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.
