The importance of the North point

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All architects plans must have a north point. 

It provides your orientation. You need to be able to imagine the building relative to the movement of the sun.

It's fundamental. It's Architecture 101.

It's one of the first things that an architect does when looking at a new drawing or a new building or a new site.

Students of architecture often forget to add the north point to drawings.

This is because they are still seeing the drawing as if it were merely lines on paper. They haven't fully learnt to see it as a representation of something that is going to exist in three dimensions. And that will be lit by the sun. And that will cast shadows across the landscape.

In our office, no-one forgets the north point. 

(There's a night out riding on it).