drawings from previous semesters and online images. I will say that I believe we could have spent more time to make our drawings more detailed, which shows the gaps in our time management that we will continue to improve over time. I am more pleased with the almost effortless collaboration to get this project done and that alone is something quite special.

REFLECTION

Building Construction and Materials was a very lengthy and detailed module to the point that it was almost overwhelming. It covered a lot in regards to material usage, building foundations, superstructures and substructures, the intricacies of fenestrations such as doors and windows, among other things. I wonder how the junior Interior Architecture students who joined us must have felt with this module being in their first semester because I think it would have scared me to learn all of this immediately after entering university. I definitely would suggest to the university to host this module for incoming students in their second semester as it does not feel like a very introductory-friendly topic.

Some lessons I took away from this module include:

Analyzing materials and construction joineries in detail
Learning about the many layers of building construction, from building foundation to superstructure to walls and fenestrations
Time management (again) and also learning to cooperate with others (again)
Teaching my fellow juniors regarding the conventions of architectural drawing and the ins and outs of the course - this I could have done a lot better