Design intervention in architecture and planning: practical explorations and applied outcomes

ABSTRACT

Within architecture and planning, the elements and outcomes of design can be difficult to conceptualize and manage. The problem lies not simply in the range of stakeholders differentially interpreting the functionality and aesthetics of a building, but also in the effect of structures’ scaling up from the site, through precinct to the metropolitan level. Incremental assembly of the built environment can promote dislocation of form and dissociation of function without any necessary legibility, integration, or harmony. This article explores the concept of visual appropriateness within frameworks of design intervention constructed by public planning authorities. Having scoped the problem, it searches over 2000 architecture, urban design, and planning references for ‘theoretical’ intervention measures, extended to include ‘empirical’ ones derived from selected planning schemes. Sorted into 3 thematic groups and 47 individual themes, they are then arranged into two evaluation dimensions within a multi-criteria analysis directed to the case of residential development in seven local government areas in Sydney, Australia. Results confirm that stronger design intervention will characterize areas with denser and more aggressive development activity and potential. The project demonstrates what is involved in contextualizing and translating just one of the several constituents of urban design.

KEYWORDS:

• Design intervention
• visual appropriateness
• residential apartments
• planning schemes
• Sydney

ORCiD

David Wadley http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7768-4840

Notes

1 Punter, Carmona, and Platts (1994) also nominate sustainability and special areas as thematic groups, but they were not included in this study because they are not directly relevant to visual appropriateness.

2 Punter, Carmona, and Platts (1994) evaluated how design controls were expressed but did not address the legal strength of each one.

3 Since they form only a minor category, measures which constitute neither elements nor relations are omitted from this analysis.

4 SEPP No. 65 can overrule any design control in a NSW planning scheme if there is an inconsistency or if a certain design control is not present. This provision could obviously affect the results of this study; however, the impact of the SEPP has not been addressed because the selection of the seven LGAs is undertaken initially to test the validity of the evaluative methodology.

5 That case established a planning principle of ‘view sharing’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David Wadley

David Wadley lectures at The University of Queensland in city planning, property development and economic geography. He has wide-ranging interdisciplinary interests with current research foci in the pedagogy of planning, the environmental crisis, labour markets and rationality in economic and social decision-making.

Hunter Gore

Hunter Gore completed a Bachelor of Regional and Town Planning degree at The University of Queensland in 2013. Following his research based on architectural form, he is now a Brisbane-based commercial and retail leasing executive at the international real estate service provider, Cushman and Wakefield.