My Architect II

Architect AJITH RANASINGHE

Our attempt in the previous article was to introduce the architect as a professional, who deals with physical and psychosocial needs of human beings in creating designed environments for them.

These designed environments may vary from a small shanty community development to a mega scale township development. It is the duty of the architect to play the role of a facilitator who would fulfill the basic sheltering need of human beings while satisfying their secondary and tertiary socio cultural needs.

Inclusion of the human component into this physical setup, demands a high level of intuition, dedication and knowledge in order to create economically viable, socially acceptable and aesthetically admirable spaces.

May it be for street children or for high class business community. A solution is given to all such requirements needs arising from a human being. Therefore an architect who is capable of comprehending the life pattern of human beings will add life to the spaces built with non living, bricks and motor.

Identifying an architect

Therefore identifying an architect as a professional who serves only the elite clientele should be corrected. In fact the architect is a professional, who has been trained to understand the total cross section of human society in fulfilling their sheltering needs irrespective of their social status. It is obvious that the architect is the key player of the building team comprised of Engineers, Quantity Surveyors, Planners and other relevant industry professionals.

That does not mean architects dominate the other parallel professions in the industry. As the team leader the architect will obtain the necessary inputs from the allied professionals in the process of transforming the natural environment into a habitable living space. As such, the architect should be considered your friendly vital partner in all building needs.

Through the years of academic and hands on experience architects have mastered the art of visualizing the scene of space even before the building is constructed. Therefore, it is obvious that there is no other person who can replace the position of an architect since this special ability is vested only with a well trained architect.

Architect fee a lifetime saving

It was evident that in olden days the professional service of an architect was obtained only by the upper middle class society of Sri Lanka, and thereby a common norm was spread that it is always expensive to commission an architect and their buildings are unaffordable to the low income segment.

The actual fact to be high lighted is that the fee you are paying to an architect is a lifetime saving since he is the only professional who is trained to provide you the most economical, meaningful and pleasing building with a proper justification to your investment.

Architects are trained to carefully listen to your needs and convert and incorporate them into a functional building where your life cycle needs are fulfilled, similar to a doctor who carefully listens to patients’ symptoms and prescribe the best medicine to cure their illnesses.

Proper communication a must

The common problem existing between a client and an architect is the lack of proper communication in the early stages of a building. When an architect is inadequately fed with vital project information (clients brief) he has no an option other than responding to the available and yet uncompleted clients brief which may result in unsatisfactory building.

Today we hope to explain the importance of obtaining an architect’s service before a project is started. Generally clients approach architects after the building site is selected. It is always advisable to obtain an architect’s service before the site is selected if that is a refurbishment or a renovation and before the existing building is demolished.

The professional input received at this early stage would save your hard earned money, rather than regretting on a decision taken without professional advice.

You may obtain a valuable contribution from your architect to conduct a proper feasibility study before the site is selected. Your architect is trained to analyze the site or intended project in the lines of economic relationships of the immediate context and future economic trends.

If that is a residential building he may analyse the social behavioral pattern of the area and will provide you the best advice such as whether to buy or not the ear marked site.

Your architect will advise you to reduce the cost of your building through proper site selection. He will consider issues such as subsoil conditions, availability of services, local building regulations, heritage implications, site orientations and views. There may be enough of examples where the site development cost and foundation cost exceed the cost of the super structure of the building due to bad site selections.

Architects are trained to advise you on budget planning of your project. They will analyse the total cost of the project in terms of construction stages, so that the owner gets a clear picture of the project expenditure for the site development, construction of the building, furniture and furnishings, landscaping and other external works. They may give some indication on cost of finance and consultants fees and on maintenance costs.

Your architect will prepare a proper project schedule to implement the project in a given socio-economic and environmental framework, where your project will run in the smoothest possible way.

In our next article we expect you to join with us in sharing various cost saving avenues you may achieve by obtaining the proper service of a qualified architect.

You may forward your questions with regard to architects’ services to [email protected]