Face-to-Face Review or Online Review? Your Choice!

Which do you prefer? Face-to-face Review or Online-Review? ATLAS-CDC offers both modes of review. You can enroll in our face-to-face review or opt for an online review for the ARCHITECTURE BOARD EXAMS. Enroll now and avail of EARLY BIRD DISCOUNTS! (Note: For social distancing measures, we will only accept up to a maximum of 45 students per class for face-to-face review) For more information and online registration, please visit: https://atlas-cdc.blogspot.com/2017/08/review-schedules.h...

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BELIEFS about STAIRS

By Arch. Ernesto R. Zárate, FPIA An eastern orientation is usually required for stairs. Ilocanos position their stairs so that they rise with the morning sun. To them, if it were the other way around, you would be turning your back on your fate. But builders in Pandi, Bulacan, just like many typical Filipinos with the spirit of controversy running strong in their veins, believe that a stairway facing east is considered bad luck because, they say, anything facing the early sun dries up ahead of all others and, in the same token, wealth that...

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Feature Project: “BALAY TAWID” (FACTORA RESIDENCE), Sarrat, Ilocos Norte

This article illustrates the detailed process of an architect’s professional service in a residential project from its conceptualization to its completion. The Factora Residence or Balay Tawid (Heritage House, Ilocano) is a 700-sqm, 2-storey, 11-bedroom house designed by Architect Raison John J. Bassig for the Factora family in 2012.  Located in a 1,100-sqm corner lot across the 16th-century Sta. Monica Church in Sarrat, Ilocos Norte, the design of the house was influenced by the architect’s desire to meet the family’s spatial requirements...

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Why should you approach an architect?

For most people a house is the single biggest and most valuable investment you will make in your lifetime. The value of that property is measured by either its resale potential or ability to generate income. The question which you have to ask yourself is what would be the best thing to do to cut on costs. So…why should you approach an architect? 1. Save money: When presented with a costing from a contractor few people know what to look for which leads to expensive realizations at a later stage. In other words; whatever you are saving on architectural...

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“Drafting is the soul of architecture”

By: Arch. Ernesto R. Zarate I wonder if this old man’s envy is common to others his age—envy for those younger architects who are experts at what is now known as “electronic drawing.” Envy for not being able to create such clean beautiful lines without the use of a drafting table, scale, T-square, triangle, pencil, eraser and other paraphernalia. It’s the fingers now that do all the work, pressing numbers and letters on the keypad of a PC or laptop. Honestly, I don’t remember being taught how to draft. What is vivid in my mind is when our instructor...

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The Tapsi Turvee World of Pinoy Signs and Names

By: Arch. Ernesto R. Zarate HOMESPUN WIT AND HUMOR are manifest in the signs the Filipino puts up and the names he coins. He is quite creative. It may even be claimed that he is either very inventively humorous or humorously inventive. In the early fifties and sixties, for example, when the basic transportation fare within Metro Manila was just ten centavos, the creative Filipino jeepney driver, instead of using a formal statement to request passengers to sit properly in public conveyances, posts the sign “Upong Diyes Po Lamang.” One...

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“Bawal ang patiwarik”

By: Arch. Ernesto R. Zarate YOU MAY BRAND ME SUPERSTITIOUS… nay, not just superstitious but overly superstitious for delving on this topic. But, as I have often said in my books, “Oro, Plata Mata, Filipino Building Beliefs” and its sequel, “More Filipino Building Beliefs,” (with tongue-in-cheek, of course) “Wala naman mawawala,e. Kaya sumunod ka na lang.” There is this Batangueño building belief that they call “Bawal ang patiwarik” or “Upside-down is forbidden.” This means that building materials shall be installed in a house with their...

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