6.1 Building Materials & Specifications

Building Materials & Specifications

Quick Answer: Beyond structural concrete and steel, the ALE tests an architect's working knowledge of finishing materials (tiles, paints, ceilings), glazing types (annealed, tempered, laminated, insulated, low-E), roofing materials common in the Philippines (corrugated GI sheets, long-span profiles, clay and concrete tiles), and how technical specifications work alongside drawings to define material standards and workmanship quality.

Finishing Materials

Finishing materials are what building occupants actually see and touch, and the exam expects an architect to match a finish to its performance requirement rather than to appearance alone.

Tiles. Ceramic tile has a porous body under a glazed surface and is suited to light-duty interior floors and walls. Porcelain tile is denser and fired at a higher temperature, giving it very low water absorption (generally below 0.5%), which makes it appropriate for exterior paving, building entrances, and wet areas such as toilets and pool decks. Natural stone finishes (marble, granite, adoquin) are more porous than porcelain and require sealing to resist staining. For any wet or sloped surface - toilets, ramps, pool decks - the architect must specify a slip-resistant (textured or matte) finish rather than a highly polished one, since polished finishes become dangerously slippery when wet.

Paints and coatings. Acrylic (water-based latex) emulsion paint is the standard for exterior masonry and most interior walls because it is breathable and lets trapped moisture in concrete hollow block (CHB) walls escape. Oil-based enamel gives a hard, glossy, more abrasion-resistant film and is typically reserved for metal railings, steel doors, and wood trim. Epoxy coatings are chemical- and abrasion-resistant and are the standard choice for parking floors, industrial floors, and water tank interiors. Elastomeric paint is a thick, rubber-like coating that bridges hairline cracks and is applied to exterior CHB walls directly exposed to wind-driven rain - it functions as much as a secondary waterproofing layer as a color coat.

Ceilings. Suspended gypsum board on a metal furring/carrying-channel system is the most common interior ceiling because it conceals mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) runs above; a moisture-resistant gypsum board type is specified in toilets and kitchens. Tongue-and-groove (T&G) wood plank ceilings remain popular for a traditional Filipino aesthetic, often paired with exposed rafters. Fiber cement board is used where both moisture and fire resistance are required. Acoustic ceiling tile or panel systems (mineral fiber or fabric-wrapped) are specified in classrooms, offices, and auditoriums to control reverberation and speech intelligibility.

Glazing and Glass Types

Ordinary annealed (float) glass is the baseline product from which every other glass type is made; it breaks into long, sharp shards and is unsafe in locations subject to human impact. Tempered (toughened) glass is reheated and rapidly cooled so that it is several times stronger than annealed glass of the same thickness, and - critically for safety - it fractures into small, relatively blunt granular pieces rather than dagger-like shards. This is why tempered glass is the default safety glazing for doors, sidelights, and low windows near walking surfaces. Laminated glass bonds two or more glass plies to a plastic (PVB, polyvinyl butyral) interlayer; if it breaks, the fragments stay adhered to the interlayer instead of falling, which is why it is specified for skylights, overhead glazing, and increasingly for typhoon-exposed facades where wind-borne debris resistance matters. Insulated glass units (IGUs) trap a sealed air or gas cavity between two panes to reduce heat transfer; they appear far more often in high-rise curtain walls than in low-rise Philippine residential work. A low-emissivity (low-E) coating is a microscopically thin metallic layer that reduces the solar heat gain coefficient (SHGC) - lowering the cooling load in the tropical climate - without materially darkening the glass, distinguishing it from simple tinted or reflective glass, which cuts heat gain mainly by reducing visible light transmittance.

Roofing Materials Common in the Philippines

Corrugated galvanized iron (GI) sheets remain the most widely used roofing material in Philippine residential and mid-rise construction, commonly stocked in gauge 24 to gauge 26 thickness (the lower the gauge number, the thicker and more durable the sheet). Long-span rib-type roofing - trapezoidal or ribbed profiles roll-formed from coil, usually finished in a Galvalume (aluminum-zinc alloy) coating for superior corrosion resistance - is fabricated in continuous lengths that can run from ridge to eave without a horizontal end-lap, giving it fewer joints and therefore fewer potential leak points than corrugated sheeting, which is why it is preferred for warehouses, gymnasiums, and airport-terminal-scale spans. Clay roof tiles ("teja") are associated with heritage Spanish-colonial construction such as the bahay na bato and are significantly heavier than metal roofing, requiring a stronger roof frame; they appear mainly in restoration or heritage-themed work today. Concrete roof tiles serve as a heavier, more economical substitute for clay. Pre-painted or color-coated roofing sheets add a baked-on polyester or PVDF finish over the metal substrate for additional UV and corrosion resistance and color choice beyond mill-finish galvanized.

Technical Specifications

Specifications and drawings are complementary contract documents, not duplicates of each other: drawings communicate quantitative and graphic information - location, dimension, quantity, configuration - while specifications communicate qualitative information - material standards, acceptable products, workmanship quality, and testing/submittal requirements. Under the UAP (United Architects of the Philippines) Standards of Professional Practice, preparing specifications is part of the architect's construction documents phase, alongside the working drawings.

Most Philippine specifications follow, or are strongly influenced by, the three-part SectionFormat popularized internationally by the Construction Specifications Institute (CSI):

• Part 1 - General: administrative and procedural requirements, references to material standards (Philippine National Standards, ASTM), submittal requirements (shop drawings, samples, mock-ups), and quality assurance/quality control provisions.
• Part 2 - Products: the material or product itself - composition, acceptable manufacturers or "or equal" substitutions, and the standard it must meet.
• Part 3 - Execution: installation requirements - surface preparation, method, tolerances, field quality control, cleaning, and protection of finished work.

Government-funded infrastructure projects commonly build their specifications around the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) Standard Specifications, popularly called the "Blue Book," supplemented by project-specific Special Provisions; private building projects more often use CSI MasterFormat-style trade divisions. In either case, the specification governs quality and the drawing governs quantity and location, and the contract's stated order of precedence - not the site foreman's judgment - resolves any conflict between the two.