The Authors

Rob Imrie is Professor of Geography in the Department of Geography

at King’s College London. His research interests include disability and
design, the regulation of the built environment, urban regeneration,
and urban policy and politics. He is co-author of Buyer-Supplier Rela-
tions (1992, MacMillan, Basingstoke) and Inclusive Design (2001, Spon
Press, London), and author of Disability and the City (1996,
Sage Publications, London), and Accessible Housing (2006, Routledge,
London). He is co-editor of British Urban Policy (1999, Sage Publica-
tions, London), Urban Renaissance? (2003, Policy Press, Bristol), Regen-
erating London, (2009, Routledge, London), and The Knowledge
Business (2010, Ashgate, Farnham).
Emma Street recently completed her PhD in the Department of
Geography at King’s College London. Her research interests include
architecture and the built environment, urban regeneration, and urban
governance and policy processes. She has written various papers
published in outlets such as Urban Studies, and Town and Country
Planning.
 Foreword

Rob Imrie and Emma Street’s book brought to mind a suppressed (and
now embarrassing) memory. As the design principal of a young and
growing firm I reacted instantly, if thoughtlessly, when the principal of a
rival firm down the street penned a letter to the editor of the local
newspaper wherein he argued that the sole reason for our profession to
exist was to serve the ‘health, safety and welfare’ of fellow citizens. In
the name of Art I was outraged! In response to this philistine grovelling I
beat my fists on the table loud enough to disturb the work of my
colleagues across the old mill space in which we worked. If such
utilitarian interests were to limit the spiritual aspirations of society so
fundamentally, I raged, we had descended to a sorry state indeed.
Twenty-five years later I now understand that it took me much longer
than it might have done to bring to consciousness, and thus to purge,
the tacit values of my education.
Fortunately for today’s young architects, engineers, public policy-
makers and others, Imrie and Street provide, in this significant text, not
only a useful critique of what they refer to as the ‘Palladian model’ of
architectural production, but also the exhaustive empirical evidence to
get beyond it. That evidence comes in the form of interviews with
practitioners from many disciplines related to the construction industry,
from focus groups, surveys and a remarkably thorough review of the
literatures. I use the plural form of ‘literature’ here because Architec-
tural Design and Regulation is a thoroughly interdisciplinary book. First,
the authors are geographers writing about architecture and urban
design. Second, their bibliography derives as much from the social
sciences, philosophy and engineering as from architecture or geogra-
phy. And third, they challenge, from the outside, the deeply held
assumptions of a discipline not their own – thus the need for empirical
rigour.
In the 1970s, Canadian sociologist Erving Goffman developed what
we now refer to as ‘frame analysis’. In coining this term Goffman held
that various social groups understand what goes on in the world from
inside distinct frames of interpretation. Insurance brokers, for example,
interpret the concept of risk very differently from high-wire acrobats or
 equestrians. The same observation can be made about the manner in
Foreword

which architects and carpenters interpret the act of building. An

important, if ironic, dimension of this interpretive dynamic is that it is
only those who exist entirely within a single frame – as do most famous
architects – who are perceived to have the necessary authority amongst
their peers to alter it. These same famous architects, however, lack the
capacity to imagine change in the system of which they are an essential
part because the achievement of high status within the group depends
on perpetuating the tacit values and hierarchies of the group. Con-
versely, code-switchers – or those who have the intellectual capacity to
inhabit several frames of interpretation simultaneously – generally have
little authority in the eyes of professional elites. After all, elites reason,
they are neither qualified nor ‘one of us’, so how can they see the world
correctly (as we do)?
This is precisely the problem now faced by Imrie and Street. To
successfully challenge the ‘Palladian’ frame of architectural production
they ask architects to step outside a frame of interpretation that has
held itself to be autonomous from, and superior to, the concerns of
everyday life – from the common act of building. For many architects
this will be very difficult indeed. The good news is, however, that it is
architects themselves who have the most to gain in accepting Imrie and
Street’s invitation.
To characterise this book as only a ‘critique’ of architecture-as-art is,
however, overly limiting. In my own view this critique is much needed,
but far more important is that the authors redirect our attention away
from the dysfunction of contemporary architectural practice, to under-
appreciated intellectual territory that is of value not only to scholars,
but to designers too. This is no small achievement. Their investigation,
then, is not one that is predetermined to delegitimise art as a cultural
practice, but one that reconstructs what I will call the co-evolution of
three related phenomena: the profession, technology and the
‘organisational governance’ of both.
Imrie and Street provide compelling evidence that, from the per-
spective of architects themselves, the nature of practice is changing.
Some refer to the change as the ‘crisis of regulation’, others as the
problem of ‘calculative thinking’, and still others as ‘the burden of
management’. What all these characterisations have in common is that
they describe new and paradoxical conditions. Some architects wel-
come the new technologies of computer aided design (CAD), and more
recently building information systems (BIM), because they seem to
empower the discipline. Increased productivity will allow, we imagine,
more creative time to fashion beautiful objects. But other architects
hold that these technologies shift the responsibilities and time com-
mitments of architects away from aesthetic considerations toward
xvi
managerial ones. It is, of course, no accident that such technologies

Foreword
have emerged at the same time that the nature of regulation itself is
‘fragmenting’. Increasingly it is not the state that regulates how we
build, but insurance companies, building managers, corporate utilities
and banks. It is the ‘decentring’ of regulating authority, as the authors
describe it, that has transformed the ‘organisational governance’ of the
building industry as a whole. This is to say that building regulations do
not emerge in isolation, or at the hands of distant bureaucrats. Rather,
the profession, our technologies, the environment, new contractual
formats and modes of governance all co-evolve as a large complex
system. The only thing truly surprising about all of this is that we
architects are oddly isolated from it by our own romantic traditions
of artistic autonomy.
Some of the authors’ respondents quoted in the text have radicalised
this observation by dramatically announcing ‘the end of the architect’.
Fortunately, Imrie and Street take a more nuanced, hopeful and
supportive view of our discipline’s promise. Rather than gloat over
the fate of increasingly irrelevant, romantic aesthetes clinging to the
sinking ship of tasteful power, the authors recognise not disciplinary
collapse, but an opportunity. In their view, architects have always
participated, even if unconsciously, in the regulation and coding of
the life-world. The question this book asks is whether we will choose to
participate mindfully, and in the process find new opportunities for
creative problem-solving in addition to those that are visual.
In this book, our discipline has received a gift from outside the tacit
values embodied in what we architects refer to as ‘studio culture’. We
can, of course, dismiss the critique and ignore the opportunity pre-
sented by the authors if we so choose. But if the entrenched architects
of my generation do, I am confident that the next generation of city-
makers will not – because, like Imrie and Street, they already glimpse
the creative potential of interdisciplinary invention.

Steven A. Moore
Bartlett Cocke Regents Professor of Architecture and Planning
School of Architecture
The University of Texas at Austin

xvii
 Preface

The design and development of the built environment is influenced by a

complexity of socio-political and institutional processes, including the
application of rules and regulations relating to the form and perfor-
mance of buildings. From the earliest periods of architecture and
building, architects’ actions have been conditioned by a plethora of
rules, regulations, standards, and governance practices, ranging 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 the book, we develop the argument that the
rule and regulatory basis of architecture is part of a broader field of
socio-institutional and political interventions in the design and devel-
opment process that serve to delimit, and define, the scope of the
activities and actions of architects. In so doing, we suggest that the
rules and regulations relating to building form and performance ought
to be understood not as external to creative processes and practices,
but as integral to them.
This understanding of the interrelationships between architecture
and its regulation is part of a contribution to an emergent field of
scholarly work that seeks to challenge the powerful discourse of the
autonomy of architecture. This discourse asserts that architecture is the
creation of beautiful buildings that reflect the artistic talents of archi-
tects. The aesthetic activities of the architect are distinctive to the
prosaic matters of building carried out by others, such as builders, who
remain distinctive to, and outside the purview of, the specialist field of
architecture. This distinction, between architecture and building, and
creativity and craft, is one whereby whole domains of practice, such as
the legal regulation of design, are conceived as external to the actions
of architects, and therefore unimportant to the task of artful and artistic
creation. At best, the intersection of regulations with creative practice
is a guarantor of the safety of buildings, and provides legal protection
for architects. At worst, it is a restraint on creative freedom with the
potential to diminish the aesthetic qualities of the built environment.
 Drawing on surveys of, and interviews with, architects, and other
Preface

development professionals, the book highlights the contradictions and

tensions contained in such understandings of the interrelationships
between regulation and the actions of architects. In particular, we
explore how the activities of architects, whatever the discourse of
autonomy may claim, are deeply embedded in complex systems of
rules and regulations, covering everything from the legal requirement
to provide safe exit routes from buildings, to the clients’ wishes,
contractually specified, to ensure a risk free procurement process. The
data show that creative actions are not independent of the socio-
regulatory parameters of the design and development process, but are
constituted by, and constitutive of, them. We illustrate this point by
referring, first and foremost, to the building regulations, but also to the
emergence of design codes, and the proliferation of rules relating to
risk management in projects, including the co-ordination and organi-
sation of work across fragmented design and development teams.
In bringing the book to publication we are indebted to a number of
people and organisations. We would like to thank the Arts and Hu-
manities Research Council (AHRC) for funding the research that much
of this book is based upon. We are grateful to the participants in the
research for giving up their valuable time to share their experiences
with us. These include Robert Adam, David Eisenberg, Roger Evans,
George Ferguson, Anthony Floyd, Stuart Hersh, Derek Horn, Judy
Knox, Rosanna Law, John Moen, Michael Montgomery, Andy Mytom,
Mriganka Saxena, Charles Thompson, numerous architects, and parti-
cipants in a focus group in December 2009. We would particularly like
to thank David Morley of David Morley Architects (DMA) and John
Robertson of John Robertson Architects (JRA) for providing us with
access to their organisations, and permitting us to spend time talking
to, and interacting with, various staff members, and attending meet-
ings and visiting project sites. An important source of support was Chris
Roberts of DMA who, at various times over the last few years, has
commented on the changing nature of architectural practice, and
provided challenging feedback to us about what we were doing.
We are grateful to a number of individuals who supported our work
by commenting on various versions of questionnaires, advising on
different stages of the research process, and reading some of the draft
chapters of the book. These people include Steven Moore from the
University of Texas, Paul Jones based at the University of Liverpool,
Paul Finch, Chair of the Commission for Architecture and the
Built Environment, and anonymous readers of chapters 4 and 8.
Our research design was also improved, significantly, by the comments
of anonymous referees of the AHRC application, and their suggestions
were subsequently incorporated into a readjustment of the
xx
methodological basis of the project. The editorial team at Wiley-

Preface
Blackwell were an excellent source of support, and we would like to
thank the senior editor, Madeleine Metcalfe, and the assistance
provided by Cat Oakley, Teresa Netzler, Paul Beverley, and Arindam
Bose. We are particularly grateful to Sarah Fielder for reading much of
the manuscript and using her copy-editing and grammatical skills to
provide pointed observations that have helped us to improve the text.
Marian Hawkesworth and Oliver Moore also read various parts of the
manuscript, and they made some telling comments that made us re-
think some of the arguments.

xxi
 Illustration Credits

Except where acknowledged in the text, all illustrations in this book are
the property of Rob Imrie and Emma Street. The authors and publisher
are grateful to all who gave their permission for the use of copyright
material. They apologise if they have inadvertently failed to acknowl-
edge any copyright holder and will be glad to correct any omissions
that are drawn to their attention in future reprints or editions.
We acknowledge the editors and publishers of Urban Studies for
permission to reproduce the paper, Imrie, R. and Street, E., (2009), Risk,
regulation, and the practices of architects, Urban Studies, 46, 12,
2555–2576. Likewise, chapter 5 is based, substantially, on the paper
Imrie, R., (2007), Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 34,
5, 925–943, and we acknowledge the publisher Pion for permission to
reproduce this article.
 Part I
The Context of Regulation

Architectural Design and Regulation. Rob Imrie and Emma Street.

© 2011 Rob Imrie and Emma Street. Published 2011 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-1-405-17966-9
 Chapter One
Regulation, Rule, and
Architecture: Introductory
Comments

Every parcel is almost predetermined by what you can build upon it, in a way of
planning code and building code issues. There are very strict envelopes about
height, bulk, massing, separation, aspect to light that produce the form of the city.
It’s all been pre-sculptured.
(Testimony from an architect, 2008)

1.1 Introduction
As this testimony suggests, the practices of architecture are influenced
and shaped by building regulations, codes, and rules that are devised
to guide and influence all aspects of architectural production, from
conceptual design to urban form. Such regulations and codes are not
necessarily enshrined in law but are, as Huge (2004) has intimated,
systematic sets of rules characterised and differentiated by authorship,
context, and implementation.1 In all instances, rules and regulations are
constitutive of the practices of architecture, yet little is known about
their impacts on, and implications for, the design and production of
the built environment (although see Ben-Joseph, 2005a, 2005b, Ben-
Joseph and Szold, 2005, Bentley, 1999, Carmona et al., 2006, Davis,
2008, Dennis, 2008, Harris, 1991, Huge, 2004, Imrie, 2007). The book
seeks to address this lacuna in knowledge by exploring the interrela-
tionships between regulation and the design and production of urban
space, with a focus on the practices of architecture.
This task is important because a feature of modern life is the increase
in forms of governance and (re-)regulation, influencing everything from
food production and its distribution, to the protection of personal
health and safety. For some, we are living in an over-regulated world

Architectural Design and Regulation. Rob Imrie and Emma Street.

© 2011 Rob Imrie and Emma Street. Published 2011 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-1-405-17966-9