Making Use of Deleuze in Planning

Proposals for a speculative and immanent assessment method

Gareth Abrahams

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781472477576
• eBook ISBN: 9781317102151
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

Making Use of Deleuze in Planning translates and re-creates some of Gilles Deleuze's most abstract philosophical concepts to form a new, practicable planning assessment tool. It shows what his philosophy can do for planning theory as well as planning assessment practice and, in doing so, sets out a pragmatic approach to Deleuzian studies: one that helps form bridges between ontological problems and the problems found in professional practice. It also breaks new ground in assessment methodology by challenging the essentialist ideas underpinning assessment methods like BREEAM and setting out and testing a new form of non-essentialist assessment named SIAM. The book argues that Deleuze's philosophy can be made useful to planning as long as one is prepared to adapt and re-create his key ontological concepts to respond to the specific demands of the field.

Part 1
Assessments, essentialism and Deleuze

Deleuze argued that one should start a study by placing oneself within a specific milieu. This argument is particularly poignant for this study as the problem that first drew me to Deleuze’s philosophy is one that I identified during my professional experiences as a practicing architect. In the first chapter of Part 1, I will delve into one experience from my professional career to reveal a discrepancy between two ways of making assessments in design and regulatory practice: an assessment undertaken during and within the design and development process, and an assessment undertaken outside of the design and development process. As I will show later in Part 1, these two ways of thinking about assessments can be distinguished in several different ways, but the one that I find most compelling looks at the philosophical ideas used to create the two respective methods – namely, an essentialist approach and a non-essentialist approach. As Part 1 develops, I will show how and why I believe Deleuze’s philosophical concepts can contribute to a formal assessment method constructed around the latter, and, thus, meet some of the aspirations of pragmatic planning theorists such as Stein and Harper (Stein and Harper, 2012), whilst capturing the concerns of discourse analysts like Fainstein (Fainstein, 2000) and the broader ontological arguments put forward by realists such as Van Wezemael (Van Wezemael, 2012). In doing so, this first part of the book sets the scene for an exploratory study into Deleuzian philosophy and how it might contribute to the tools used in planning.

1
A problem with assessments

Lodge yourself on a stratum, experiment with the opportunities it offers, find an advantageous place on it, find potential movements of deterritorialization, possible lines of flight, experience them, produce flow conjunctions here and there, try out continuums of intensities segment by segment, have a small plot of new land at all times.

(Deleuze and Guattari, 2004b: 178)

Identifying a problem ‘… par le milieu’¹

In 2007/8 I acted as Project Architect for a proposed apartment block situated on the English Channel. This was one of many schemes in which I noted a clear discrepancy between the way members of the design and development team formed assessments and decisions as part of the design process, and the way an appointed sustainability assessor judged those decisions. The following overview of the scheme illustrates this discrepancy and why I believe it to be problematic and worth pursuing as a line of enquiry.

The apartment block was to be designed for wealthy downsizers from London and was supported, in principle, by the Local Planning Authority, who saw the scheme as a valuable contribution to a broader regeneration strategy for the area. The apartments were designed as a contemporary and luxury development using a steel frame structure, with concrete beam and block floors, and a flat roof concealed at ground level by a parapet. The external façade was formed from rendered panels, and slit glazing afforded views to the sea. Given the contemporary style of the development, the design team undertook an extensive process of public consultation, which resulted in a range of design changes. One year after commencing the initial sketch proposal, the scheme was awarded planning approval under delegated powers. As with most schemes of this size and type, planning approval was subject to a list of conditions. One of these conditions noted that the scheme would need to meet Code for Sustainable Homes level 4 (see sub-section ‘The Code for Sustainable Homes’ below).

The following text details the design decisions made in two particular areas of the scheme: the foundation and the structural frame.

Designing the foundation

After achieving planning approval, the project team began the detailed design stages (Royal Institute of British Architects work stage 4). ² I started this process by commissioning a survey to identify the structural stability of the site. The survey revealed deep layers of sandy ground below the proposed building footprint. This sandy ground was the result of several key factors: the relief of the land, the kind of stone that formed the land and the corrosive tendencies of waves from the English Channel. In terms of the design, sand offers poor structural stability for a building proposal designed to be over five storeys above ground level and one storey below ground level. This discovery ‘lodge[d] [the design team] on a stratum’ and set in motion a series of ‘experiments’ ³ intended to resolve the ‘design problem’.

The structural engineer suggested that designing the building around a deep piled foundation best accommodated this constraint. This provided us with ‘an advantageous position’ from which to explore three design options: steel driven piles, pre-cast concrete driven piles and contiguous piling. Each option was explored as a design sequence by experimenting with different materials, methods of construction and the entities that formed them.

The first option, steel driven piles, was deemed unsuitable due to the risks of corrosion from a high water table and the building’s proximity to the sea front. A second option was to use pre-cast concrete driven piles. Whilst concrete piles would not corrode, they introduced other design and construction issues. This option would demand that the contractor excavate a large area of land, drive the piles at regular intervals, build a concrete block wall between the piles and treat the wall with a water-resistant membrane before back filling around the perimeter. This sequence of work would have had an impact on the estimated construction programme, the number of specialist trades needed, the amount of working space needed around the foundations and so forth.

A third option was to use contiguous, in-situ poured concrete piling. In this option, piles would be driven around the perimeter of the building and then filled with in-situ concrete and mixed with a water-resistant admixture to avoid subsequent water proofing. Once the concrete was set, the ground within this perimeter could be safely removed to form the basement level. This third option would have less impact on the programme, introduced fewer specialist trades, avoided risks associated with corrosion and could be adapted to suit the building footprint and the ground conditions below. Taking these points into consideration, the design team agreed that this third option was the most efficient and effective design solution.

Designing the structural frame

This decision led us to consider the design of the structural frame: a second ‘stratum’ in which to ‘lodge’ ourselves. The sketch scheme had been conceived using a steel frame. However, as with the steel driven piles, this steel frame would be at risk of corrosion from airborne salt from the sea.

We agreed, therefore, that the most effective method for reducing the risks of corrosion was to treat the steel frame with a protective paint. From this ‘advantageous position’, we were able to experiment with a range of different design and construction management opportunities and restraints. After further consideration, it was noted that, if this treatment was undertaken on an erected frame, there was a significant potential that connections, both to the concrete foundation and between steel sections, would be only partly covered. Discussion with steel fabricators provided us with a number of other opportunities. Anti-corrosion treatment could be applied off site, and special measures undertaken to avoid chipping the paint during transit.

Erecting the frame and subsequent phases of construction were less easy to resolve. To avoid chipping the paint during construction, the design team worked with the principle contractor, the curtain wall specialists, the cold steel partition specialists, and the cladding panel and insulated render specialists to consider a number of changes to aspects of the frame and methods of erection. These included the use of pre-cast fixing angles, protective covers, heightened site supervision and so forth. Such measures only partly resolved the corrosive tendencies of airborne salt and affected other parts of the design, adding further complexity to the design and construction process.

The risk of damaging the protective paint was all the more pronounced when we considered the subsequent maintenance of the building. The design team explored different options for replacing cladding and windows panels. These revisions to the detailed design demanded a number of bespoke materials installed by a range of specialist trades over a much longer construction programme.

With this in mind, the design team agreed to explore more fundamental design changes – namely, the use of a concrete rather than a steel structural frame. Unlike steel, concrete has a high resistance to the corrosive tendencies of airborne salt, thus avoiding the problems associated with specialist paints. Members of the design team noted other advantages and limitations resulting from this design change.

If the concrete frame was cast in-situ, it could be designed as an extension of the concrete foundation, thus avoiding vulnerable connections. This solution also reduced the number of trades working on site at any given time and reduced the amount of the transport associated with its construction. A concrete frame has better thermal and acoustic properties than a steel frame, thus reducing the demand for thermal and acoustic insulation. However, concrete columns take up more space than an equivalent steel column. Thus, to maintain the position and overall design of the windows, the columns would need to be positioned further into the building. This had implications on the proposed furniture layouts. It also increased the cantilever needed for the external balconies, and, thus, the thickness of the concrete floor needed to achieve this cantilever. This thicker floor would result in a deeper floor zone and a lower floor-to-ceiling height. Whilst this was not problematic in terms of intended use, it increased the space between floors, which impacted on the stair design. Our design ‘experiment’ with a concrete frame instead of a steel frame led us to re-design the stair by introducing more steps, which demanded more space. This had a knock-on effect on the space planning of the apartment corridors, the position of the lift and the layout of post boxes at ground level.

These two connected extracts from the design process highlight an on-going sequence of assessment and experimentation, not dissimilar to the creative process described by Deleuze and Guattari in the quotation introducing this chapter. It shows how designers ‘lodge themselves on a strata’ by identifying a key area of the design (such as the foundations and the structural frame) and identifying factors that influenced this design (such as sandy ground conditions and airborne salt). It shows how they ‘find an advantageous position on it’ by setting out a design proposal (such as the intention to introduce deep pile foundations formed in steel or concrete) and use this to ‘experiment with the opportunities it offers’ by assessing how sandy ground and airborne salt affect these design options before exploring a sequence of design changes that responded to these factors (changing the material or position of the structure or introducing protective paint, welded angles, protective sheeting, additional stairs and so forth).

However, this was not the only form of assessment applicable to this scheme. At pre-conceived stages in this process, the design was also assessed according to formal criteria, including those set out in the Code for Sustainable Homes.

The Code for Sustainable Homes

In the UK, the Building Research Establishment (BRE) developed the Code for Sustainable Homes as a building-industry-approved measuring tool for the concept of a ‘sustainable home’ alongside other BRE methods known collectively as BREEAM. In 2007 it became a supplement to Planning Policy Statement 1, ‘Delivering sustainable development’ (DCLG, 2005), published by UK central government, and it was applied to most housing developments until it was ‘wound down’ in 2015. This assessment, known colloquially as ‘the Code’, identifies nine categories of sustainable design. Each of these categories is broken down into contributing design issues (Table 1.1).

These categories and issues are weighted to reflect their respective contribution to the concept of the ‘sustainable home’. By comparing these factors against the properties of a design, an appointed Code for Sustainable Homes assessor is able to assign points and, thus, classify the scheme as more or less ‘sustainable’.

In the project outlined above, the assessor’s report discussed the decision to change from steel piling to contiguous concrete piling and the decision to change from a steel frame to a concrete frame. Because concrete produces higher CO₂ emissions than a comparable unit of steel, the assessor suggested that these changes to the design reduced the building’s fabric energy efficiency. As the category, CO₂ emissions, is weighted to account for 34.6% of the total sustainability assessment, this decision was deemed highly ‘unsustainable’. The report suggested re-considering this design decision, or to re-design other areas of the scheme to better reflect the criteria.

These conclusions and recommendations in the assessor’s report highlight an interesting difference between the formal method of assessment developed by the BRE and the assessments made as part of the design and development process. By drawing on a universal set of criteria for a ‘sustainable home’, the assessor was unable to appreciate why steel was rejected in favour of concrete. In other words, this formal assessment method did not take full account of the integral and on-going approach to assessment used within the design process as noted above.

Table 1.1 The Code for Sustainable Homes categones and issues

Category	Issue
Energy and CO2 emissions	• Dwelling emission rate (M)
	• Fabric energy efficiency (M)
	• Energy display devices...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Notes on author
• Preface and acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART 1 Assessments, essentialism and Deleuze
• PART 2 How to make Deleuze useful
• PART 3 A case study of BRE assessments
• PART 4 Synthesis, discussion and conclusions
• Bibliography
• Index