Architectural Design and Regulation

Rob Imrie, Emma Street

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781405179669
• eBook ISBN: 9781444393149
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture Design

From the earliest periods of architecture and building, architects' actions have been conditioned by rules, regulations, standards, and governance practices. These range from socio-cultural and religious codes seeking to influence the formal structure of settlement patterns, to prescriptive building regulations specifying detailed elements of design in relation to the safety of building structures. In Architectural Design and Regulation the authors argue that the rule and regulatory basis of architecture is part of a broader field of socio-institutional and political interventions in the design and development process that serve to delimit, and define, the scope of the activities of architects.

The book explores how the practices of architects are embedded in complex systems of rules and regulations. The authors develop the understanding that the rules and regulations of building form and performance ought not to be counterpoised as external to creative processes and practices, but as integral to the creation of well-designed places. The contribution of Architectural Design and Regulation is to show that far from the rule and regulatory basis of architecture undermining the capacities of architects to design, they are the basis for new and challenging activities that open up possibilities for reinventing the actions of architects.

Part I

The Context of Regulation

Chapter 1

Regulation, Rule, and Architecture: Introductory Comments

Every parcel is almost predetermined by what you can build upon it, in a way of planning code and building code issues. There are very strict envelopes about height, bulk, massing, separation, aspect to light that produce the form of the city. It's all been pre-sculptured.

(Testimony from an architect, 2008)

1.1 Introduction

As this testimony suggests, the practices of architecture are influenced and shaped by building regulations, codes, and rules that are devised to guide and influence all aspects of architectural production, from conceptual design to urban form. Such regulations and codes are not necessarily enshrined in law but are, as Huge (2004) has intimated, systematic sets of rules characterised and differentiated by authorship, context, and implementation.¹ In all instances, rules and regulations are constitutive of the practices of architecture, yet little is known about their impacts on, and implications for, the design and production of the built environment (although see Ben-Joseph, 2005a, 2005b Ben-Joseph and Szold, 2005, Bentley, 1999, Carmona et al., 2006, Davis, 2008, Dennis, 2008, Harris, 1991, Huge, 2004, Imrie, 2007). The book seeks to address this lacuna in knowledge by exploring the interrelationships between regulation and the design and production of urban space, with a focus on the practices of architecture.

This task is important because a feature of modern life is the increase in forms of governance and (re-)regulation, influencing everything from food production and its distribution, to the protection of personal health and safety. For some, we are living in an over-regulated world characterised by, in the urban context, a plethora of rules about conduct in public spaces, the emergence of privatised redevelopment sites that restrict, through formal regulations, rights of access, and an increase in surveillance as part of policy to regularise and normalise citizens' behaviour (see, for instance, Blumenberg and Ehrenfeucht, 2008, Miller, 2007). Such regularisation of behaviour was highlighted by the leader of the British Conservative Party, David Cameron (2009), who, in a speech about government powers in the UK, referred to ‘Control State Britain’. Here, Cameron acknowledged the well-documented trend, observed worldwide, towards an expansion of the regulatory capacities of the state, albeit often through the context of decentred fragmented forms, including hybrid cross-cutting organisations (Mackenzie and Martinez Lucio, 2005).

These wider, societal, trends are evident in relation to the design and construction of the built environment, in which state-centred legal forms of regulation have proliferated. For instance, in the UK, the government has said that planning regulation and building control will be important in delivering an urban design-led renaissance of the British cities (DETR, 2000, ODPM, 2005a). Here, the government is widening the scope and scale of building control activities, to incorporate ‘non-traditional’ spheres of regulation (Hawkesworth and Imrie, 2009). These include, on the one hand, responding to the creation of ‘resilient cities’ that incorporate building design sensitised to threats to health and safety posed by terrorism and climate change, while, on the other hand, seeking to use the building control system to respond to socio-psychological and cultural issues related to place making and sustainable urban living. This is a marked departure from the traditional, physical or design, focus of building control, and one where there is little knowledge of how the system is responding and adapting to the new challenges.

For architects, and other development professionals, such systems of state rule and regulation are, we argue, one of the critical contexts that influence the form and content of the design and construction process. There is no part of the design and development of the built environment that is untouched by the plethora of rules, regulations, standards, and governance practices, relating to building form and performance. From the earliest urban settlements, the practices of architects have been entwined with, and conditioned by, directives about street layouts, building widths, the control of pollution, and fire precautions. Kirk (1978), for instance, refers to the control of spatial development of ancient cities in India, through rulers' application of the treatise, the Arthasastra, published between the 4th and 2nd centuries BC. The Arthasastra outlined the conditions for statecraft and, according to Kirk (1978 : 74), it contained a ‘whole series of bye-laws aimed at achieving an orderly, urbane existence’. Like similar documents in ancient Greece and Rome, it was a forerunner of modern systems of discipline, propagating encoded ideals of what makes good urban form (see chapter 2).

These ideals were often overlain with architects' use of building types, or the (self-)development of principles of aesthetics that served to guide the crafting of urban form. Such crafting has, however, been influenced by increasing layers of state intervention in, and control of, urban design that, while evident in ancient city cultures, escalated throughout medieval times and became part of the rise of regulation in the late 18th and 19th centuries. This featured the well-documented intervention of governments in health and safety, including prevention of fire risk in buildings, and the development of systems of planning and building control. By the mid to end of the 20th century, the omnipresence of spatial regulation was such that some commentators were suggesting that architects no longer needed to design anything. Rather, it was felt that this was being done for them through the context of the application of the rules, regulations, and standards relating to the form and performance of buildings and the built environment (Gummer, 2007, Saint, 2001).

State-centred, regulatory, formations are only a part of the broadcloth of rules and regulations that shape urban design and the spatial development of cities. In recent times, non-state institutions or decentred organisational formations appear to be as influential as, if not more so than, their state counterparts in shaping the design and development, or the production, of urban space (Miller et al., 2008). Of significance are the actuarial activities of insurance companies that seek to identify and prevent risk in relation to human behaviour (O'Malley, 2004). The formative building codes of the late 19th century were influenced by the regulatory requirements of insurers, who set conditions relating to most aspects of building form and performance. If anything, their role has been heightened and it is indicative of what O'Malley (2004 : 191) suggests is a post-disciplinary order, whereby the coercive, even punitive, actions of the state are being supplanted, in part by the preventative and risk-spreading (i.e. insurance) activities of organisations that ‘appear to act technically rather than morally’.

What this suggests is that the actions of architects and other agents involved in the production of the built environment are entwined in complex ways with a panoply of state, non-state, and civil organisations, associations, and relations. These relations extend to the entanglement of architects' creative practices with the pragmatics of the design process, and in particular the regulation of design activity through the application of multidisciplines, and the disciplinary behaviour, of diverse project professionals (Baer, 1997, Habraken, 2005). This reflects what Sarfatti-Larson (1993 : 23), refers to as the ‘heteronomous conditions’ of the design process, in which the making of buildings is the co-production of different actors involved in a ‘creative synthesis and an eminently political activity’.² This activity draws attention to the networks that are part of the dispersal, or decentring, of the actions of architects in ways whereby architects are increasingly engaged in complex inter-disciplinary teams of professionals in the negotiation of design outcomes.

These observations provide a steer to theory building and development, and part of this is the current concern, in the social sciences, with understanding phenomena as relational and influenced by processes of co-production through the context of complex networks. Such notions are helpful for steering analysis away from a conception of architecture as an autonomous sphere, and useful in (re-)centring social scientific ideas into the study of urban design. However, we feel that there is much to be done to develop such concepts to ensure that research based upon them does not reproduce reductive frames of analysis. For instance, co-production implies, helpfully, a sense of negotiation or the search for consensus. It directs attention to the importance of networks and interactions, and implies a sharing – even an equalisation – of power between co-producers. This has analytical benefits, but dangers too, in that it may deflect analysis from power inequalities or structural differences more likely to be captured by other concepts that emphasise, much more, structural inequalities and organisational differences.

Despite the rule-based and bounded nature of architecture, there is limited knowledge or understanding of how development professionals, such as architects, interact with and understand the rules and regulations relating to the construction of the built environment, and how such interactions shape different elements of the design process. A key focus of the book is to develop particular lines of argument or ways of thinking about the relationships between rules, regulations, and the practices of architects. These include the following.

1. Regulation is core to the practices of architecture and, in turn, such practices (re)define, in part, the scope and possibilities of regulation. If one accepts this proposition, it seems incumbent on research to (re-)centre the understanding of the practices of architecture within the broadcloth of the rules and regulations that, in turn, are part of the broader contexts within which architecture unfolds.

2. Rules and regulations are part of a matrix of relations that influence the practices of architecture and they are embodied in different forms, including language, text (construction), materials, drawings, and, of course, buildings. The shape of rules and their shaping of the practices of architecture is part of a relational mixture of discursive practices and social and political processes.

3. While conceptions of design may preclude explicit incorporation of regulations and building standards, such standards do influence aesthetic and design outcomes in variable ways. Regulations ought to be conceived of as much more than technical instruments or part of a non-creative process somehow removed from architects' practices (or the practices of architecture).

4. It follows from this that rules about, and the regulation of, the form of the built environment are constitutive elements in the (re)production of urban space. This suggests that the regulation of building form and performance is part of relational socio-political formations, a conceptualisation that requires a rethinking of the alleged centrality of architects in the shaping of the built environment.

In developing these, and related, insights into the interrelationships between rules, regulations, and the practices of architects, we divide the rest of the chapter into two main parts. First, we outline the discourse about the autonomy of architects and architectural practice (Cuthbert, 2006, Knox, 1987, Sarfatti-Larson, 1993, Till, 2009). We develop the argument that the insistence on a separation between architecture as the pursuit of aesthetic endeavour from building as the crafting and construction of the built environment is related in part to the understanding of regulation, propagated by some within the architectural profession, as exterior to the legitimate concerns and practices of the architect. One implication is that regulation, whether it is through the context of planning standards, building regulations, or design codes, is often understood as part of a separate sphere of expertise and experience to the practices of architects and, as such, it is rarely conceptualised as intrinsic to, and implicated in, the creative actions and activities of the architect.

Second, in seeking to move beyond the notion of the ‘autonomy of architecture’, we briefly discuss the importance of rules and regulations in relation to the governance of urban form and process, and outline why the study of regulation ought to be (re-)centred within the broadcloth of the analysis and understanding of architecture and urban design. We relate such discussion to an overview of the book's content. In doing so, we discuss broader debates about what regulation is, and how it ought to be thought about or regarded in relation to the activities and actions of architects.

1.2 The autonomy of architecture and the design process

One of the objectives of the book is to contribute to the understanding of the social context of architecture by discussing the role of rules and regulations relating to building form and performance in influencing the content and conduct of the design process. The actions of architects are influenced by a complexity of socio-institutional and political processes and relations in which, as Frampton (1980 : 17) notes, of all the forms of cultural production ‘it may be claimed that architecture is, in fact, the least autonomous, compelling us to admit to the contingent nature of architecture as a practice’ (also, see Hill, 2003, Knesl, 1984, Knox, 1987, Sarfatti-Larson, 1993). This observation contrasts with the dominant traditions of research about design that, as Markus (1993 : 27) suggests, are bifurcated between social historians or critics who conceive of close connections between art and society but rarely mention architecture, and architectural historians who ‘treat buildings as art objects’ but do not say much about social and political context.

This orientation, in the study of architecture, tends to conceive of the architectural process as ‘autonomous’, in which the architect is what Bentley (1999 : 28) suggests – the ‘heroic form giver’ – deploying their creative talents to design and produce the built environment.³ It is assumed that architecture is a form of artistic expression and endeavour, and, in Ghirardo's (1991 : 9) terms, ‘that art has a high moral purpose in the formation and transmission of culture … of the design of aesthetically pleasing forms of poetic spaces’ (also, see Frampton, 1980, Porphyrios, 1985). However, for Bentley (1999) and Sarfatti-Larson (1993), such discourses (of architecture) are problematical because they tend to side line certain subject matter from scholarly consideration, by emphasising, first and foremost, the importance of study of artistic or creative behaviour, and/or the technical or investment attributes of buildings and the design process (also, see McGlynn and Murrain, 1994, Knox, 1987, Prak, 1984).

This is part of a perennial theme emphasising the schism between architecture and building and between the architect and builder. This schism is one whereby the work of the architect is conceived as a separate act from the actions of building or the construction of the built environment. This disjuncture, between architecture as the creation and conception of the aesthetic components of the built environment, and the realisation of building as a product or tangible, material, physical form, was brought to the fore in a range of writings, including the publications of Leon Battista Alberti in the 15th century who, for Habraken (2005 : 41) ‘introduces the persona of the architect’. For Alberti (1988), the architect operated over and beyond the rules or conventions of building and, instead, exercised autonomy of thought and action. As Alberti (1988 : 3) suggested, ‘I consider the architect, who by sure and wonderful reason and method, knows both how to devise through his own mind and energy, and to realise by construction, whatever can be most beautifully fitted out for the noble needs of man’.⁴

This viewpoint was an echo of sentiments expressed in earlier periods of history that extended the understanding of the architect as the purveyor of beauty and truth through the context of their focus on what Vitruvius (1960 : 37) coined as ‘eurythmy’, or the beautiful rhythms of a perfectly composed building. While Vitruvius (1960) had a broad conception of the architect as someone who conjoined the technical with the artistic, and whose practices could not occur in abstraction from an understanding of the substance of building and construction, later influential architects, such as Mauro Codussi (1440–1504), Sebastiano Serlio (1475–1554), and Andrea Palladio (1508–1580), emphasised much more the visual, artistic, and sty...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• List of Illustrations
• List of Tables
• The Authors
• Foreword
• Preface
• Illustration Credits
• Part I: The Context of Regulation
• Part II: The Practices of Regulation
• Part III: The Scope of Regulation
• Endnotes
• Appendix: Research Design and Methods
• References
• Index