Architecture and Structure – a Conflict or Confluence? 

Dehradun Institute of Technology   By     Peu Banerjee         24th August,2015

 

 

If one finds that an architect’s building-form looks off beat, the usual question is “who is your structural engineer”? In the architects’ world, majority think that a good structural engineer is a rare commodity. The latter are too rigid and do not help to support their wonderful concepts and form and prefer to remain conventional.

 

By virtue of training, architects are equipped with a strong sense of visualization of building forms. This process starts right from their First Year classes, where they learn how to imagine and produce a concept design. The representations are to narrow down the gap between imagination and physical reality. In sharp contrast, civil engineering training on structures is primarily calculation based. Theory of bending, shear, torsion etc. are dealt as mathematical problems and seldom with respect to the physical reality of a building form.

 

As a result, when civil engineers join the architecture course as faculty to sensitize the students about structures, there is a clash between these two completely different types of teaching methodologies. No wonder the twain never meets.

 

Where is the solution? Let us not forget that if the architects are the proud form makers, then the onus is on them. They who should be adequately equipped to communicate with the structural engineers so that there is reciprocation in a favorable way. This needs a radical change in the academia of both architecture and civil engineering, which would lead to a peaceful co-existence between these two opposite camps, leading to a much more interesting built environment. While we might suggest this, we cannot wait till the civil engineering course is updated. Hence, there is a strong need to explore how the students of architecture could be taught structures in an interesting way without being calculation oriented. While doing so, one has to remember that a bit of simplified calculations are necessary in order to get a feel of how different building forms behave under loadings. This will turn the conflict into confluence.

In an effort to join the two camps and thus produce master architects, the authors conducted a Structures workshop at DIT, Dehradun, with Second and Third Year students on a request from the Dean, Department of Architecture.

 

The workshop began with explanations about why we study Structures as part of our Undergraduate curriculum and how and when this knowledge is useful in our profession. With this clear in the minds of the students, the workshop led the students through a step by step understanding of the basic concepts of a building structure. It ended with a study on various solutions of the ‘long span’ and ‘towering’ challenges posed by buildings at the cutting edge of technology.

 

Lectures, presentations and demonstration models were used in the workshop. But the highlights were the models made by the students – exploring the various topics of the Structure syllabus. Their smiles and enthusiasm and hard work lay to rest the myth that architecture students do not understand or enjoy structures. Many of the models made by them clearly indicated a good understanding of what was taught in the class.