The title block is the first piece of information you’ll see in construction site plans. Study the plan legend to decode and understand basic symbols in the drawings. Find the architect’s plans to scale and orientation, as all Architect’s plan drawings are drawn to scale. Look for notes from the Architect.
The first requirement in constructing a building project is to understand architectural drawings, also known as blueprints or plans. To read these drawings, follow these steps:
Understand Scale and Measurements. Architects and designers use a trusted and effective system of scale ratios to draw floor plans. This method helps them understand architectural layouts.
Master reading floor plans and understanding architectural layouts. This guide covers floor plan basics to advanced tips. It provides a step-by-step explanation of how to read and understand architectural drawings, including details on walls, doors, windows, measurements, symbols, building codes, and more.
Learn how to read house blueprints. They are drawn to scale and pages are typically in the order of.
Learn how to read floor plans with dimensions and the symbols for doors, windows, cabinetry, and fixtures. Floor plans illustrate what would be seen if the roof was removed and you were looking straight down at the house.
This informational page aims to educate the public, clients, and contractors on how to read and interpret an Architect’s set of sheets prepared by the Architect. A basic floor plan is a blueprint for the house design, usually drawn on a 1:100 scale.
📹 how to read a FLOORPLAN (architecture edition) Understanding Architectural Floor Plans Walkthrough
Do you know how to read a floorplan? If you are new to architecture, reading floorplans, construction drawings, blueprints …
📹 Architecture A to Z (Guide to Popular Concepts)
This video introduces and defines common architecture terms from A to Z. It is no secret that architecture is full of jargon and …
For quick reference: A — Aesthetic B — Buttress C — Circulation D — Diagramattic E — Enfilade F — Fenestration G — Geodesic H — Hierarchy I — Iconic J — Jamb K — Kitsch L — Legibility M — Morphology N — Node O — Ornamentation P — Program Q — Quoin R — Rustication S — Stereotomic T — Tectonic U — Urbanism V — Vernacular W — Weathering X — Xylography Y — Yurt Z — Zeitgeist
I was curious about Buckminster Fuller, so I Googled him, fascinating. Then I Googled his only daughter, Allegra, who was famous in the world of dance choreography. She passed away just last week. This has nothing to do with architecture, of course, but proves that the world is big and small at the same time.
Ooooh! Enfilade was a new term for me. I really hadn’t consciously realized that museums are a series of rooms. It makes sense now because lots of historic places I’ve visited were residences turned museums. In my mind, I thought of the series of rooms as very residential and French. And the museum was just working with the existing architecture. But even newly constructed museums follow this same concept! Huh! Love the word! Also, YouTube suggested your website to me today and I immediately subscribed after perusal 1 article. The algorithm knows!
@stewart, A question about “how to design architecture”: In graphic design we often will collect all our raw design elements and content onto the screen and begin assembling them into various design explorations based on background requirements, past designs, and raw creativity. Is there an equivalent to this in the architecture design process, specifically when the architect sits down to design the interior spaces and exterior surfaces? Perhaps the answer to this could be a good candidate for a article title: “How to do architecture” 😛
I find your definition of “weathering” quite poetic and will therefore be imprinted in my mind. I’ve never heard it described in that way before. Did you come up with that sir? Beautiful, the way it’s put into words. Also, I found an interest in stereotomy, now that you’ve introduced it to me. Happy, I definitely am.
As soon as you said ‘C’ is for Corridor, I knew ‘E’ would be for Enfilade. I still love it when I find this situation in homes. It is so light and airy. I was, however, definitely wrong when it came to predicting which terms you’d use for several of the letters. For some reason, I figured ‘P’ would refer to Palladian (as in a window) or palladiana. Oddly, I’m looking out of one right now as I’m sitting in a suburban AirB&B. Then again, such fenestration references might lead to ‘C’ becoming a modern equivalent, a Chicago window. I also figured ‘T’ would be for Trabeation or Trabeate and ‘A’ would be for Archuation or Arcuate. There are so many terms and so few letters in the alphabet. Good job, as always!
Very much enjoyed this article which defines the terms so clearly. I live in Edinburgh and there are a lot of examples of rustification, especially for the ‘below ground floor’ front for tenements prolific in the New Town and other sloping areas. I always wondered what the term for this look was and now I do.
I understand “tectonic” a little differently: as a direct analogy to the geological meaning of tectonic plates in the earth’s surface. Buildings, then, have a monolithic shape that is similar to a rock formation or tectonic plates, especially if they seem to grow out of the earth. An example would be the Frank Lloyd Wright midwestern houses with their horizontal forms that seem like outgrowths of the exposed limestone layers in eroded land. I took an architecture class once, and a (then) somewhat amusing term was “architectonics” that referred to, for example, the general shapes of large buildings that, because of their size or number, cause the individual to relate to them as he would terrain or mountains. It is shape, connected to or part of the earth.
I want to comment on jamb real quick. He mentions how it is a support in a building, but in most modern buildings, this isn’t true. Mind you, I’m not an architect, I just live in a very earthquake prone area, and we are taught to NOT take shelter in door frames, because they do not supporters, and can collapse on you.
Hot take; OK, as far as aesthetic go I think the mustache is good, but the hair isn’t doing him any favors. The glasses 🤮 total replacement, horrible curb appeal. Just screams “midwit reddit mod with nude anime figurines” The choice of shirt was a mistake, a v-neck or collared shirt wouldn’t highlight how narrow the shoulders are and the lack of deltoids. Sold bones on this one, good head shape, good teeth, but definitely need a little remodeling.
I find that using architectural jargon loses clients, planners, review boards, and even building officials faster than anything else. While useful in an academic sense, leave these esoteric words for your peers and to impress your professor. The real world cares in the least, and most people do not relate to seemingly superficial or shallow terms.
It can be a dense jargon. I am a architecture photographer. And as such havent had any training in the field. Just core design, line and shape principles. This website has really helped me. And its lovely to watch all these. Even if my interest is mostly Dutch and historical European architecture and stone masonry. Tnx.
Vitruvius provided a definition for the architect’s role that served admirably for centuries. A building should effectively address the needs of the humans it serves, it should be built to endure, and it should be beautiful. After world war two, the profession rejected its own tradition, and has clearly been floundering ever since. Architects decided that they didn’t want to learn all those names for the parts of a building, or how construction is done – they wanted to focus on making dramatic sculptural gestures. This adolescent tantrum did serve to express a wider cultural malaise that the youth culture of the sixties appropriately reacted against, but it also resulted in what James Howard Kunstler refers to as “the greatest misappropriation of resources in the history of the world.” The pervasing cancerous growth of suburban housing developments and the accompanying mallscapes with their parking lagoons have eviscerated our cities. Rather than address the fundamental problems now inherent in our dysfunctional built environment, the architectural profession has continued to create pompous bullshit. Guess what they use to describe it.
It is such a great article! Thank you very much! Just as a maybe helpful bit of critisizm – the difference between the volume of the music and the volume of the voice was slightly too much for me, listening with the headphones, so that I found myself turning the volume up everytime I wanted to hear the explanation clearly, but then felt blasted with a harmful level of sound when the music came in 😵
I’ve never come across a more completely random collection of words supposedly used in architecture. Some of them I’ve never heard used in an architectural context (tectonics), some I’ve never heard used before at all (stereotomy). And architecture has a lot of jargon, far more than a single article can be expected to explore. Why jamb but not pillar, post, column, pilaster, stile, beam, frame, entablature, cornice, truss or lintel?
Are architects needed tomorrow at all? Today neural networks create simple layouts easily. However, Indians for 5 rupees will always do the same job for which I will ask 50-500 $. Do people need aesthetics? People who are willing to pay for a design are ten times less than people who can create it. As an architect, I am convinced that this is a dying profession. We are becoming technical draftsmen.