In the design and specification of buildings, technical design decisions are taken by designers in response to well recognised ‘rules of thumb’, by adherence to traditional approaches and by adherence to codes of practice and building regulations. Frequently, students and practitioners alike have little understanding of the scientific basis for these decisions. This lack of understanding often leads to inappropriate technical design decisions and hinders technological advancement in construction-related disciplines.
The Technical Design Series comprises succinct, easy to use, topic-based guides that collate in one place unbiased, need-to-know technical information about a particular subject area, where these are otherwise difficult and time-consuming to assimilate. It demystifies the scientific basis for technical design solutions, illustrating how fundamental scientific theory has been used to develop both traditional and innovative construction techniques and practices.
Guides within The Technical Design Series each provide a ‘fundamentals’ section in which the underlying scientific theory relating to the topic is presented, and an ‘applications’ section that describes how the scientific theory has been applied to technical design solutions. The highly illustrated ‘applications’ section explains the scientific basis for common technical design ‘rules of thumb’, for traditional and innovative construction practices and for relevant codes of practice and building regulations and comprises the majority of each volume.
