Building design

Building design is the process of planning a building’s form, spaces, structure, systems, materials, and relationship to its site. It coordinates practical needs, technical constraints, and intended experience.

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Architectural programming: The process of defining a building’s purposes, users, activities, and spatial requirements. It translates client needs into the requirements that guide design.
Building code: A set of legal requirements governing the design and construction of buildings. Code requirements set limits on occupancy, dimensions, and safety.
Site planning: The arrangement of buildings, access, landscape, and infrastructure on a parcel of land. It determines how the building meets its surroundings and approaches.
Vitruvius: A Roman architect and author of De architectura, an influential treatise on building and design. His account of firmness, commodity, and delight remains a touchstone for design aims.
Modern architecture: An architectural movement that rejected historical imitation in favor of new forms, materials, and functions. Its principles continue to inform many contemporary design decisions.
Conceptual design: The early design stage that establishes a project’s main spatial and formal ideas. It turns the brief into an initial organizing idea.
Structural system: The connected elements that carry a building’s loads to its foundations and ground. Its spans and supports constrain plans and architectural form.
Passive solar building design: Design that uses building orientation, form, and materials to manage solar heat and daylight. It makes orientation and openings tools for comfort and energy performance.
Andrea Palladio: A sixteenth-century Italian architect whose villas and treatise influenced architecture across Europe and beyond. His proportional villas became models for organizing domestic buildings.
Postmodern architecture: An architectural movement that reintroduced historical reference, symbolism, and eclectic forms after modernism. It challenged modernism’s preference for restraint and universal expression.