Abstract
State-enforced norms regarding the production of built space play a central role in determining architectural and urban quality. When addressing to this issue, researchers concentrate on social, historical, political and technical aspects of architectural regulations, but their role is not often investigated in morphological terms. This research concentrates on two normative case studies regarding the assessment of the ‘quantity of buildable space’, which are extrapolated from Italian laws and local regulations and tested using the architectural project as a heuristic tool to understand their effects on architectural design. Two questions are addressed: (1) how can a rule have effects, such as hinder or promote specific (architectural) forms without addressing them directly, and (2) what are the mechanisms that allow these effects to take place? The study argues that building regulations, even in apparently neutral aspects, such as the definition of indexes, can result in perverse effects, namely effects that are neither intended nor planned, and that can encourage or hamper specific forms. It concludes with the assertion that regulations regarding architecture should be subject to a deep analysis to envisage possible distortions, using the design process as a method of assessment, in order to understand whether their influence on design choices can or not be acceptable or desirable.
Highlights
Regulations are often seen by practitioners as a subject matter external to the discipline (Imrie 2007), with the consequence of perceiving them as a nuisance on the work rather than a stimulus to improve the design process
In order to address the first question, namely ‘how can rules produce specific formal outputs without explicitly prescribing them’, this enquiry engages with a ‘normative set’, consisting in a series of norms, based on Italian building laws, that presents a structure that can be found by designers in an actual Italian context of building design
It consisted in answering two questions: first, it shows how rules can hinder or promote specific forms without addressing them directly. It asserts that such rules can orient the actions of designers to maximise profitability, suggesting particular forms or encouraging their use and spread. While these mechanisms are unforeseen and unexpected by nomothetes, and their effects can be considered related to the phenomenon of unintended consequences of the law, the study argues that their influence is such that it hampers the unfolding of a rational design process and have to be ascribed to the category of “perverse effects”
Summary
The role played by state-enforced rules on architecture is often overlooked by architectural theorists, (Ben-Joseph 2005; Ben-Joseph and Szold 2005; Lehnerer 2009; Carmona 2016), and scholars rarely engage in the discussion of the effects of regulations on architectural quality. Regulations are often seen by practitioners as a subject matter external to the discipline (Imrie 2007), with the consequence of perceiving them as a nuisance on the work rather than a stimulus to improve the design process. The role played by state-enforced rules on architecture is often overlooked by architectural theorists, (Ben-Joseph 2005; Ben-Joseph and Szold 2005; Lehnerer 2009; Carmona 2016), and scholars rarely engage in the discussion of the effects of regulations on architectural quality.. While all of the cited works concern the many aspects of the interrelationship between the domain of norms and the practice of architecture, they rarely engage in the description of the formal outcomes of which the systems of rules are responsible; rather, they tackle the social (Imrie 2007; Imrie and Street 2009, 2014), historical (Lehnerer 2009), technical and political (Ben-Joseph 2005; Ben-Joseph and Szold 2005) dimensions of the problem. Even if most of the cited works present accounts of specific phenomena regarding the unintended effects of norms on architecture, the
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