No_6_June_1968 — Page 22

tures, Services and Environmental Technology.

The Production of buildings on the other hand concerns the techniques of the manufacture, form, handling, use, organisation and control of the

BUILDING SERVICES

parts of the buildings made from these by R. A. Callow

materials. Some of these problems, in their turn, receive additional and differently oriented study in the se- parate Services, Practice and Manage- S

ment, Specification and Economics

courses.

Both of these aspects of Building Technology are to some extent taught parallel to each other throughout, though circumstances tend to concen- trate most of the 'science' in the first three years, with 'production' der the guise of 'Industrialised Build- ing' receiving attention in depth in

the fourth year.

←

un-

Although this is an appropriate se- quence from some points of view, from others, it has serious defects. The principles of production have an important effect on the design process and should not be excluded from the earlier formative stages of the course.

Teaching is largely by means of lectures, though the disadvantages of this medium are minimized by en- couraging discussion on the principles covered. Realism is engendered by means of carefully regulated site and factory visits, though again achieving suitable conditions for these is not an easy task in Hong Kong.

Practical building-site and work- shop instruction is also undertaken. mostly in the first year, but its full benefits are adversely affected by a lack of continuity with the rest of the course work; a situation that can be rectified as workshop and laboratory space and facilities improve.

The application of Building Tech- nology in the studio projects falls into two parts. The first and most im- portant of these is in the form of 'technical studies' and comes before a design exercise is finalised'. These studies are intended to contribute to a solution though too frequently they are seen as more of an intrusion than an essential part of the design pro-

cess.

at

The second application comes the post-design stage and is basically an exercise in communicating the design, by means of 'production' do- cuments, to those whose job it is to make and build it, In this context the traditional all-purpose academic type working drawing' is obviously unsuitable and, as a result, is disap- pearing.

Aids to teaching

As stated, the full and proper teaching of Materials and Techniques is dependent on a satisfactory overall design methodology. On its own, of course, this is not enough and the support and use of appropriate and fully equipped teaching facilities and aids is required.

Three particularly important faci-

ERVICES in the design of buildings present many facets, each mem- ber of the building team architect, engineer, quantity surveyor and build- ing contractor taking a different view of the subject and its relative importance.

―

To the mechanical engineer and the heating/ventilating engineer, services are the life blood in the body of the building without which the structure is merely an empty shell-a reasonable attitude, for what is the good of most buildings without their water, gas and electricity supply, without drains, ven- tilation, heating or cooling and all the other aspects of services?

To the quantity surveyor, services are only part of the numerous and varied building technologies which make up the wealth of his profession-

lities have been developed over the past four or five years that are indis- pensable to this teaching and a num- ber of the closely related subjects al- ready mentioned. One of these facili- ties is the Department's Technical Re- ference Bureau which provides con- venient day-to-day working access to that mass of authoritative and up-to- date information and data on the technical aspects of building.

The contents of the bureau, which is SfB classified and manned by ex- perienced full-time staff, includes re- ports, standards, theses, abstracts, books, periodicals and technical litera- ture from research and other

OT-

ganisations concerned with Building

all over the world.

A second facility, which it has been possible to partially develop in recent years, is the workshop. Al- though this will safely accommodate only six or eight people at a time, within this severely restricted space, multi-purpose machines and a wide range of power and hand tools to deal with most woodworking operations, have been installed. In addition, it is possible to carry out operations in plastics and light metals.

The third facility referred to is a laboratory for experiments, testing and demonstration work in the field of the building sciences. The Depart- ment has had some specialist equip ment of this kind for many years, but it is only recently that enough more general laboratory equipment ment has arrived which should per- mit the limited introduction of this aid into the teaching programme to- wards the end of this year.

Again severe space restrictions and limitations on the quantity of equip- ment will only allow working in

al knowledge

knowledge

by

which he ensures their inclusion in the documents he produces.

To the building contractor, services are perhaps one of the most difficult parts of his task of planning, pro- gramming and controlling the building works. Services tend to be the work of sub-contractors (often nominated by the architect and sometimes dif- ficult to deal with) occuring late in the programme of construction.

Nevertheless the building contractor has all the responsibility of making adequate ways for the pipes, wires, etc., and this requires close attention at the early stages of the job long be- fore the actual services themselves are installed. Later, any hold-up in ser- vices installation will certainly delay closing-in works and is likely to hold

groups of six at a time. The labora- tory also contains a materials and components samples collection, and, as is the case with the workshop, it is manned by a full-time technician.

The future scene

This brief review of some of the problems and possibilities of teaching this particular aspect of building de- sign has been kept deliberately critic- al in tone. This is not to imply that everything that has or is being done is unsuccessful, because this is very far from being so.

Experience in many other parts of the world shows that the standards achieved in Hong Kong compare very favourably indeed with elsewhere. Nevertheless, although deficiencies are constantly being realised and rectified, the situation is one that calls for con- stant vigilance since it is all too easy to become complacent.

Building is no longer the man-de- signed hand-made craft of yesterday. It is well on its way to being a ma- chine-designed, as well as a machine- made technology, and this must be anticipated in teaching.

Existing techniques and proce- dures are rapidly being outdated and new ones, involving standardisa- tion, computation, organisation, co- ordination, rationalisation, integration, communication, automation, and the like, are taking their place.

These must be learned and master- ed and then handled by designers with the same facility and assurance that they have shown hitherto with pen- cil, brush and paper. Only then will it be possible for them to create ef- fectively and meet man's needs with

success,

265

Far East BUILDER, June 1968.