Architecture course essentials
The following articles are available on Designing Buildings Wiki for architecture students. They have been divided into the modules you are likely to study as part of your course.
For more information, see How to become an architect
[edit] Introduction to architecture and building design
- Architects Registration Board ARB
- Architects Registration Council of the United Kingdom ARCUK
- Architectural communication
- Architectural publishing
- Architectural styles
- Architectural training
- Architecture
- Association of Consultant Architects ACA
- Building design
- Building design competitions
- Computers in building design
- Concept architectural design
- Construction industry institutes and associations
- Design intent model
- Design management
- Design management plan
- Design review
- Detailed design stage in building design
- Developed design
- Inclusive design
- Methods of communication for architects
- Mixed use development
- Modular vs traditional construction
- Self publishing for architects
- The architectural profession
- Year-out student.
[edit] Architectural drawing and representation
- Architectural reprography
- As-built drawings and record drawings
- As-built or as-constructed building information model
- Assembly drawing
- Asset information model AIM
- Augmented reality in construction
- Briefing documents for building design
- Blueprint
- Component drawing
- Computer aided design CAD
- Computer aided manufacturing CAM
- Computer-generated imagery (CGI)
- Computers in building design
- Concept architectural design checklist
- Concept design
- Concept design report
- Concept drawing
- Concept services design
- Concept structural design of buildings
- Design drawings
- Detail drawing
- Digital mapping and cartography
- Elevations
- Engineering drawing
- General arrangement drawing
- How to read technical drawings
- Installation drawings
- Landscape design
- Manual drafting techniques
- Model-based design
- Mood board
- North American Paper Sizes
- Notation and symbols
- Open source architectural plans for modular buildings
- Paper Sizes
- Parametric modelling
- Passive building design
- Preparation and brief project stage
- Projections
- Samples and mock-ups
- Section drawing
- Shop drawings
- Site plan
- Spatial diagram
- Standard hatching styles for drawings
- Symbols on architectural drawings
- Technical drawing
- The origins of perspective
- Types of drawings for building design
- Urban design
- Virtual reality and manufacturing
- Working drawing
[edit] Building environmental science
[edit] Materials
[edit] History and theory
- Archaeology in the built environment
- Architectural styles
- Architecture
- Architecture and the need for innovation
- Art Deco
- Art Nouveau
- Arts and craft movement
- Baroque architecture
- Bauhaus
- Beaux Arts style
- Blobitecture
- Buckminster Fuller
- Chateauesque style
- Chicago school of architecture
- Chinese renaissance architecture
- City beautiful
- Classical orders in architecture
- Classical revival style
- Colonial Revival style
- Commercial style
- Concept architectural design
- Constructivist architecture
- Contextualism
- Deconstructivism
- Densification
- Elements of classical columns
- Ernö Goldfinger
- Form follows function
- Frank Gehry
- Frei Otto
- Garden cities
- Genius loci
- Gothic revival style
- High-tech architecture
- International Style
- Italian Renaissance Revival style
- Jane Jacobs and garden villages
- Landscape urbanism
- Living in the Hyperreal post-modern city
- Metabolism in architecture
- Mimetic architecture
- Modernist architecture
- Monument and context
- Neo-futurism
- Octagon style
- Parametricism
- Phenomenology
- Placemaking
- Plug-In to Housing
- Polite architecture
- Postmodern architecture
- Prairie School style
- Principles of conservation
- Principles of enclosure
- Queen Anne style
- Regeneration
- Richard Rogers
- Rococo
- Shingle style architecture
- Spanish Colonial revival style
- Stick style
- The Architecture of Neoliberalism
- Truth to materials
- Tudor revival style
- Vernacular architecture
- Zaha Hadid
- Zeitgeist
[edit] Structural design
- Anticlastic
- Arcade
- Architrave
- Balustrade
- Barrel vault
- Bas-relief
- Cantilever
- Colonnade
- Conoid shell
- Cooling tower design and construction
- Corbel
- Cornice
- Domestic roofs
- Elements of classical columns
- Entablature
- Fillet
- Flat roof
- Flooring
- Flying buttress
- Folded plate construction
- Footings in foundations
- Frieze
- Geodesic dome
- Groundscraper
- Hyperbolic paraboloid
- Limit state design
- Long span roof
- Megastructure
- Megatall
- Mouldings
- Pedestal
- Pediment
- Pendentive dome.
- Pilaster
- Pilotis
- Portal frame
- Quoin
- Retaining walls
- Shell roof
- Skyscraper
- Soffit
- Structure definition
- Structures at the end of their design life
- Tensegrity
- Tensile structures
- The development of structural membranes
- The history of fabric structures
- Trompe l’oeil
- Types of column
- Types of dome
- Wind and tall buildings
[edit] Construction organisation and management
[edit] Economics
[edit] Principles of law
[edit] Surveying
- Building survey.
- Condition survey.
- Desk study
- Digital mapping and cartography
- District surveyor
- Ecological survey for design and construction
- Geophysical survey
- Global positioning systems and global navigation satellite systems
- How to layout a building
- Land surveying
- Laser scanning for building design and construction.
- Levelling.
- Robotic total station
- Site surveys.
- Site appraisals.
- Site plan
- Soil survey
- Surveying instruments
- Surveyor.
- Tree hazard survey
- Vendor survey
[edit] Contract administration
[edit] Plant and equipment
[edit] Contractor’s estimating and planning
[edit] Sustainable building design
- Adapting 1965-1980 semi-detached dwellings in the UK to reduce summer overheating and the effect of the 2010 Building Regulations
- Aerogel insulation for buildings
- Air permeability testing
- Air source heat pumps
- Air tightness in buildings
- Airtightness of energy efficient buildings
- Allowable solutions for zero carbon buildings
- BRE Üserhuus
- BREEAM
- BREEAM and CEEQUAL
- Building emission rate BER
- Cavity wall insulation
- Code for Sustainable Homes
- Cool brick
- Cool roofs
- Daylight lighting systems
- Do green buildings pay?
- Domestic micro-generation
- Energy certificates for buildings
- Energy storage
- Energy targets for buildings
- Environmental plan for building design and construction
- Green building
- Green building envelope
- Heat recovery for buildings
- Heat rejection
- Integrated modelling, simulation and visualisation (MSV) for sustainable built healing environments (BHEs)
- Life cycle assessment
- Lighting and energy efficiency
- Living façade
- Low-e glass
- Minimum energy efficiency standard regulations for domestic and non-domestic buildings
- Natural ventilation of buildings
- Nearly zero energy buildings
- Passive building design
- Passive water efficiency measures
- Passivhaus
- Performance gap between building design and operation
- Performance gap in low energy housing
- Photocatalytic tiles
- Rainwater harvesting
- Retrofit
- Retrofit coordinator
- Smart buildings
- Solar gain in buildings
- Solar photovoltaics
- Solar thermal systems
- Solid wall insulation
- Sustainable materials
- Target emission rate TER
- Target fabric energy efficiency rate
- The business case for adapting buildings to climate change
- The Future of Electricity in Domestic Buildings
- Thermal behaviour of architectural fabric structures
- Thermal bridging in buildings
- Thermal conduction in buildings
- Thermographic survey of buildings
- Variations in low carbon building performance
- WELL Building Standard
- Wellbeing and buildings
- Wellbeing and creativity in workplace design - case studies
- Zero carbon homes
- Zero carbon non-domestic buildings
[edit] Property development
- Affordable housing
- Affordable rented housing
- Ancient woodland
- Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty AONB
- Asset of community value
- Brownfield land
- Brownfield registers
- Building Preservation Notice BPN
- Buy to leave
- Caveat emptor in property sales
- Certificate of ownership
- Change of use class
- Community infrastructure levy CIL
- Conservation area
- Conservation of the historic environment
- Consultation process
- Definition of tree for planning purposes
- Designated areas
- Desk study
- Detailed planning application
- Development appraisal
- Development benefits scheme
- Development consent order
- Development management
- Development Management Procedure Order
- Development plan
- Development plan documents DPD
- Discharge of planning conditions
- Duty to cooperate
- Equity in property
- Fast track planning proposals
- Flood risk
- General development order
- Getting your planning application right first time
- Glossary of property law terms
- Green belt
- Greenfield land
- Ground rent
- Historic environment
- Housing tenure
- Housing zones
- Landlord and Tenant Act
- Leasehold
- Legal indemnity insurance
- Licence to alter
- Listed buildings
- Local development orders
- Local development scheme LDS
- Local planning authority
- Local strategic partnership LSP
- Opportunity Area Planning Framework (OAPF)
- Overage in property sales
- Permitted development
- Planning authority
- Planning permission
- Pre-application advice for planning permission
- Prior approval for permitted development
- Private rented sector
- Quiet enjoyment
- Retrospective planning permission
- Right of support
- Right of way
- Right to acquire
- Right to buy
- Right to contest
- Right to manage for leaseholders
- Right to rent
- Rural exception sites
- Safeguarding land
- Securing planning permission for self-build homes
- Self-build home: project plan
- Sites of special scientific interest SSSI
- Social housing
- Special purpose vehicles for building development
- Statutory approvals for buildings
- Strategic housing market assessments
- Town centre definition
- Town planner
- Windfall site
- World heritage site
[edit] Mechanical services
- Absorption heat pump
- Air conditioning
- Air handling unit AHU
- Air source heat pumps
- Absorption refrigeration in buildings
- Background ventilator
- BMS v BEMS
- Building Automation and Control System BACS
- Building energy management systems (BEMS) for data centres
- Building energy management systems BEMS
- Building heating systems
- Building management systems BMS
- Building services
- Carbon monoxide detector
- CCTV
- Chilled water
- Chiller units
- Combined heat and power CHP
- Combustion appliance
- Commercial security systems
- Compression refrigeration
- Cyber-physical system
- Data centre cooling
- Daylight lighting systems
- DC electricity networks
- Distributed fibre-optic strain sensors
- District energy networks
- Domestic micro-generation
- Draught diverter v draught stabiliser
- Earth to air heat exchangers
- Ethernet
- Evaporative cooling
- Exhaust air heat pump
- Fan coil unit
- Fire detection and alarm system
- Fit out of buildings
- General lighting v task lighting
- Ground preconditioning of supply air
- Ground source heat pumps
- Heat exchanger
- Heat interface unit
- Heat pump
- Heat recovery ventilation
- Heating ventilation and air conditioning HVAC
- Home security solutions market
- Information and communications technology in construction
- Lifts for buildings
- M&E
- Mechanical, electrical and plumbing MEP
- Mechanical engineer
- Mechanical ventilation of buildings
- Mechanical ventilation with heat recovery MVHR
- Passive water efficiency measures
- Perimeter security
- Pipework defects, ventilation and airflow rates
- Plenum ventilation in buildings
- Radiant heating
- Refrigerants in buildings
- Retrofit, refurbishment and the growth of connected HVAC technology
- Smart grid
- Smart meter
- Smart technology
- Smoke detector
- Specialist process lighting
- The impact of lighting in retail design
- Thermal storage for cooling
[edit] Maintenance, repair and refurbishment
[edit] Value management and engineering
[edit] Management finance
[edit] Geotechnical engineering
[edit] Building production
- Archaeology in the built environment
- Base construction
- Basement excavation
- Bored piles
- Buildability in construction
- Building an extension
- Building control officer BCO
- CDM 2015
- CDM 2007 Construction phase plan
- CDM co-ordinator
- CDM planning period.
- Civil engineer
- Client for building design and construction
- Construction contractor
- Construction manager
- Construction organisations and strategy
- Construction phase plan.
- Construction plant
- Consultant team for design and construction
- Cost consultant
- Design and build.
- Design coordination
- Design management
- Developer
- Driven piles
- Electrical engineer
- Employer's agent for design and build
- Engineer for construction
- Environmental consultant for building design and construction
- External works
- Falsework
- Footings in foundations
- Formwork
- Health and safety consultant
- Hoarding for construction sites
- Integrated project team
- Integrated supply team
- Lighting of construction sites.
- Mechanical engineer
- Modular vs traditional construction
- Pile foundations
- Pre-construction information
- Prefabrication
- Project engineer for construction
- Project manager
- Quality control for construction works
- Quality in construction projects
- Quantity surveyor
- Retaining walls
- Schedule of work for construction
- Site appraisals.
- Site information.
- Site layout plan for construction.
- Sub-contractor
- Subcontractor vs supplier
- Suppliers for design and construction
- Supply chains in construction
- Surveyor
- Site foreman
- Site manager for construction sites
- Site plan
- Site Waste Management Plan
- Temporary works for construction
- Types of crane
[edit] Principles of design management
Featured articles and news
Twas the site before Christmas...
A rhyme for the industry and a thankyou to our supporters.
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New apprentice pay rates coming into effect in the new year
Addressing the impact of recent national minimum wage changes.
EBSSA support for the new industry competence structure
The Engineering and Building Services Skills Authority, in working group 2.
Notes from BSRIA Sustainable Futures briefing
From carbon down to the all important customer: Redefining Retrofit for Net Zero Living.
Principal Designer: A New Opportunity for Architects
ACA launches a Principal Designer Register for architects.
A new government plan for housing and nature recovery
Exploring a new housing and infrastructure nature recovery framework.
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Fundamental Review of Building Regulations Guidance
Announced during commons debate on the Grenfell Inquiry Phase 2 report.
CIAT responds to the updated National Planning Policy Framework
With key changes in the revised NPPF outlined.
Councils and communities highlighted for delivery of common-sense housing in planning overhaul
As government follows up with mandatory housing targets.
CIOB photographic competition final images revealed
Art of Building produces stunning images for another year.
HSE prosecutes company for putting workers at risk
Roofing company fined and its director sentenced.
Strategic restructure to transform industry competence
EBSSA becomes part of a new industry competence structure.
Major overhaul of planning committees proposed by government
Planning decisions set to be fast-tracked to tackle the housing crisis.
Industry Competence Steering Group restructure
ICSG transitions to the Industry Competence Committee (ICC) under the Building Safety Regulator (BSR).
Principal Contractor Competency Certification Scheme
CIOB PCCCS competence framework for Principal Contractors.
The CIAT Principal Designer register
Issues explained via a series of FAQs.