From ancient Greek statues to modern graphic design, every art form can be broken down into basic design fundamentals—line, shape, form, color, value, shape, and texture. Architecture is no exception and can also be dissected using these basic design elements. However, since architectural work is such a distinctive and functional art form, it also has its own set of design principles.
Architectural design principles further define the basic elements of design in a way that specifically relates to the art of architecture. They are invaluable for architectural understanding, learning, troubleshooting, and growth.
Why Are Architecture Design Principles Important?
Architectural design principles are the building blocks of successful design. While they each focus on different elements of the design, they must work in tandem to ensure that a structure is visually pleasing and unified. In addition, a basic understanding of these principles assists with:
User Experience: A building needs to work for its purpose and its occupants. Using architectural principles can assist with the flow and movement of the layout to ensure users are comfortable and supported in their daily tasks and goals. Furthermore, these basic principles translate well to interior design.
Troubleshooting: Whether you’re in the preliminary design phase using AutoCAD software or staring down a half-built building, knowing the architectural design principles will help you pinpoint visual and functional offenses. Any structure or design can be broken down into these design principles to assist in finding what works and what doesn’t. Think of them like a troubleshooting checklist to tweak design decisions.
Communication: Architecture design principles are the foundation for not only good design but also effective communication. They allow teachers to better explain the architectural design process and make for clearer communication between colleagues.
Creativity: To push the boundaries of design, you must first understand what you are pushing against. Yes, there are pieces of architecture that bend the rules and principles. However, note that this isn’t due to a disregard for them—it is often the mastery of the principles that allow an architect to successfully push the “rules of design”.
Architecture Design Principles
1. Principle of Balance
What type of symmetry does the structure have? Does it achieve visual balance?
This important principle is perhaps the easiest to identify. It refers to the visual balance, which in its most basic form can be categorized as symmetrical balance or asymmetrical balance.
Symmetrical: Whatever you place on the right of the building, you also put on the left. It is almost as if one side of the building is a mirrored reflection of the other. Although, note that some design elements can vary slightly from side to side. When a building is the same on the left side and right side, such as common skyscrapers, this is referred to as bilateral symmetry. You can also have a symmetrical building that reflects across a horizontal axis in the middle of a building—where the top of the building is the same as the bottom.
Examples of symmetrical buildings include the United States Capitol Building, Taj Mahal, Pantheon, and Baiturrahman Grand Mosque.Photo Source. Baiturrahman Grand Mosque.
Asymmetrical: The two sides of the building do not mirror each other but hold the same visual weight to create balance. In these cases, the surrounding natural and built environment may help achieve balance. However, asymmetrical builds rely more on other design elements to ensure an even distribution of visual weight to create a sense of stability and unity.
Photo Source. Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles is asymmetrical with its highly unique shape. To achieve unity, it leans into the other principles of design and architecture, such as the rhythmic repetition of the block pattern on the steel façade.
Symmetrical and asymmetrical balance are the most basic forms of balance. However, you can also have other forms of symmetry in a structure and its architectural components. For example, radial symmetry that stems from a center point, such as a round stained-glass window, or spiral symmetry, such as spiral staircases.
2. Principle of Emphasis
What do you want the eye to be drawn to? What will lead it there?
All designs need a focal point—a natural place for the eye to rest. Without one, a building may feel unbalanced and chaotic.
To emphasize a focal point, an architect may use line, color, shape, texture, and mass. More specific methods of emphasis include:
Vertically aligning multiple focal points to create a focal axis.
Using a framing mechanism to frame the design using neighboring buildings.
3. Principle of Proportion & Scale
Photo Source.While a skyscraper may fit effortlessly into a cityscape, it would look out of place in a country setting.
Are the building components proportional to each other? Does the design scale well to the surrounding environment?
Proportion: The relation between the building components. They should unify with each other and achieve visual harmony.
Scale: How the design spatially relates to the surrounding natural and built environment. It should not overwhelm neighboring designs, nor should it be overwhelmed.
4. Principle of Movement
How does the eye explore the work? How do users navigate and experience the building?
Eye Movement: Movement of design is what guides the viewer’s eye across the work. It may lead to a focal point or emphasized portion of the structure. Patterns and emphasis may be used to guide the eye and add visual interest.
User Movement refers to form and function—specifically, the layout and how users experience the building. The design should have space and flow for them to achieve their daily tasks with ease. Consider basic functionalities and the most common paths a user will take to get from point A to point B in the building. For example, for a commercial building, it may be from their workspace to the bathroom. Is the path obstructed? Can it be optimized?
5. Principle of Rhythm
Photo Source. The repetition of triangles on the Sydney Opera House creates a rhythmic flow. It does not present itself in a pattern but has a random rhythm.
Does the structure have flow? Does it employ repetition or pattern to create rhythm?
Rhythm is key to the flow of a building and is commonly created with repeating elements. A very basic example of this is how a house generally uses the same window shape across the entire design. Repetition adds unity to a structure, but it can also add movement in some cases (much like how repetition adds movement to famous works of art, such as the swirls in Van Gogh’s Starry Night).
Lastly, while not all repetition forms a pattern, all patterns have repetition. Since a pattern is predictable, it is easy and enticing for the eye to follow. Therefore, it is common to see patterns used to emphasize and draw the eye to a specific part of the design, like a focal point.
Project workflows in the architecture, engineering, and construction industry are deeply fragmented. Gaps in handoffs between planning, design, building, and operations lead to the loss of valuable data. Data loss leads to revenue loss. According to McKinsey in 2016, large projects are up to 80% over budget on average.
How digital twin can help today’s AEC challenges
Digital twin isn’t the latest shiny object. It is solving some major challenges from both the design and owner sides of the equation. 2D plans and specifications remain the industry-standard deliverable for construction documents. However, owners often also ask for BIM (Building Information Modeling) without any means to articulate what they actually need or how they can use it. The typical result? Project teams spend countless, unbillable hours updating models. And, at the end of the day, these models aren’t even useful to the owner because data is trapped in files.
This analog, unclassified, and disconnected data is often an insurmountable challenge for owners and operators to monitor, manage, and fine-tune their assets. They are unable to realize the benefits of smart buildings and end up with siloed data and systems, inaccurate information, and a lack of transparency and important insights.
Now, a digital twin can finally solve this handover problem with all the data and insights at the owner and operator’s fingertips. New innovations are making this easier than ever before, such as Autodesk Tandem which brings project data together from its many sources, formats, and phases to create a data-rich digital hub that tracks asset data from design through operations.
Here are three ways digital twin is poised to benefit project delivery
Design & Construction
Project teams spend countless unbillable hours updating models. Digital twin solutions such as Autodesk Tandem bring project data together from its many sources, formats, and phases to create a data-rich digital hub that tracks asset data from design through operations. The result is a single-pane view of all project insights.
Up to 89% of all IoT Platforms will contain some form of digital twinning capability by 2025.
–Researchandmarkets.com
Operations
The digital twin can be connected to the built asset’s systems to collect operational performance data and system models can be created to perform simulation. Owners and operators can monitor and tune energy consumption and carbon emissions, as well as support facility utilization and contact tracing. To accomplish these goals, the digital twin must evolve over time and requires a constant feed of data. But in return, nearly 80 percent of an asset’s lifetime value is realized in operations.
As a result of COVID-19, 31% of all respondents use digital twins to improve employee or customer safety, such as the use of remote asset monitoring to reduce the frequency of in-person monitoring.
–Gartner
Planning the Next Facility
Operational data collected through a digital twin informs long-term decisions about investments. The digital twin can be used to produce realistic simulations of updates, predict failures, and even forecast planning needs.
When owners begin operations with a data-rich digital twin made up of objects rather than PDFs and spreadsheets, there is an incredible opportunity to reduce the risk inherent to decision-making.
The global digital twin market size was valued at USD 3.1 billion in 2020 and is projected to reach USD 48.2 billion by 2026.
-MarketsandMarkets
Getting started with digital twin
Digital twin isn’t far off in the future—it’s happening now. Learn more about how to join Autodesk’s Project Tandem, digital twin community, and upcoming beta program to build the future together.
There are many notable twins in the world today. You might even be a twin but do you know what a digital twin is.
Essentially, it’s a digital version of a physical object a dynamic up-to-date digital replica of a built asset or environment with the help of building information modeling (BIM), artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and the internet of things (IoT) technology. Data from the original asset is used to build and improve the digital twin by providing a precise up-to-date model of its original.
What is the benefit of a digital twin?
A digital twin can help designers, engineers, contractors, owners, and manufacturers create more efficient structures. Digital twins can help with everything from planning, design, and construction to operations and maintenance.
Consider a building that’s already been designed and constructed. Imagine there’s a digital twin of the entire facility from the roof to the HVAC to the mechanical engineering and plumbing systems.
Now imagine that sensors in the building provide the digital twin with real-time information the digital twin updates itself according to the data. Then, building owners can view areas where the building is aging or faulty and make improvements on a greater scale.
Multiple digital twins can be integrated in an entire ecosystem.
So how did digital twins get their start in the 1960s?
NASA was one of the first agencies to use mirroring technology to replicate systems in space. Notably, NASA created a replica of Apollo 13 which became critical in the midst of its challenging mission. Engineers were able to test solutions on the replica to avoid further disaster.
Dr. Michael Greaves, Chief Scientist for Advanced Manufacturing at the Florida Institute of Technology introduced the concept of the digital twin at an American Society of Mechanical Engineers Conference in 2002. He proposed a product lifecycle management center that contained the elements of a digital twin, the physical space, the virtual space, and the flow of information between the two.
The manufacturing industry was quick to adopt digital twins and the architecture engineering and construction industry followed suit with the help of technological advancements like BIM or building information modeling.
How has the digital twin evolved since then?
Today, digital twin technology plays a big part in the digital transformation of the design, engineering, construction, manufacturing, and maintenance industries. A digital twin starts with knowledge of the assets and spaces that make up a facility.
This type of descriptive twin is a live editable version of design and construction data such as a visual replica of assets or facilities. An informative twin has an added layer of operational and sensory data as more and more data is added the twin becomes richer and richer and more strongly linked to its physical counterpart.
Predictive twins are able to leverage this operational data for insights while comprehensive twins simulate future scenarios and consider what-if questions in the future twins will become autonomous able to learn and act on behalf of users because digital twins can gather key information about things like population growth, natural resource supply levels, and historical data on environmental disasters.
Digital twins can help build more resilient cities and infrastructures as the world changes.
Eventually, an entire ecosystem of digital twins will help industries respond to global challenges with powerful simultaneous changes right now.
Digital twins are helping operations and facility managers respond faster by removing the need for complex and time-consuming maintenance documents.
Owners can gather information from the design and build phases to make faster business decisions lowering operational and maintenance costs.
Professionals on site can predict material and labor cycles reducing waste and enhancing safety by helping professionals gain more insight into the inner workings of the
world.
Digital twins are becoming partners in building a better future.
For more information about how it is being used, watch our webinar recording the two-part TECH Perspectives webinar series we did and hear from Microsoft, CallisonRTKL, and Stantec.
Hear our discussion as we focus on the challenges of implementing, managing, and measuring Digital Twin solutions.
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