Make the most of this lockdown by taking up an online program

The lockdown has opened the flexibility to learn online and add muscle to your regular degree. While online education provides students with a range of opportunities, it also can present challenges of learning in a new environment. Here are some tips to ensure your success.

Set yourself up for success

Before starting an online learning program, plan ahead. Give yourself space and time to study, as well as technology tools to do your best. If you are interested in taking up a career as an architect, join a coaching program to ace NATA. Visit websites of prominent architecture colleges like MIDAS and get useful insights from their YouTube pages.

Give yourself space

A quiet workplace without any interruption from family members is necessary for success in an online program. If your space isn't completely quiet, noise-canceling headphones can help you focus.

Check your tech

Always use a desktop or laptop for all your studies, as a tablet or phone may not be the best tool for most tasks. Familiarize yourself with the learning platform and keep information about tech support handy. Ensure that you have multiple browsers (such as Chrome or Firefox) available, as one might work better for some programs than others.

Organize your time

Time management is key to learning online, as you must take the initiative and be accountable for your own work.

Communicate

Stay connected to your instructors. Take advantage of opportunities to collaborate, share insights, and ask questions. Email instructors or use class discussion boards to ask questions or offer comments. Instructors like seeing student engagement and participating will improve your overall experience.

Be persistent

When things get challenging, remember the reasons why you're pursuing your education. Post verbal or visual reminders near your workspace to keep your goals top of mind.

To learn about the B.Arch from MIDAS, visit bit.ly/MIDAS_Admissions. 

Career opportunities for young architects

A B.Arch from MIDAS will help you to develop a fine range of creative, visual, practical, and design-based skills to offer employers. Although most architecture graduates will be looking to becoming architects to practice professionally, there are plenty of other options for you to consider.

The most obvious architecture career, as an architect is to design new buildings or complete extensions or alterations to existing ones, ensuring that they are safe, cost-effective, and functional.

Architectural technologists use engineering skills to create tough, resilient, and sustainable constructions and refurbishments. Using both computer-aided design and other drawing techniques, Architectural Technologists prepare and present design proposals and advise clients on technical matters.

Interior designers design or renovate internal spaces, fixtures, and fittings. With their architectural, creative design, and project management skills they ensure that spaces are both attractive and efficient.

Building surveyors deal with conserving, modifying, fixing, renovating, and restoring existing buildings. They are also involved with taking precautionary measures to keep buildings in good condition, as well as to make them more sustainable.

Town planners manage and develop the countryside, towns, cities, and villages. Working on behalf of everyone in the area and alongside other professionals they balance the needs of the local environment, population and economy and think of innovative, sustainable solutions for developments.

Production designers work closely with film producers and directors to develop a complete visual outline for the products they’re working on. Some production designers are entirely focused on theater and stage design.

Historic buildings inspectors work to promote the conservation of the historic buildings and help to protect them. They visit historic sites to inspect and survey them, advise on the best preservation methods, and take part in regeneration projects to benefit the community, economy, or environment.

Structural engineers are responsible for choosing the right materials to meet design specifications. They also examine existing buildings to ensure that they are structurally secure and up to standard.  

The B.Arch from MIDAS helps students to gain practical experience and develop key employability skills including critical, creative and strategic thinking, teamwork and ethical practice. Visit us at bit.ly/MIDAS_Admissions to know more.

The COVID-19 Pandemic is changing the Architectural Environment

The rapid spread of COVID-19 has caused architects to reevaluate their work, and what it might mean to design for a world that will never be quite the same, especially when it comes to how we gather in and use large public spaces, like parks, airports, hotels, hospitals, gyms, and offices.

But while the particular lessons of COVID-19 are still very much in the initial stages, a few ideas have already emerged.

Park for Social Distancing

Keeping our distance is crucial right now. However, getting fresh air and exercise is equally important to our overall well being. Because of this, landscape designers are dreaming up creative spaces we can all use safely in the future.

Studio Precht, a design house in Austria, has created a wholly new idea “Parc de la Distance." The park is designed as a geometric maze that closes in on the center of a circle. Each one is lined with massive shrubs to resemble a human fingerprint. Every lane has a gateway on the entrance and exit, which indicates if the path is occupied or free to stroll. The lanes are distanced 240 cm from each other and have a 90 cm wide hedge as a division.

Automated public spaces

Almost everyone predicts that public spaces will move toward more automation to mitigate contagion. Development of all types of touch-less technology—automatic doors, voice-activated elevators, cellphone-controlled hotel room entry, hands-free light switches, and temperature controls, automated luggage bag tags, and advanced airport check-in and security, will speed up. 

Advanced healthcare facilities

The biggest thing to come to light during this is the inability of hospitals to accommodate the number of sick people. So from a design perspective, we might see an ability to make a normal patient room more flexible to increase capacity or be easily converted into an ICU.

Architects have already started work to eliminate the traditional waiting area by creating alternative waiting nooks scattered around the building. This lets patients be somewhere else in the building—the library or somewhere —instead of sitting around on the same floor with other ill people.

The B.Arch from MIDAS is designed to create innovative architectural solutions to address the needs of the future. Know more at bit.ly/MIDAS_Admissions.  

Architecture community chips in to help combat COVID-19 pandemic

As the COVID-19 pandemic expands globally, architects are leveraging their technologies, facilities, and research skills to aid in the fight against the pandemic.

Jupe Health, a humanitarian startup, has developed a new type of shippable hospital room that can be quickly distributed to crisis zones amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. The units are enclosed by a faceted exterior in soft-top or hardcovers and are either solar or battery-powered and fitted with water-disposal.

Humanitas Healthcare and the World Economic Forum, is developing Connected Units for Respiratory Ailments (CURA). It is an open-source, design and build initiative that converts shipping containers as biocontainment pods. 

SheltAir, a domed bio-containment pod erected using inflatable cushions could help coronavirus patients isolate. The pods consist of a grid shell of plastic rods, which is assembled flat and pushed up through a pneumatic formwork of inflatables. 

STAAT Mod (Strategic, Temporary, Acuity-Adaptable Treatment), a prefabricated modular solution that can be deployed anywhere, will provide hospital-level care to patients suffering from COVID-19. They can be deployed in diverse environments from convention centers to free-standing hospital expansions.

Shipping containers turn into mobile intensive care units to treat COVID-19 patients

Architects have turned to shipping containers to make everything from pop-up shops to co-working spaces, and even makeshift homes. But now the humble corrugated steel box might have found one of its most useful reincarnations yet, in the hands of an international network of architects and engineers who have come together to convert them into two-bed intensive care units for the coronavirus pandemic.

The open-source project, dubbed Connected Units for Respiratory Ailments (CURA) is harnessing the skills of experts from around the world to develop self-contained, mobile ICUs that can be plugged into hospitals or installed in parking lots.

The first prototype unit, currently under construction in Italy, is nearly complete and is scheduled to be deployed in a hospital in Milan.

CURA units are designed to be far more than a giant metal box with a couple of beds inside. Each is set up with negative air pressure, creating a bio-confinement environment that can restrict the virus from leaving the chamber.

It's one major advantage over the tent-like centers that hospitals have been setting up to cope with the influx of patients, which could put doctors and other health-care workers at risk of infection.

Since the approximately six-meter-long shipping container design is more or less standard around the world, the CURA design should be more or less adaptable around the world.

The B.Arch from MIDAS is designed to help architects create innovative solutions to address the needs of the community. Admissions are open. Visit www.midas.ac.in to join now.

Murals lighten up Chennai's Kannagi Nagar

Kannagi Nagar home to nearly 80,000 people mostly living in identical multi-storied apartments now sports a brand-new facelift. Mural artists national and international in association with Greater Chennai Corporation have added bright murals to make the apartments colorful and lively. 

Over 100 local kids were also involved in the process. 

Murals play an important role in architecture as they bring art into the public sphere. At MIDAS, architecture students organize regular mural art training camps to help locals gain insights into the world of murals. 

Drawing inspiration from the livelihoods of locals, the color tones and elements of the mural at Kannagi Nagar reflect the environment. 

The building that welcomes one to Kannagi Nagar sports a medley of gradients. The Geometrical shapes are filled with yellows, reds, and blues 

  

The second wall portrays a woman with a powerful gaze in vibrant colors of green, orange and blue. 

  

Adjacent to these is the mural inspired by scenes from the Koyambedu flower market.  

  

A little away from this network of walls, stands a mural dedicated to the inhabitants of the area who had to move after the devastating tsunami of 2004. It depicts a mother-daughter duo, amidst waves, looking upwards, surrounded by iris flowers. 

A boost for green buildings! Public buildings in France to be built with at least 50 % timber

The French government has announced plans for a sustainability law that will ensure all new public buildings are built from at least 50 percent timber,  natural materials or bio-based materials that are made from matter derived from living organisms like hemp and straw, says a report in dezeen.com

Like wood, they have a significantly lower embodied carbon footprint compared to other construction materials like concrete and steel.

The measure will be implemented by 2022 and will include all public buildings financed by the government.

The move was inspired by Paris and its recent low-carbon mandate to build structures for the 2024 Summer Olympics from timber.

Green construction offers eco-friendly solutions that can drastically reduce the carbon footprint created by traditional building methods.

The ultimate goal of green building and design is to create sound structures that possess environmental sustainability without the sacrifice of the kinds of modern comforts people expect. Both architects and builders of eco-friendly buildings follow comprehensive reuse, recycle, and repurpose model in as many facets of construction as possible. Here are some ways that modern construction is making strides to decrease environmental impact both during and after the construction of new structures.

Generating clean energy

One of the most effective ways to decrease the impact of a building on the environment is to make sure that it is constructed in a way that generates a high percentage of the energy it consumes. Structures that generate energy on their own like solar panels on the roof and walls do not draw as much power from plants. 

The reduced draw on these resources means fewer polluting fuels need to be burned in order to generate the energy needed to run the systems within the building. 

Increasing HVAC system efficacy

Eco-friendly construction companies also seek to make the heating and cooling systems of the structures they design and build environmentally sound. Making them more efficient consequently reduces the amount of energy it takes to effectively run heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. Eco-friendly insulation is also becoming a more popular choice.