5 External Climatic Factors That Affect An Interior Design Project

Dear friends, the emergence of architecture in human society
has taken a wide and distinct role in itself. Starting from
early eras where man used to live in caves, we have seen a
remarkable growth in architecture and allied fields, which
includes landscape and interior design
The recent being the use of computers and “Computer Aided Design”
in architecture, which allows a kind of perfection in design
and execution process of any building and its interiors.
In spite of all the technological advances, the primary function
of any building structure remains the same, protection from
outside environment and natural calamities.
Starting from a place to “protect yourself’ from nature, interior
design has become a “status symbol”. Today’s interior spaces have
a two way channel, first and the obvious one is the function and
second one is aesthetical, which is a little complex one.
It is quite obvious that the interior design of a space is directly
related to the function of the space. This means that two spaces
like a home and an office have two well defined functions, hence
it will reflect in every aspect of the interior design solution.
But apart from the there is one more important factor that
will affect each and every aspect of the final design solution,
and that’s the geographical location of the architectural structure.
A hotel building at seashore and the other one at a hill station
will have a completely different sets of problems to deal with.
Lets see in a short way what are the external factors that can
affect an interior design solution
1) Amount of direct sunlight.
Locations on the far northern or southern hemisphere receive less
amount of sunlight than those at the equator. That’s why here the
building with more use of plane glass are used. Also artificial
lighting is given much importance.
2) External temperature.
External temperature directly affects the comfort level of internal
spaces. Since external walls act as a “buffer” between internal
and external climate, it is necessary to use the right construction
material for walls. Depending upon the wall material the internal
finishes also have limitations. This is especially true for
structure that face extreme climatic ups and downs, such as
locations in the gulf countries.
Hence selecting materials that can sustain heavy climatic changes
on a daily scale is challenging.
3) Humidity and Rainfall.
Because of the salty nature of air around coastal areas extra care
is taken for building construction materials, which can directly
affect the entire budget of the project.
4)Wind Direction.
Wind direction and wind speed also has direct affect on the interiors.
Heavy winds exert a load on the external walls of the structure,
thus affecting the construction technology.
5)Land Structure and Topography.
Land structure is the nature of land on which the structure stands.
Various types of land structures include rock solid, marshy land,
etc…Topography of land is classified as plane or a site with slope.
If the site of the structure is on a hill slope, extra precautions
are taken to allow the natural flow of rainwater that the structure
might block. Depending upon the quality of land surface the construction
technology will change.
As far as interiors are concerned a well planned structure with
properly thought spaces is a must because internally the spaces
get divided into various floors.
From the above short discussion it can be said that external factors
and environment greatly affect the way structures are built and thus
directly affecting the interior qualities of the structure.
Technological advancements have allowed us to artificially control
the internal environment of a building irrespective of what’s
happening outside. But a carefully studied and well planned
architectural space can easily cut the extra cost of air conditioning
and other ventilation services.
I hope this article was informative to everyone.
Copyright Shrinivas Vaidya