Pavement Exploration - Difference Between Soft and Hard Pavement

I know many of you quite familiar with the pavements but many of you don't know the differentiation between hard and soft pavement. There are many categories and entire subject/term considered as "Landscape Architecture".

Only architects, construction managements know these terms and general people call it just pavement.

Actually we don't have time to notice this small pavement category, we just walk on it or if that is part of a garden, we just look at it and move on.

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But as an architect, it's part of our design and we have to design and calculate every inch of it. Not only the measurement, but we also have to count tiles/blocks, patterns, design and materials as well.

^{Hard Pavement}

^{Soft Pavement}

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Generally what we basically see all are hard pavements. All the walkways, plaza, square, in front of sculpture, pedistrian are hard pavement and made of brick, rocks or different tiles material. But soft pave are those where greens are provided as well. So certain portion of green and hard materials are known as soft pave.

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Basically garden landscape, parks architects provide soft pavements to blend with nature and another reason is heat reduction. Hard pavement emits a lot of heat while soft pavements don't produce that much heat.

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This broken pedistrian naturally turned into soft pavement. If want to observe the difference, then before sunset if you go to the hard surface pavement, you will feel the heat because of the heavy sunlight during the day. But on the other hand, if you go to the soft pavement, you will see that it produces and discharge much more less heat than the hard pavement.

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Same concept goes with the streets as well that why it's mandary to provide proportional amount greens as well in the landscape.

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Many people think that soft pavements are only for beautification but architects provides soft paves to control heat. That's why mostly on rooftop gardens, garden areas, parks, it is mandatory to provide soft paves.

Now a days, rcc blocks are popular and size can be 12"X12" , 18"X18", squarish shapes but the rectangle shapes are popular as well. Depends on landscape and how much area you want to cover with soft paves.

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In this post, I have provided some basic idea of pavement characteristics which is part of Landscape architecture. Also, some soft pavement surfaces are known as seamless soft pavements which are really smooth and made of RCC.

Also there is another category of porous pavement which is mostly used in garden and parks.

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Only one disadvantage of the soft pavement is hard to maintain and needs adequate amount of water because of green. That's why porous pavements are quiet popular as soft pavements because it consumes water and keep greens alive.

But for beautification or gardening RCC blocks, tiles are popular because garden area gets water rather than other soft pavements.

This is it for today....

See you on my next post...

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Priyan...

^{I am Hive account@priyanarc.... An architect, a dreamer and a passionate writer who loves to write about life. I try to present my own perspective and experiences. Please leave your feedback and criticism because it's the only way I can know and reach your mind and thought easily...}