In order to master the foundation of architecture, you must first master the basic building blocks of its language; the definitions, function, and usage. The Language of Architecture provides students and professional architects with the basic elements of architectural design, divided into twenty-six easy-to-comprehend chapters. This visual reference includes an introduction to architecture design, historical view of the elements, as well as an overview of how these elements can and have been used across multiple design disciplines. Whether you’re new to the field or have been an architect for years, you’ll want to flip through the pages of this book and use it as your go-to reference for inspiration and ideas. This comprehensive learning tool is the one book you’ll want as a staple in your library.

Atelier Bow Wow The Global Seed Vault designed by Peter W. Soderman Environmental Context

One of the most important and pressing aspects of the design of a structure is its environmental context, a context that can either affect the building positively (as provide warmth or shade) or extremely negatively (as in erosion or collapse). Most characteristic of this context is that it is continuously transforming, either in predictable or unanticipated ways. And the building in turn has a responsibility toward that context: perhaps at worst it will coexist, but at best it will enhance it.

Extreme Variability

Architecture has a responsibility to anticipate that the environment in which it is situated will change, and often in quite unpredictable ways. Extreme weather—floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, and avalanches—introduce design parameters that situate a work in a specific environmental context. A building erected in a flood plain might be raised on stilts while one in a frequent avalanche zone might be wedge shaped and embedded into the mountainside.

Weather

Rates of environmental change can be more predictable, from a twenty-four-hour cycle to seasonal variations. A building’s anticipation of the behaviors of basic yet constantly changing environmental elements of sun, rain, and wind cannot only be traced in the placement and dimension of apertures, the slopes of roofs, and the materials used, but in the more fundamental placement of a building within its actual physical site.

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