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Office of Urban Regulation

Design Rules and Design With Rules!

Cities as cultural products are neither ‘built’ nor ‘planned,’ at best they are guided and steered in a certain direction. Therefore, rules and regulations are one of the few tools that are actually suitable to guide future development within such collective and complex urban settings.

We strongly believe that the field of (urban) design should not simply adhere to these standards as some neutrally existing context but should actively engage in discussing them in order to make them subject to design as well. read more

Office for urban regulation

Short Blocks

Jane Jacobs

Block lengths shall be short.

  • The blocks must be short. Actually, these are the only illustrations among the 450 pages of Jane Jacobs’ Death and Life of Great American Cities.

Rule category

Motivation
Contextual Regimes: issues depending on the immediate context and its preservation, economic and social regimes, traditions, etc.
The Kind of Rule
Rule that stipulates a fixed limit.
Rule that is NOT related to any preconceived zone or area.
Rule that stipulates an upper limit.
Domain
Rule with direct impact on architectural or urban form.
Scale
Streetscape Rule: Rule that is tied to a single street or road.