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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

Height Difference Max

Los Angeles , Mulholland Drive

Height differences between individual buildings are highly desirable, but at the same time an excessively strong contrast between neighboring structures detracts from a district’s physical coherence. For this reason, neighboring buildings shall not differ in height by more than 50% of their total heights.

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 is tied to a certain zone.
Rule that stipulates an upper limit.
Rule that works as reference, ratio, or dependency.
Domain
Rule that has a strong influence on urban density and its distribution.
Rule that regulates building heights.
Scale
Neighborhood Rule: Rule that works at neighborhood scale.