Building Engineering— A Needed Discipline

Building design and building construction are in permanent evolution. Program complexity increases. Building technology does not stop changing from “an art” to an engineering and science-based field of knowledge and application. Fitness for purpose, backed by user, corporation and society demands, and translated into performance requirements more and more define and help in assuring quality. Hence, these evolutions should direct the construction sector toward an integrated approach.They, however, are counteracted by the split between design, consultancy and construction, the fragmentation of the sector, its guild's mentality, the manufacturing side denying responsibility, the low level ofR& Dinvestments and the absence of a quality tradition. The traditional education in architecture hardly considers these evolutions and does not try to impact the drawbacks. On the contrary, its focus is on producing designers who create buildings as most original pieces of art. This, of course, is not unimportant, but it demands a parallel education that may be called building engineering.