Architectural Design and Regulation E-Book

Rob Imrie

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 650

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

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.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

List of Illustrations

List of Tables

The Authors

Foreword

Preface

Illustration Credits

Part I: The Context of Regulation

Chapter 1: Regulation, Rule, and Architecture: Introductory Comments

1.1 Introduction

1.2 The autonomy of architecture and the design process

1.3 The study of regulation and the practices of architects

1.4 Conclusions

Chapter 2: The Rule and Regulation of Building Form and Performance

2.1 Introduction

2.2 Early settlement and the codification of design practice

2.3 Spatial codes and the regularisation of design and development

2.4 Hygienic spaces and the efficiency of design

2.5 From the regulatory society to the regulatory state

2.6 Conclusions

Chapter 3: Urban Design and the Rise of the (De)Regulatory Society

3.1 Introduction

3.2 Self-activation and the (re-)regulation of design activities

3.3 Regulating design: an evaluation of leading assumptions

3.4 Conclusions

Part II: The Practices of Regulation

Chapter 4: Learning about Regulation

4.1 Introduction

4.2 Discipline, education, and the creation of the architect-subject

4.3 Pedagogy and the acculturation of architects: evidence from the field

4.4 Conclusions: towards relational pedagogies

Chapter 5: Working with Regulation

5.1 Introduction

5.2 Systems of Control and the Management of the Design Process

5.3 The Interrelationships between Regulations and the Practices of Architects

5.4 Conclusions

Chapter 6: Risk and the Regulation of the Design Process

6.1 Introduction

6.2 Building form, performance and the regulation of risk

6.3 Risk, regulation, and architecture: some evidence from the UK

6.4 Conclusions

Part III: The Scope of Regulation

Chapter 7: The Role of Project Actors in Influencing Design

7.1 Introduction

7.2 Redefining Roles in the UK Design and Construction Industry

7.3 Contemporary Project Teams and the Rise of the New Professional

7.4 Responding to Change: Architects' Experiences of A Changing Profession

7.5 Conclusions

Chapter 8: The Coding of Design and Architecture

8.1 Introduction

8.2 Modernity, Urbanism and the Revival of Urban Character

8.3 The Influence of Design Coding on the Practices of Architects

8.4 Conclusions

Chapter 9: Regulation and the Practices of Architects: Concluding Thoughts

Endnotes

Appendix: Research Design and Methods

References

Index

This edition first published 2011

© 2011 Rob Imrie and Emma Street

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Imrie, Robert, 1958- author.

Architectural Design and Regulation / Rob Imrie, Emma Street.

p. cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4051-7966-9 (hardback)

1. Building laws. 2. Architects–Legal status, laws, etc. I. Street, Emma, author. II. Title.

K3538.I575 2011

343'.07869–dc22

2010049559

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This book is published in the following electronic formats: ePDF [9781444393132];

Wiley Online Library [9781444393156]; ePub [9781444393149]

List of Illustrations

1.1The Palladian representation – Villa Pisani91.2Villa Rotonda101.3The architect's representation111.4Piazza de’ Rucellai132.1The Tower of the Winds292.2Prehistoric building regulations?302.3The settlement of Copan312.4Bam, Iran322.5The Wang Cheng, Imperial City332.6Creek Square Ground or ‘Big House’342.7Ta Prohm, Angkor352.8The prologue of the Code of Hammurabi on a clay tablet in the Louvre362.9William Blake's depiction of Isaac Newton392.10Sapporo, Japan: the modern rationalised urban form402.11Park Crescent, London – a Georgian Terrace422.12Drawing of Almshouses in Rochford, 1787432.13New Lanark442.14Plan of Santiago de Chile by Emmanuel Bowen, 1747452.15The Great Chicago Fire, 1871482.16The Silent Highwayman492.17Mulberry Street, 1900502.18‘Set back’ architecture in New York City522.19Chicago tall buildings532.20Casa – The Double House582.21The Ernst May House592.22Reconstruction of a Frankfurt kitchen, Vienna592.23An apartment block: Plan for Greater Moscow, 1932602.24The Narkomfin building622.25Alvar Aalto private home and studio in Helsinki632.26The modernist city653.1Reconciling housing standards and affordability793.2American Youth Works, Austin803.3Regulated public spaces: Valencia Gardens, San Francisco853.4Facilitating the use of new techniques and materials903.5Perspectives on the code formation process in the USA953.6Influencing the code formation process973.7Constraining the location of investment by regulation1005.1The realisation of creativity by breaking the rules1445.2Regulatory complexity1475.3A design with combined ramp access and stepped entrance1495.4The impact of Part L on building form1515.5A building surveyor's view of architects1545.6Seeking to influence the regulations156B1A typical straw-bale building with stucco exterior163B2A non-load-bearing straw-bale building164B3Mom's House1686.1A ‘risk register’187C1Embassy of the United States in London, Grosvenor Square194C2Security measures and the diminution of aesthetic quality?1957.1‘Letability’ and design: the case of 10 Fenchurch Street217D1Computer generated image of the School of Sport, Loughborough University231D2The previous building and SB site, Loughborough University233D3Lecture theatre, School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences2348.1Builders’ attitudes to design codes2498.2A rationale for design codes – a view from California2508.3The iterative process of design coding2578.4A builder's observations about house-builders258E1Character of an Upton mews street, Upton Design Code265E2The developer selection process at Upton266E3Housing at Upton, first land parcel267E4Housing at Upton, later land parcel268E5Newhall regulating plan269E6Cala Domus, Newhall270E7Housing at Newhall by PCKO Architects271

List of Tables

4.1‘An architect needs to receive training in budget management’1174.2‘I received adequate training in budget management’1184.3‘An architect needs to receive training in marketing’1184.4‘I received adequate training in marketing’1184.5‘How well did your education prepare you for architectural practice?’1194.6‘An architect needs to receive training in building regulations’1244.7‘I received adequate training in building regulations’1245.1‘Architecture is subject to too much regulation’1455.2‘Architecture is too bound up in red tape and prescriptive standards’1465.3‘Regulation is becoming more complex’1465.4‘Regulation is becoming more difficult to deal with’1475.5‘I am rarely consulted by government about planning control and building regulations’1596.1‘The design process is highly influenced by considerations of risk’1806.2‘There is more risk of litigation against architects than five years ago’1827.1‘Project managers disproportionately influence the design of buildings’2247.2‘Quantity surveyors disproportionately influence the design of buildings’2247.3‘Consultants disproportionately influence the design of buildings’2258.1‘The introduction and use of design codes is a good thing’2528.2‘The use of design codes is likely to raise the quality of urban design’253

The Authors

Rob Imrie is Professor of Geography in the Department of Geography at King's College London. His research interests include disability and design, the regulation of the built environment, urban regeneration, and urban policy and politics. He is co-author of Buyer-Supplier Relations (1992, MacMillan, Basingstoke) and Inclusive Design (2001, Spon Press, London), and author of Disability and the City (1996, Sage Publications, London), and Accessible Housing (2006, Routledge, London). He is co-editor of British Urban Policy (1999, Sage Publications, London), Urban Renaissance? (2003, Policy Press, Bristol), Regenerating London, (2009, Routledge, London), and The Knowledge Business (2010, Ashgate, Farnham).

Emma Street recently completed her PhD in the Department of Geography at King's College London. Her research interests include architecture and the built environment, urban regeneration, and urban governance and policy processes. She has written various papers published in outlets such as Urban Studies, and Town and Country Planning.

Foreword

Rob Imrie and Emma Street's book brought to mind a suppressed (and now embarrassing) memory. As the design principal of a young and growing firm I reacted instantly, if thoughtlessly, when the principal of a rival firm down the street penned a letter to the editor of the local newspaper wherein he argued that the sole reason for our profession to exist was to serve the ‘health, safety and welfare’ of fellow citizens. In the name of Art I was outraged! In response to this philistine grovelling I beat my fists on the table loud enough to disturb the work of my colleagues across the old mill space in which we worked. If such utilitarian interests were to limit the spiritual aspirations of society so fundamentally, I raged, we had descended to a sorry state indeed. Twenty-five years later I now understand that it took me much longer than it might have done to bring to consciousness, and thus to purge, the tacit values of my education.

Fortunately for today's young architects, engineers, public policy-makers and others, Imrie and Street provide, in this significant text, not only a useful critique of what they refer to as the ‘Palladian model’ of architectural production, but also the exhaustive empirical evidence to get beyond it. That evidence comes in the form of interviews with practitioners from many disciplines related to the construction industry, from focus groups, surveys and a remarkably thorough review of the literatures. I use the plural form of ‘literature’ here because Architectural Design and Regulation is a thoroughly interdisciplinary book. First, the authors are geographers writing about architecture and urban design. Second, their bibliography derives as much from the social sciences, philosophy and engineering as from architecture or geography. And third, they challenge, from the outside, the deeply held assumptions of a discipline not their own – thus the need for empirical rigour.

In the 1970s, Canadian sociologist Erving Goffman developed what we now refer to as ‘frame analysis’. In coining this term Goffman held that various social groups understand what goes on in the world from inside distinct frames of interpretation. Insurance brokers, for example, interpret the concept of risk very differently from high-wire acrobats or equestrians. The same observation can be made about the manner in which architects and carpenters interpret the act of building. An important, if ironic, dimension of this interpretive dynamic is that it is only those who exist entirely within a single frame – as do most famous architects – who are perceived to have the necessary authority amongst their peers to alter it. These same famous architects, however, lack the capacity to imagine change in the system of which they are an essential part because the achievement of high status within the group depends on perpetuating the tacit values and hierarchies of the group. Conversely, code-switchers – or those who have the intellectual capacity to inhabit several frames of interpretation simultaneously – generally have little authority in the eyes of professional elites. After all, elites reason, they are neither qualified nor ‘one of us’, so how can they see the world correctly (as we do)?

This is precisely the problem now faced by Imrie and Street. To successfully challenge the ‘Palladian’ frame of architectural production they ask architects to step outside a frame of interpretation that has held itself to be autonomous from, and superior to, the concerns of everyday life – from the common act of building. For many architects this will be very difficult indeed. The good news is, however, that it is architects themselves who have the most to gain in accepting Imrie and Street's invitation.

To characterise this book as only a ‘critique’ of architecture-as-art is, however, overly limiting. In my own view this critique is much needed, but far more important is that the authors redirect our attention away from the dysfunction of contemporary architectural practice, to under-appreciated intellectual territory that is of value not only to scholars, but to designers too. This is no small achievement. Their investigation, then, is not one that is predetermined to delegitimise art as a cultural practice, but one that reconstructs what I will call the co-evolution of three related phenomena: the profession, technology and the ‘organisational governance’ of both.

Imrie and Street provide compelling evidence that, from the perspective of architects themselves, the nature of practice is changing. Some refer to the change as the ‘crisis of regulation’, others as the problem of ‘calculative thinking’, and still others as ‘the burden of management’. What all these characterisations have in common is that they describe new and paradoxical conditions. Some architects welcome the new technologies of computer aided design (CAD), and more recently building information systems (BIM), because they seem to empower the discipline. Increased productivity will allow, we imagine, more creative time to fashion beautiful objects. But other architects hold that these technologies shift the responsibilities and time commitments of architects away from aesthetic considerations toward managerial ones. It is, of course, no accident that such technologies have emerged at the same time that the nature of regulation itself is ‘fragmenting’. Increasingly it is not the state that regulates how we build, but insurance companies, building managers, corporate utilities and banks. It is the ‘decentring’ of regulating authority, as the authors describe it, that has transformed the ‘organisational governance’ of the building industry as a whole. This is to say that building regulations do not emerge in isolation, or at the hands of distant bureaucrats. Rather, the profession, our technologies, the environment, new contractual formats and modes of governance all co-evolve as a large complex system. The only thing truly surprising about all of this is that we architects are oddly isolated from it by our own romantic traditions of artistic autonomy.

Some of the authors' respondents quoted in the text have radicalised this observation by dramatically announcing ‘the end of the architect’. Fortunately, Imrie and Street take a more nuanced, hopeful and supportive view of our discipline's promise. Rather than gloat over the fate of increasingly irrelevant, romantic aesthetes clinging to the sinking ship of tasteful power, the authors recognise not disciplinary collapse, but an opportunity. In their view, architects have always participated, even if unconsciously, in the regulation and coding of the life-world. The question this book asks is whether we will choose to participate mindfully, and in the process find new opportunities for creative problem-solving in addition to those that are visual.

In this book, our discipline has received a gift from outside the tacit values embodied in what we architects refer to as ‘studio culture’. We can, of course, dismiss the critique and ignore the opportunity presented by the authors if we so choose. But if the entrenched architects of my generation do, I am confident that the next generation of city-makers will not – because, like Imrie and Street, they already glimpse the creative potential of interdisciplinary invention.

Steven A. MooreBartlett Cocke Regents Professor of Architecture and PlanningSchool of ArchitectureThe University of Texas at Austin

Preface

The design and development of the built environment is influenced by a complexity of socio-political and institutional processes, including the application of rules and regulations relating to the form and performance of buildings. From the earliest periods of architecture and building, architects' actions have been conditioned by a plethora of rules, regulations, standards, and governance practices, ranging 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 the book, we develop the argument 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 and actions of architects. In so doing, we suggest that the rules and regulations relating to building form and performance ought to be understood not as external to creative processes and practices, but as integral to them.

This understanding of the interrelationships between architecture and its regulation is part of a contribution to an emergent field of scholarly work that seeks to challenge the powerful discourse of the autonomy of architecture. This discourse asserts that architecture is the creation of beautiful buildings that reflect the artistic talents of architects. The aesthetic activities of the architect are distinctive to the prosaic matters of building carried out by others, such as builders, who remain distinctive to, and outside the purview of, the specialist field of architecture. This distinction, between architecture and building, and creativity and craft, is one whereby whole domains of practice, such as the legal regulation of design, are conceived as external to the actions of architects, and therefore unimportant to the task of artful and artistic creation. At best, the intersection of regulations with creative practice is a guarantor of the safety of buildings, and provides legal protection for architects. At worst, it is a restraint on creative freedom with the potential to diminish the aesthetic qualities of the built environment.

Drawing on surveys of, and interviews with, architects, and other development professionals, the book highlights the contradictions and tensions contained in such understandings of the interrelationships between regulation and the actions of architects. In particular, we explore how the activities of architects, whatever the discourse of autonomy may claim, are deeply embedded in complex systems of rules and regulations, covering everything from the legal requirement to provide safe exit routes from buildings, to the clients' wishes, contractually specified, to ensure a risk free procurement process. The data show that creative actions are not independent of the socio-regulatory parameters of the design and development process, but are constituted by, and constitutive of, them. We illustrate this point by referring, first and foremost, to the building regulations, but also to the emergence of design codes, and the proliferation of rules relating to risk management in projects, including the co-ordination and organisation of work across fragmented design and development teams.

In bringing the book to publication we are indebted to a number of people and organisations. We would like to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for funding the research that much of this book is based upon. We are grateful to the participants in the research for giving up their valuable time to share their experiences with us. These include Robert Adam, David Eisenberg, Roger Evans, George Ferguson, Anthony Floyd, Stuart Hersh, Derek Horn, Judy Knox, Rosanna Law, John Moen, Michael Montgomery, Andy Mytom, Mriganka Saxena, Charles Thompson, numerous architects, and participants in a focus group in December 2009. We would particularly like to thank David Morley of David Morley Architects (DMA) and John Robertson of John Robertson Architects (JRA) for providing us with access to their organisations, and permitting us to spend time talking to, and interacting with, various staff members, and attending meetings and visiting project sites. An important source of support was Chris Roberts of DMA who, at various times over the last few years, has commented on the changing nature of architectural practice, and provided challenging feedback to us about what we were doing.

We are grateful to a number of individuals who supported our work by commenting on various versions of questionnaires, advising on different stages of the research process, and reading some of the draft chapters of the book. These people include Steven Moore from the University of Texas, Paul Jones based at the University of Liverpool, Paul Finch, Chair of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, and anonymous readers of chapters 4 and 8. Our research design was also improved, significantly, by the comments of anonymous referees of the AHRC application, and their suggestions were subsequently incorporated into a readjustment of the methodological basis of the project. The editorial team at Wiley-Blackwell were an excellent source of support, and we would like to thank the senior editor, Madeleine Metcalfe, and the assistance provided by Cat Oakley, Teresa Netzler, Paul Beverley, and Arindam Bose. We are particularly grateful to Sarah Fielder for reading much of the manuscript and using her copy-editing and grammatical skills to provide pointed observations that have helped us to improve the text. Marian Hawkesworth and Oliver Moore also read various parts of the manuscript, and they made some telling comments that made us re-think some of the arguments.

Illustration Credits

Except where acknowledged in the text, all illustrations in this book are the property of Rob Imrie and Emma Street. The authors and publisher are grateful to all who gave their permission for the use of copyright material. They apologise if they have inadvertently failed to acknowledge any copyright holder and will be glad to correct any omissions that are drawn to their attention in future reprints or editions.

We acknowledge the editors and publishers of Urban Studies for permission to reproduce the paper, Imrie, R. and Street, E., (2009), Risk, regulation, and the practices of architects, Urban Studies, 46, 12, 2555–2576. Likewise, chapter is based, substantially, on the paper Imrie, R., (2007), Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 34, 5, 925–943, and we acknowledge the publisher Pion for permission to reproduce this article.

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 stylistic components of buildings (Figure 1.1). For Habraken (2005 : 10), architects, such as Palladio, were in the vanguard of an emerging tradition that came to represent buildings ‘as abstract models divorced from site or context’.

Figure 1.1 The Palladian representation – Villa Pisani. The figure depicts a typical representation of buildings by Palladio in his book I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura (The Four Books of Architecture). This drawing was published in 1540, and based on a house named the Villa Pisani designed by Palladio in the 1540s.

Source: Villa Pisani a Bagnolo di Lonigo (Vicenza), from I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura by Andrea Palladio (2002).

Habraken (2005 : 9) characterises the legacy of this as contemporary architects being ‘Palladio's children’, or those involved in the (re)production of a persona of the architect that, during the lifetime of Palladio, became ‘increasingly self-referential’. This was characterised by an outpouring of writings and published works by architects, as part of their oeuvre. This often comprised visual and graphical representations of proposed and completed buildings, with the intent to display them as art-objects and as powerful signifiers of the creative prowess and powers of the architect. Palladio's output was more voluminous than most, and was significant for the use of a picture-book format characterised by drawings of the geometrical compositions of buildings (Bentley, 1999, Habraken, 2005). For Habraken, these representations, while beautiful artistic creations, were symptomatic of architects' increasingly distanced relationships to the broader fields, or contexts, of building production, construction, and outcomes (Figure 1.2).

Figure 1.2 Villa Rotonda. The Villa Rotonda was commissioned in 1566 and designed and inhabited by 1569. It is located on a hilltop near to Venice, and commentators claim it to be the most influential of all the buildings designed by Palladio. It is wholly symmetrical and inspired others around the world to copy its style. Palladio (cited in Wundram et al., 1993 : 186) describes the building in the following terms: ‘The place is nicely situated and one of the loveliest and most charming that one could hope to find; for it lies on the slopes of a hill, which is very easy to reach. The loveliest hills are arranged around it, which afford a view into an immense theatre; because one takes pleasure in the beautiful view on all four sides, loggias were built on all four facades.’

Source: Illa Capra, Vicenza, Palladio – Seccion de ‘i quattro libri’ – 1570 – Publicacion de Scamozzi, 1778, copyright expired.

This distancing was apparent in Palladio's work in which the character of the architect, the so-called eponymous hero, was paramount, and in which discussion of buildings and form occurred with limited reference to the social, institutional, and political contexts of the design and construction process (Bentley, 1999, Knox, 1987). For Palladio, the building was (re-)presented primarily as an object, a thing in and of itself, rather than as an element in a broader series of social relationships. Habraken's (2005 : 13) description of one of Palladio's buildings, the Villa Rotonda, conveys the sense of its abstraction from the materiality of the design and construction process: ‘the building remains self contained … it dominates the land while not being rooted in it … it is set like a stone upon the hill’. The outcome, for Habraken (2005 : 11), is the objectification of ‘the building, to distinguish it from the landscape’. The object does no more than inform the observer of the building's line, height, and width, and conveys proportions between these components.

This style of representation of buildings is an undercurrent of much contemporary architectural practice, in which the Palladian discourse encourages site and context to be subsumed by emphasis on form, and where an objective of the architect is to demonstrate their artistic and creative skills by the projection of architecture as the production of objets d'art. Like Palladio, subsequent generations of architects came to represent their buildings as ‘stand-alone’ objects, to illustrate and emphasise form and style or the aesthetics of the design (Figure 1.3). One of the key instruments of representing architecture, the drawing, often became an end in itself, characterised by representation of scale measures, of plan, elevation, and section (Imrie, 2003, Bloomer and Moore, 1977). These emphasised the metric properties of form, and reproduced a representation of architecture reduced to Cartesian coordinates, or geometrical points between different parts of a building. There was no conveyance of the performance of buildings or how they might operate once occupied and in use (Hill, 2003).

Figure 1.3 The architect's representation. The figure is an illustration of the one- and two-dimensional representation of buildings commonly used by architects to show scale and proportion of built form. It is devoid of a three-dimensionality in relation to the projection of the building's form. It is unable to show performance in relation to its use.

Source: Imrie, 2003.

These abstractions of form from aspects of site and locational context are not dissimilar to the Palladian ideal's foreclosure of other matters of building deemed to be marginal, even irrelevant, to the architects' pursuit of aesthetic and artistic expression. This is particularly so in relation to the rules and regulations relating to the design and development of the built environment. No building is designed and constructed outside of perceptual and practical, or material, schema about rules relating to proportions, performance, and form, nor outside of socio-political controls relating to the safety of structures. Yet these aspects of the practices of architects are rarely revealed in, or acknowledged by, architects' representations of, and scholarly writings about, the design and construction process. The buildings of architects like Palladio appear to emerge as free floating from laws and rules about form. Where regulation is referred to, it is usually counterpoised to architecture as purveyor of visual representation and artful masterpiece. Regulation is part of the external world of building with the potential to render the design process no more than a technical exercise.

A legacy of such perspectives about architecture is that a fuller study of the socio-institutional contexts underpinning the shaping of design is not always evident, especially in relation to subject matter such as the interrelationships between architects and the rules and regulations that codify and regulate their practices. However, from Alberti's (1988) conception of buildings as a form of living body, which led him to construct rational rules of architectural form determined by mind and matter, to the structuring of space around the four cardinal points, codes and/or rules have always been core to architects' conceptual schema and practices. Indeed, they reflect, in part, the imposition of a moral order on spatial representation and practice (Figure 1.4, over page; also, see chapter 2). For Bentley (1999 : 27), rules enable architects to ‘get to grips with the otherwise implausibly complex flux of the world’ and, since the late 19th century, rules relating to design and building structure have been increasingly institutionalised through formal, usually legal, regulation and conduct by government.

Figure 1.4 Piazza de' Rucellai. The Palazzo Rucellai is a 15th-century palace in the Piazza de' Rucellai, Florence, Italy, designed by Leon Battista Alberti between 1446 and 1451. The Institute at Palazzo Rucellai describes it in the following terms: ‘this splendid work was the first to fully express the spirit of fifteenth century Humanism in residential architecture. The structural elements of ancient Rome are replicated in the arches, pilasters and entablatures, and in the larger blocks on the ground floor which heighten the impression of strength and solidity. The pilasters of the three stories embody different classical orders creating an effect reminiscent of the Coliseum’ (text cited at: http://www.palazzorucellai.org/(S(uxtzemzkolxoeoe2nfhszh55))/StandardPage.aspx?id=8)

Source: Wilhelm Lübke, Max Semrau: Grundriß der Kunstgeschichte. Paul Neff Verlag, Esslingen, 14. Auflage 1908, copyright expired.

This is indicative less of the autonomy of architecture from the rule-based contexts of design and construction, and more its entwinement with(in) a complexity of socio-institutional regulatory processes. This recognition of entanglement with(in) the rules and regulations relating to design is one whereby the architect is being confronted with the contradiction between, on the one hand, seeking to propagate the Palladian discourse or the essence of architecture as art and, on the other hand, the understanding that its realisation is dependent on others, or what Sarfatti-Larson (1993 : 5) refers to as ‘rival professionals or humbler executants’. The recognition of such dependence confronts architects with the realisation of their less than autonomous capacities. It sets up the architectural profession, potentially, in opposition to, or at least in tension with, other professions and disciplines, such as building regulation, that, through their operations, have the capacity to transform architects' conceptual or aesthetic schemas.

It is not surprising then that a commonly held view of regulation by architects, particularly in relation to planning and building control systems, is one whereby it is seen as anathema to, and likely to diminish, architects' raison d'être, that is, the pursuit of beauty (chapter 5; also, Saint, 2001). The opposition between architecture and building thus situates regulation as part of bureaucratic rule that, through its application, is likely to diminish the quality of design. This feeling was also at the forefront of Alberti's (1988 : 140) observations in 1452, on regulatory differences between country and city: ‘a large number of men and things cannot be accommodated as freely in the city as they can in the country. Why is this? In urban building there are restrictions such as party walls, dripping gutters, public ground, rights of way … to prevent one's achieving a satisfactory result. In the countryside this does not happen; here everything is more open, whereas the city is restrictive.’

Alberti (1988) was hinting at a discourse that was yet to be developed in the mid 15th century, but has since become part of a popular, often caricatured, understanding of the interrelationships between architecture and regulation (chapter 3). Such understanding views regulation as one more restriction on the autonomy of architects, and something that is imposed rather than part of a negotiated, even democratic, process. It is the antithesis of design, and a threat to what Habraken (2005) regards as architects' visualisations of buildings in abstract terms, and regarding them as, first and foremost, proportional objects designed around orderly principles. Regulation disrupts, potentially, the rhythm, methods, and forms of architects' practices, and it is a challenge to the idea, even ideology, of design as a discrete skill. Typical of this view is Ventre (1997 : 17) noting that planning and building control regulations are ‘culturally conservative’ and anathema to the ‘romantic heritage of architecture’. For Ventre (1997 : 17), this meant an inevitable clash between architecture and regulation or, as he suggests, ‘obdurate approaches to, or, at best, ambivalence towards the aspect of regulation’.

Such views have a more extreme version, and authors such as Knesl (1984 : 9) go as far as to suggest that ‘architecture has seldom been more than a recipient of the laws affecting the built environment’, so suggesting that architects are passive and compliant in the face of regulatory control and practice (also, see Bentley, 1999, Knox, 1987, Saint, 2001). As Knesl (1984 : 9) suggests, ‘architecture is predetermined by political and economic power, including laws, statutes, codes…’ This narrative is, potentially, problematical for conceiving spatial regulations as a) external to what architects think and do; and b) determinate of architectural processes and outcomes (also, see Baer, 1997, Imrie and Hall, 2001, Imrie, 2007). Thus, if architecture is ‘predetermined’ by political power, as Knesl (1984) suggests, it renders architecture, and its practitioners, as somehow inert or without substance, inactive and not able to influence, in any significant ways, the actions of regulators and the outcomes of regulatory activities.

Neither this conception of the design process, nor that of the ‘autonomy of architects’, is particularly tenable. The former is based on an understanding of process in which the ‘self actions’ of politicians and/or regulators are responsible, largely, for shaping architects' practices. The latter conceives of what Till (2009 : 37) describes as architects ‘ridding the world of contingency’, and propagating a view of their work as operating with little constraint or control on their design activities. In both instances, actions and outcomes become reduced to a singular point or determinant when, as some of the empirical substance of the book will show, the relationships between architects, regulators, and others are recursive or relational. In Lefebvre's (1991 : 15) terms, they are ‘part of a practical relationship, part of a dialectic’ in which regulations and architects' practices are conjoined through the context of specific social, political, and institutional processes.

Sarfatti-Larson (1993 : 5) refers to this as ‘heteronomy’ or ‘the architect's dependence on clients and the other specialists of building’. She suggests that the design of buildings is not just ‘architects’ autonomous application of knowledge and talent alone' (Sarfatti-Larson, 1993 : 5). Rather, they reflect Bentley's (1999) understanding that architects' actions are inextricably connected to a project's contexts. Such contexts reflect the complexity of the conjoined elements of design and construction, including the instruments and techniques of design and building that influence and discipline architects. The techniques range from the client's brief, the project manager's use and application of risk assessment, cost estimation, forecasting and economic evaluation, to the rules and regulations relating to the different dimensions of the design and construction process. What is important to study is not, as Saint (2001) suggests, the issue of whether the regulations ‘matter more’ but, rather, how they matter and function in relation to the design and production of the built environment.

This, then, is to recognise and document that the daily activities of architects take place in contexts of negotiation, disputation, and debate about different aspects of the development and design process. The notion that there is a simple linear relationship between design and buildings is, as Hill (1999) suggests, problematical (also, Bentley, 1999, Knox, 1987, Scott, 1999). Of significance, and a focus of this book, is the role and raison d'être of rules and regulations relating to architectural form, and how and where in the process they are absorbed into the design of buildings. In particular, rules and regulations about design and building form often stress the importance of vernacular, localism, and tradition. For Huge (2004), the specificity of authorship (i.e. who wrote the rules), context (i.e. their interpretation and where, and under what conditions, they are applied), and implementation (i.e. how they are applied) are paramount to an understanding of the interrelationships between architects' practices, regulation, and design.

1.3 The study of regulation and the practices of architects

A perennial image of the architect is conveyed by Frank Lloyd-Wright (1992a : 29) who, in a speech to the University Guild of Evanston, Illinois, in 1896 observed that ‘art … is to be revered and fostered as the creative power … to feel ennobling enthusiasm for and to work for.’ Later in the same presentation Lloyd-Wright suggested that art and aesthetics are constrained by the ‘ultra commercial’, an observation lamenting the loss of architects' control over the production of the built environment, and one that anticipated the rise of what Lloyd-Wright (1992b) called the ‘plan factories’: ‘architecture today is the great orchestration of materials, methods, men’ (also, see Le Corbusier, 1925). Here, Frank Lloyd-Wright (1992b) was referring to the development of multi-agent project teams, and a ‘new’ architecture characterised by a fragmentation of tasks and the multiplicity of seemingly disparate and uncoordinated actors and agencies. For Frank Lloyd-Wright (1992b), the aesthetic foci of architects were being supplanted by the bureaucratic rise of management as part of a rationale to assure project development and delivery.

Frank Lloyd Wright's observations anticipated much of what architecture has become, in which a core activity of contemporary architects is to ensure the delivery of buildings to budget and time, within prescribed health and safety standards, and sensitised to a multiplicity of rules and regulations relating to building form and performance. This multiplicity is indicative, so some allege, of a regulatory society that, in the 21st century, is characterised by what Levi-Faur and Gilad (2004 : 106) refer to as ‘the proliferation of new mechanisms and techniques of regulation’ (also, see Black, 2002, Crawford, 2006, Morgan and Engwall, 1999). In the spatial development context, architects appear to be entwined in a greater range of legal regulatory obligations, partly as a product of the expansion of the scope of both planning and building control, and also the management of project risk through the context of an explosion in contractual, rule-based, relationships between different parties involved in the design and development process.

It is this regulatory complexity that forms the backdrop for the rest of the book, in which we explore architects' entanglement with the rules and regulations that govern much of the conduct of the design and development process (also, see Fischer and Guy, 2009). The research underpinning Part II of this book was preceded by a range of projects conducted by the authors, that had their origins in the exploration of the interrelationships between the mobility and movement of disabled people and the building regulations (Imrie, 1996, 2003, 2006, 2007, Imrie and Hall, 2001). The findings of these projects suggested a complexity of architects' feelings about, and interactions with, the regulations relating to their activities. Far from the Palladian schism between architecture and building and design and construction, the research identified deeply embedded, often positive, relationships between architects' actions and the (building) regulations, to the point whereby they were revealed as neither ephemeral nor insignificant to the design process, but as an integral and constitutive part of it.

This understanding informed the shaping of subsequent, follow-up projects, including the research that is the basis of this book (see the appendix for further details). In particular, given that previous research had specifically focused on the interrelationships between disability and the building regulations our point of departure was to broaden the documentation of the building regulatory systems, with the focus on the UK. The justification for this focus is primarily because we feel that the building regulations are an under-explored and under-emphasised part of spatial development. As previously alluded to, the building regulations have rarely been an attractive subject of study, for either practising architects or art historians, or for academics working within the social sciences where studies of spatial regulation have focused primarily on planning. This lacuna seems untenable, given that building regulations, we contend, are much more integral to the work of architects than has been acknowledged in previous research and writings.

In the course of conducting the research our focus on the building regulations – and our views of rules and regulation – shifted, primarily due to the ways in which architects were defining regulatory type and process as not necessarily legally based or bounded, or reducible, solely, to state-centred legal fiat or form. In interviews, it was commonplace for respondents to talk about the ‘tacit and hidden rules’ embedded in the complex relationships between different actors and agents, often with competing and different value systems (also, see Lawrence, 1987). This began to highlight the implicit informal, often unwritten, rules that define principles of interaction between actors, that do not necessarily have a basis in law. Part of the basis of such rules is moral and ethical, a rootedness to obligated relationships, even to habituated systems of interaction, or what Moore (2008) describes as codification that is closely interlinked with custom, practice, and traditions of local communities (also, see Bourdieu, 1998, Moore and Wilson, 2009).

This chimes with an understanding of regulation that we seek to develop in the book, referred to by Black (2002) as ‘decentred’. A decentred definition of regulation is one that does not exclusively relate regulatory form, behaviour, and process to the activities and actions of the state, such as the building regulations. Rather, decentred regulation is characterised as dispersed across social, institutional, and political contexts, and not confined to any specific organisational form or process. Regulation is, as Black (2002 : 4) suggests, ‘in many rooms’ (also, see Nader and Nader, 1985). This observation corresponds with the views of those who claim that state-centred government and regulation is fragmenting, characterised by shifts towards self-activated actors, and new forms of governance based upon self-regulation and the rise of systems of audit and control (Black, 2002, Levi-Faur, 2008). In these emerging contexts, the practices of architects may be thought of as relational webs of decentred regulation in which scope for action is dependent, in part, on institutional rules, governance processes and practices, and the values of actors relating to different stages of the design process.

We develop these ideas in more detail in subsequent chapters, particularly in chapter 2, where we outline the significance of rules and regulations in relation to the practices of architecture. We suggest that architecture, from the earliest stages of human habitation, has revolved around, and been constituted by, rules of building form and style, many tacit and part of tradition and learnt through practice, others related to laws about building height, strength, and performance. They are part of socio-cultural formations that Davis (2006 : 202) defines as a ‘system of social constraints that guarantee that a certain set of knowledge and rules will be followed by the building culture’. Since the late 18th century, such codes and/or rules of building form and performance have become increasingly entwined with formal, legal, systems, or government and private sector interventions in the regulation of building form and performance. Of paramount concern has been the regulation of health and safety in the built environment, rule setting by insurance companies, and state regulation to ensure minimum standards of building design.