Menu ETH
Chair of Architecture and Urban Design
Asst. Prof. Dr. Alex Lehnerer
Grand Urban Rules

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

Revision Cycles

Chicago / New York , General

These officially proclaimed rules are complemented by a series of unwritten social and economic norms. These are also binding for the city. The degree of force of such unwritten norms changes with time. For this reason, the rules adopted herein must also be subject to modification. Furthermore, such changes in regulation contribute to a desired morphological diversity.

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 works as reference, ratio, or dependency.
Domain
Rule that has a strong influence on urban density and its distribution.
Rule that influences programmatic and functional issues.
Rule with direct impact on architectural or urban form.
Rule that regulates building heights.
Rule that explicitly copes with stylistic and aesthetic concerns.
Scale
General Declaration: General declaration, motive without specific scale.