Land Form

It is very easy to bring in heavy machinery to a sloping site and level the ground to suit a building designed for a flat site. However, this changes significantly the natural land form. Our predecessors with less powerful equipment paid more respect to the natural contours of the land and adjusted the building design to take account of them.

The siting of a building may well be constrained by other factors than land form but it is as well to consider how to use the contours and folds to obtain the best positioning with the minimum disturbance to the natural landscape of the site. In this way a proper understanding of the characteristics of the site is really the first thing the developer needs to seek in the design process.