The Architect's Portal

CPD's

The RIBA offer several CPD's & semindars throughout the year. The RIBA 'what's on' calendar offers up to date events.

Keep an eye out as new events are added all the time.

There are several books and online methods of calculating building costs.

ABI House Rebuilding Calculator provided by the Association of British Insurers offers a chance to calculate the re-build cost using a variety of costing factors.

BCIS Calculator uses the same system as ABI although they often given slightly different end figures. Both ABI & BCIS calculators are provided by the RICS.

SAC Building Design Unit offer an accurate & up to date farm building cost guide.

Kingspan Access Floors offer a cost calculator for large industrial & office buildings. We use this quite regularly at the Architect's Portal and find this a pretty good guide to follow.

The Griffiths Price Book & Wessex Price Book offer a complete guide to building costs for those who prefer a hard copy of the information. They are both available through Amazon & do come in for a lot of use at the Architect's Portal.

Computer Hardware

Links to computer retailers for business and personal use

Apple Computers are the Architect's Portal top choice.

Computer Warehouse offer all things Apple Mac with fantastic delivery times & customer service.

Dell Computers are our top choices for PC's. They offer a wide range of performance systems for home & business at good prices.

PC World often offer good value for money & some good deals.

Sony Vaio offer a range of high end, high spec PC's

Computer Software

Details, tips and tricks, purchasing and help with all the main Architect related computer software.

Adobe offer a popular series of software from Photoshop, Indesign and their PDF tools. All these can be found on the latest version of their software Creative Suite 3

Autodesk are the creators of the evergreen & industry standard AutoCAD as well as 3D StudioMax and Revit software.

Microstation is Bentley Systems flagship product. Another industry standard CAD system. This is often the preffered system for engineers.

SketchUp by Google is a revolutionary way to design in 3D & is a particular favourite at the Architect's Portal

Not as heavily used & without the financial backing of the other big companies are other useful computer software. Solidworks, TurboCAD & ArchiCAD

Books

Perform Architecture related book search using popular book retailers.

Amazon BookStore is the site we tend to use for the majority of our searches. The choice on offer is very varied & you often end up finding books here you may not anywhere else.

Blackwell Publishing offer an Architecture specific genre of books. They also offer E-mail alerts & an A-Z list of Architecture Journals.

Pickabook features over 5 million books and audiobooks with a competent search tool. They often offer great deals on most books & free delivery on orders over £15.

RIBA BookShop offers pretty much every Architecture book ever written. They feature a Top 20 Books of the month. Recommended books for every Architectural Practice & Recommended Reading for Students. We also find the weekly email updates very useful for keeping track of new releases & special offers.

The three books we recommend are the Metric Handbook, New Metric Handbook & The Architect's Pocket Book. All are essential & used on a daily basis here at The Architect's Portal

Building Regulations

In the UK it is essential the building regulations are followed when designing a building. No matter how well you know them, there is always a time you need to refer back to them.

Approved Documents A-P are here for your reference. These are the online versions. For hard copies the best place to buy them from is at the TSO online bookshop.

BREEAM: BRE Environmental Assesment Method is a relatively new method which has been implemented to provide an environmental assesment of buildings.

NBS National Building Specification offers distinct methods to apply to building design.

NHBC National House Building Council is the national standard for house building & is important to obtain if residential Architecture is your business.