Building Technology

Building Technology

Javed Jaffery

Feb, 16, 2016

Building Technology

Making buildings for housing purposes have been done for a long time and has come a long way. Humans have always tried to find a better way to create a shelter to protect them from any danger of their environment such as weather conditions. Through past centuries, housing was not only an essential element to protect people, but also started to bring comfort and improve the quality of life. A lot of effort has been put into improving the quality of these buildings. In different regions, based on the accessibility to materials, weather conditions, and even people’s taste and culture, these improvements took different routes with different paces. However, most of the building technologies and improvements have been introduced in the past century and now are become unified in most of places in the world. It is critical to understand how these technologies got influenced and changed. These items have been studied by many scientist and building experts.  A closer look at these works will illustrate the building technologies and all aspect impacted them in past centuries.  All these developed systems bring better feeling for people who live in buildings.  Engineers every year develop their knowledge and try to use best design and high quality material in contracture.   Using high quality material and efficient design in building cause more enjoyment, happiness, and more safety.  However, those are not only achievement for good designing, energy-efficient is one of the most accomplishment in new building.  In building industry, engineers using new method of design and new material in construction and call it building technology.  Therefore, it is important to learn about history of building technology in the USA,background and development, US market, research and technology, tall and super-tall building, heating and cooling technology, green building in the US,the energy crisis, and future prediction.

Background

        During history of the United States building materials changed.  Material which were used in buildings were based on technology of that time and also weather condition were different.  The United States from west to east has different weather condition and it affects building technology.  Therefore, it is important to know about history of building technology in the USA, and building material.

History of Building Technology in the USA

It is important to understand the technology and material of buildings from different eras. There has been a lot of studies to categorize this technologies in buildings. Byers (2006) said, the building technology did not evolved significantly between 1760’s until about 1820’s.  After the 1820’s there were some improvements in building technology, however the main methods remained the same.  The changes could be mostly seen in the appearance of the buildings where the Georgian style changed to a simpler look of Federal style.  Building experts use this knowledge to identifythe age of the buildings.  This also helps understanding building technology and materials from the appearance of it.