Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Can any Architect/Engineer prepare Plan for your house?

Quite often, I hear from my clients that he got plan of his house prepared by an Engineer/Architect as if it is the best he can get to invest in his house to be constructed with almost major portion of his earnings of life

Very few people understand the fact that plan of the house is the most important, most critical part of designing and building a house. Almost all think that for a particular plot for needs expressed by him for the house, plan that can be made by any Engineer/Architect will be the same. This assumption about plan of house is wrong.

There are two factors in design of a plan of house. One is skill to draw a plan possibly in Auto CAD.A technically trained person in the field of Architectural design will have that skill. Any one coming out of a technical institute/Engineering college with subject of study, Civil Engineering or Architecture does not automatically become a good designer of house. Ability to draw an Auto CAD drawing do not mean that the person has acquired enough expertise in designing a house for you to save your money in construction and to provide you better facilities with proper utilisation of space and money.

Design of house requires a lot of common sense. This common sense is what makes a good designer. House design is always a great effort in accommodating needs of client, budget constraints, space constraints, building rules, Vasthu considerations and limitations of plot. Only an experienced expert with lots of exposure to house design and construction can design plan of your house to get you better facilities at lesser cost

Most important limitation for you as a customer is that unlike a good designer, you cannot visualise well implications of those lines drawn in a plan. Most of the people realize flaws and deficiencies in the plan only when building completes structure work. Then it will be too late to do anything to correct defects and insufficient space utilisation or even wastage of space. Several clients have called me to check their building after completion of structure work to suggest ways to correct mistakes in design. But at that stage not much can be done

I have directly designed and constructed more than 200 houses in different parts of Kerala and even outside state. I have designed many more buildings of different purpose. Each of these works taught me a lot on building design and construction which no Engineering college can teach. When I design plan of your house, these rich inputs of experience work for you to give you a plan of house which can not only save your money but also provide you better space utilisation of every built up space with better facilities at lesser cost

Now, tell me, why should you waste your money getting a plan from any one? Go for experienced expertise.

Quite a lot of people think that anyone can make a good plan of house but not good Elevation for the house. Drawing a good looking Elevation is not that difficult for a technically trained person. But you can finalise an Elevation only after checking capabilities of the contractor who will actually work at site. There is no point in drawing an impressive looking Elevation if your contractor cannot do it at site. For the same plan of house you can have different Elevation. But if the plan of house is not designed in a manner to get good Elevation; you may not get a good Elevation. So, even a good Elevation of the house starts with a good plan of the house. Just any plan cannot get an impressive looking Elevation

I can also check on plan made by any one on following aspects:

1. Architectural

2. Structural Engineering

3. Vasthu aspects

4. Kerala Building Rules

5. Optimum use of built up space

6. Cost reduction

Write to me to

vhthomas@viruvelil.com

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