THE URBAN

BLOCK
A G U I D E F O R U R B A N D E S I G N E R S,
ARCHITECTS AND TOWN PLANNERS

J O N AT H A N TA R B AT T & C H L O E S T R E E T TA R B AT T
© RIBA Publishing, 2020

Published by RIBA Publishing, 66 Portland Place, London, W1B 1AD

ISBN 978 1 85946 874 6

The rights of Jonathan Tarbatt and Chloe Street Tarbatt to be identifed

as the Authors of this Work have been asserted in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 sections 77 and 78.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without prior permission of the copyright owner.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Commissioning Editor: Alex White

Assistant Editor: Clare Holloway
Production: Sarah-Louise Deazley
Designed and typeset by Sarah-Louise Deazley
Printed and bound by L.E.G.O. spa

While every efort has been made to check the accuracy and quality
of the information given in this publication, neither the Authors nor the
Publisher accept any responsibility for the subsequent use of this
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 CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS IV

ABOUT THE AUTHORS IV

A NOTE ON ILLUSTRATIVE BLOCK DIAGRAMS V

0 INTRODUCTION 1

1 UNDERSTANDING THE BLOCK 5

2 DEFINING THE BLOCK 33

3 DESIGNING THE BLOCK 73

4 ILLUSTRATING THE BLOCK 99

REFERENCES 148

BIBLIOGRAPHY 151

INDEX 152

IMAGE CREDITS 154

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We are very grateful to the architectural practices who so generously contributed

drawings and photographs of their work, as well as others who helped by supplying
maps or other information. We also beneftted from a Faculty Teaching Award
bestowed on Chloe by the University of Kent, which went some way towards
meeting the costs of travel and photography.

We are also very grateful for the unstinting support and generosity of our parents:
Jon’s parents, David and Ruth Tarbatt, and Chloe’s mum, Joanna Lowry, who also
looked after our young children, Thomas and Hugo, while we were struggling to
fnish the book. We’re sure Chloe’s father, the late Professor Brian Street, would be
proud, and would be the frst to propose a toast! Last (but not least), many thanks
to the RIBA team, especially commissioning editor Alex White for taking us on,
assistant editor Clare Holloway for keeping us on track, and production and
design assistant Sarah-Louise Deazley, for making us look good.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Jonathan Tarbatt, BA, BSc, BArch, MRUP, MA (Urban Design), RTPI, RIBA

Jonathan is an Urban Designer, Chartered Architect and Town Planner with

over 25 years’ experience in the public and private sectors in the UK, Australia
and Ireland. The depth and breadth of his experience and education in these
three disciplines, together with his academic background in urban geography
and sociology, has given him a multidisciplinary perspective and a unique level
of expertise in the built environment. He is the author of The Plot – Designing
Diversity in the Built Environment, and has also contributed to a range of books
and industry journals, focusing on the impact of urban form on environmental
quality. He is an active practitioner and combines his consultancy work with
teaching at the Kent School of Architecture and Planning (KSAP).

Chloe Street Tarbatt, BSc, MArch (RCA), ARB, PGCHE

Chloe is an architect and a lecturer at the Kent School of Architecture and

Planning (KSAP). Following 10 years’ practice experience working on a range
of high-profle, award-winning cultural and educational projects with Dixon
Jones (London) and de Blacam and Meagher Architects (Dublin), she taught at
the University for the Creative Arts before joining KSAP, where she is currently
the BA Programme Director for Architecture. Her research interests include the
psychology of urban experience, architectural representation and pedagogy.
Chloe continues to combine private practice with teaching.

IV THE URBAN BLOCK

A NOTE ON ILLUSTRATIVE BLOCK DIAGRAMS

The block plans we have produced to illustrate the history of the block and our
case examples have been redrawn from a variety of diferent sources, including
open-source mapping, national mapping agencies and architects’ own plans and
drawings. We have supplemented these sources with information from aerial
photography and site visits, where relevant. All of the block diagrams are oriented
to north, and so north points have not been added to the plans.

To allow the reader to compare and contrast the examples, we have (with one or
two exceptions) reproduced the plans to the same scale, regardless of the size
of the block. Given the widely varying level of detail available for each project,
this has meant adding detail in some cases (e.g. from aerial photography) and
stripping it back in others. In doing so it became apparent in some cases that
there were minor discrepancies between the detail we were provided with, and
what has been built. Of course, buildings change, and designs can be altered
during construction. This is especially the case regarding historical examples,
where a great deal of time has passed since their original conception and the
availability of mapping to us. In regard to the contemporary case examples, we
have tried to pick up some of these discrepancies along the way to make them
more accurate, however we cannot claim they are accurate in the fullest sense.
Having said that, of course, we would argue that the examples have been chosen
for more signifcant reasons than can be undermined by such small details, and
we hope that this comes across clearly in what follows.

A NOTE ON ILLUSTRATIVE BLOCK DIAGRAMS V

0
INTRODUCTION

This book is about the block. It focuses on a kind of urban block known to
designers and urban morphologists as the ‘perimeter block’: a type that has
dominated urban (and suburban) development for millennia. The perimeter block
has a long but chequered history: it has fallen in and out of favour over time for
a variety of reasons. Its pure form is most commonly found in cities, but it has
been adapted to suburban development, albeit with mixed results. Today, it is
promoted by academics and ‘best practice’ guidelines as the outstanding kind of
block that masterplanners and urban designers can deploy to create successful
streets and spaces. But there are many and varied forms the perimeter block can
take, each with its own strengths and weaknesses, and the perimeter block itself
is neither a reliable indicator of urban quality nor is it appropriate to every urban
or suburban condition.

1
ABOUT THE BOOK

Much has been written about urban form that directly or indirectly touches on
the block, but there is very little that brings together the myriad considerations
that go into block design and layout in one place. Our aim is to fll this gap in a
coherent way.

Chapter 1 sets out our understanding of the block. It includes a brief discussion
of prominent theorists and how their ideas have infltrated into contemporary
notions of ‘best practice’, and their concurrent implications for urban design. A
basic knowledge of the history and theory of the block is necessary to understand
and read urban form today. As urban designers and architects, we combine our
awareness of urban context with direct observation to engender some refection
on the scale of urban form that mediates between the city and individual buildings.
It demonstrates a useful point that there is no one way to build a city or suburb.

Chapter 2 develops a simple taxonomy of urban forms, including the main block
types. This helps to defne the basic block types that are in common use, and hints
at variants or hybrid forms that have emerged, or might yet emerge. The main
features of each type are outlined, with the implications for each on urban life.

These ‘implications’ lie at the core of the book, because they raise questions
about how urban designers and architects should set about designing blocks to
create convivial places with high-quality streets and spaces. The issues designers
must grapple with range from lofty ideals related to equality of access versus
exclusivity of access, down to how and where to park cars and store rubbish bins.
Somewhere in between, the way in which buildings interface between the public
and private realms must also be designed, and this raises yet more questions:
What is the nature of the transitional space between the back of the public
footpath and the building threshold? What uses, entrances or activities will be
encouraged to ‘face’ the street, if any? To what extent will movement through
the block be regulated?

These are just some of the questions posed in Chapter 3, and some forms of block
design are better at answering them than others. Subsequently, we’ll examine
the syntactic relationships between buildings and streets that block designers
must consider. At this point – the dialectical relationship between the block and
the street – we must acknowledge that our study is underpinned by Western
assumptions. Consequently, we spend less time looking at urban forms where
buildings intentionally ‘turn away’ from the street than those that actively address
it. Where we include traditional Arabic urban forms, we do so primarily to illustrate
the essential diference in their treatment of the public and private realms, while
recognising that in any case new urban development in many Arabic cities often
adopts ‘Western’ models anyway.

We explore these issues further in Chapter 4, with reference to case examples.

The case examples are drawn from a variety of places and contexts, both ‘urban’
and ‘suburban’. Low-density suburban forms are often criticised for being

2 THE URBAN BLOCK

wasteful of land and resources,1 but we feel that it is important and valid to study
these suburban forms, if only because they are a fact of life.

Developers and house-builders – those holding the purse strings, so to speak

– have their own agendas, however, and they often prefer diferent forms. We
look at other kinds of block too, and how the perimeter block has been adapted
and changed to suit diferent circumstances and conditions. There are also
circumstances where a variety of diferent approaches can, and have, been
used successfully in the past. We hope that through examining the perimeter
block and its close cousins, we can demonstrate its continued relevance to
placemaking, whether suburban or urban, while recognising that a dogmatic
approach is not necessarily the best way forward.

WHY THE (PERIMETER) BLOCK

Without the block, there would be no streets, just roads. Without streets, there
would be no street life, just trafc. Without street life, there would be no city, just
buildings. In more prosaic terms, the block is no more than the land and building
area defned by streets. But it is the nature of the interface between the two that
has a critical impact on the quality of the spaces between those buildings.

To understand why this is true, it is necessary to appreciate that the city is more
than the sum of its individual buildings. It is made up of built elements – urban
blocks – that mediate between the scale of individual buildings and the scale of
wider neighbourhoods or quarters. By extension, these elements also mediate
between the private domain of the individual, and the public realm. As such, they
have been called ‘the building blocks of the city’.2

The importance of the block to city life is well rehearsed, and in any case, we
seldom fnd ourselves in the business of making cities from scratch.3 But we are in
the business of making new houses, neighbourhoods and new local centres, and
we need lots of them: 250,000 a year to be imprecise.4

INTRODUCTION 3
1
UNDERSTANDING
THE BLOCK
Understanding the history of urban form, and particularly the urban block, is
essential to understanding the urban context within which we are designing
today. Without an understanding of what works and why, we cannot hope
to exert a positive infuence on the urban fabric. Following this premise, this
chapter outlines a short history of urban form, explaining how certain historical
processes have afected patterns of urban development and consequently, the
formation of urban blocks.

5
THE BLOCK, THE PLOT AND THE STREET

The traditional urban block cannot be understood as a discrete entity. Rather

it is one element of a system that depends both on its symbiotic relationship to
the street and on the substrate of subdivisions that divide it into smaller, more
or less independent units of land holding known as plots or lots. In turn, these
plots can be occupied by diferent buildings and potentially have diferent uses
or combinations of uses. This underlying structure implies a ‘built in’ capacity for
change, for which the plot is the underlying framework. As Panerai et al. put it:
‘To think of the block as a whole would be missing the point, and reducing it to a
continuous and homogeneous built up area surrounding an empty centre…risks
showing the outward appearance of urbanity without ensuring the conditions that
allow it to happen.’1 Put simply, the fabric of older towns and cities has evolved
through this superimposition of several structures operating at diferent scales to
produce diferent yet coherent urban forms.

This historic practice, to masterplan by plot and block together, where the owner
of every plot is left to their own devices, has been superseded in the modern era
by a tendency to masterplan by block alone, where the block is produced by the
space left over after the street has been defned, and each block or series of blocks
is developed by a single entity (the developers). Contemporary masterplanning
practice tends to reduce the block to a single ‘super plot’ to be occupied by a single
building (or sometimes a group of buildings which are nonetheless ‘joined at the
hip’ by means of a shared basement or podium). In this new normal, the plot is
no longer part of the development equation, and so an invisible yet fundamental
structuring element of the ‘old town’ has been removed. Once this is understood,
we can begin to understand why historic blocks have managed to evolve and
change to meet new conditions, and why modern blocks are more likely to be
replaced in their entirety when they are no longer ft for purpose.

1.1 Aerial view of the Roman City of Timgad,2 Algeria, dating to the 1st century BCE. The blocks, or ‘insulae’, measure approximately 21m2.

6 THE URBAN BLOCK

THE BLOCK IN ANTIQUITY

This potted history begins around the turn of the common era (CE) at the outset
of the Roman Empire, during which the signifcant term ‘insula’ (plural ‘insulae’),
meaning ‘island’, was coined to denote both an apartment building and an urban
block. The term ‘island’ is instructive because the block takes its form from the
streets that surround it. In other words, it is the area of private land surrounded by
public streets. Gates3 estimates that 90% of the population of Ancient Rome lived
in insulae, and as such, they constituted the general fabric of the city, punctuated
by shops, public buildings and more salubrious villas. To form an ‘island’ requires
more than one street. This essentially diferentiates the block, which sits within a
network of streets, from the linear nature of streets on their own: the street must
change direction more than once for a block to be formed. Second, one ‘island’
on its own does not a city make.

The Ancient Greeks are credited with the rational masterplanning of new cities
in orthogonal grid patterns at least four centuries earlier than this, during the late
classical period of the 5th and 4th centuries BCE (e.g. Miletus, Piraeus, Olynthos
and Priene). Describing excavated Greek houses at ancient Olynthos, for example,
Gates4 states: ‘Blocks of adjacent houses sharing walls are neatly arranged along
straight streets, laid out in parallel lines. Houses are similarly hidden from the
street by an enclosure wall, and inside, the courtyard is the focus.’5 Parallel to
the gridded masterplans taking place in classical Greece, such layouts were
emerging elsewhere, with similar examples found in Babylon (present-day Iraq).

This gridded approach developed by the Ancient Greeks and other early civilisations
was highly infuential on Roman city planners (e.g. Timgad, North Africa; see Figure
1.1), who continued the practice as part of a ritualistic process, culminating in
the distribution of building plots by lottery.6 Although Timgad seems a somewhat
random case – isolated as it is in the barren landscape of North Africa – its function
as a garrison town is very much representative of a formula that was established
for new fort towns across Africa, Gaul and Britain during the Roman Empire, and
illustrates the far-reaching and long-lasting efects of classically inspired Roman
town planning.

There are two relevant points that arise from these early examples of gridded
masterplanning. Firstly, that the practice of creating a masterplan that defnes
urban blocks has a long history, and secondly, that these blocks were (at least
initially) occupied by internally oriented courtyard houses, and as such did not
address the streets that they enclosed.

UNDERSTANDING THE BLOCK 7

This relationship to the street appears to have been fundamentally altered by later
Roman city building. Urban remains at the mercantile Roman city of Ostia have
been relatively well preserved and the archaeological excavations of four-storey
insulae dating to the 3rd century BCE7 show an urban form we can more readily
associate with contemporary urban blocks (see Figure 1.2). The excavated block
at Ostia is lined with shops at street level, with a series of passages and entrances
leading to apartments overlooking the public street and a garden courtyard. The
interior of the block contains shared open space with two further apartment
blocks, and as such, creates what we defne as a ‘nested perimeter block’.

0 25 50m

1.2 A mixed-use block of apartments and shops, Ostia.

8 THE URBAN BLOCK

THE MEDIEVAL BLOCK

A new phase of urban development took place during the medieval period,
between the 10th and 11th centuries CE, during which the political and
economic climate in Europe regained some semblance of stability. The direct
corollary of the masterplanned city of the Greeks and Romans (whether gridded
or adopting a radial or other pattern) is the unplanned, seemingly ‘organic’ one,
which is most commonly associated with the medieval towns developed during
this period. As Spiro Kostof8 argues in The City Shaped: Urban Patterns and
Meanings Through History, this apparent dichotomy is problematic. What reads
as unordered may on closer examination prove to be an ‘irregular pattern’. Rather
than being ‘unplanned’, it is more accurate to suggest that such forms resulted
from the accumulated decisions of a greater number of agents over a longer
period of time. It is also well documented that ‘new’ medieval towns (i.e. ones that
did not inherit a pre-existing urban form) were often laid out by surveyors, albeit
on occasion not very accurate ones.9 Because medieval land division was fxed
with reference to metes and bounds (natural features or pre-urban land divisions
and pathways), as well as with the use of instruments, it is not surprising that the
results would yield seemingly organic forms, which contrast with the more orderly
gridded masterplans of both earlier and subsequent eras.

Understanding the historical forces that brought these organic-seeming urban

forms into being helps to explain the diversity of block formation that emerged
during this medieval period.

According to Hindle10 there are fve types of medieval plan layouts found in Britain:

■ Towns with central marketplaces (usually triangular owing to the

meeting of three roads).
■ Linear towns (usually a street with a widening to accommodate a
marketplace).
■ Castle towns (often consisting of a single street running from the
castle gates and surrounded by a protective ditch or wall).
■ Rectilinear plans (planned towns with a rectilinear block pattern,
extending to a few examples with gridded plans consisting of more
than twelve rectilinear blocks).
■ Composite plans (plans that grew in diferent ways over time, for
example organic in origin with planned extensions or alternatively
planned cores with ad hoc extensions).

Elsewhere, in the later medieval period, bastide towns – established in Southern

France, Northern Spain, the Netherlands and Wales – took on a more deliberately
gridded arrangement. The more orderly form of these settlements can be read
as an expression of control by wealthy nobles over land for farming, trade and
defence over contested territories.11

UNDERSTANDING THE BLOCK 9

Together these illustrate the complexity of urban morphology as an area of
study, serving to highlight some of the factors that challenge the conventional
assumption that the block is either the result of a rational masterplan (i.e. gridded) or
the result of happenstance (i.e. organic). Rather the history of urban form is multi-
layered, with places being subject to multiple infuences over time. Where a block
layout originally formed as the result of a gridded masterplan, this order may also
be disrupted by later occupiers. For example, the Roman grid is outward-related
but the Islamic ‘block’ is inward-looking, and so Roman gridded towns that were
taken over by Muslim invaders were re-moulded to suit the cultural and religious
norms of Islam. Diferent processes disrupted the grid in the West, for example the
primacy of the marketplace was asserted over and above the Roman forum and
asserted a radial hierarchy of movement for which the grid is not so well suited.12

One such city is London. Within the Roman city walls the primary streets maintained
their original alignments but over time the grid was disrupted and made more
irregular. In Figure 1.3 the medieval block is at frst subdivided into generous burgage
plots occupied by street buildings, with space for cooking, workshops and market
gardening within the interior of the block.13 As the population grows and demand
for space within the walls intensifes, there is a pattern of further subdivision of the
plots, together with gradual encroachment of buildings inwards. In some cases,
the original plots are inflled completely with a sub-set of single-aspect dwellings
accessed by a narrow court.

Changes to the economic structure of towns in the 19th and early 20th centuries
saw a gradual reversal of subdivisions, leading to an amalgamation of plots to
suit new building types. The earliest available Ordnance Survey mapping of the
medieval city of Canterbury (which was also founded atop a Roman settlement),
shows how the grain of plots that make up the block are gradually increased
in size over the period of a century (see Figure 1.4). The left-hand block shows
the former Buttermarket at the upper north-western side, adjacent to the
Cathedral Precincts. The Buttermarket is typical of many medieval towns, as it
was formed at the intersection of three radial routes, with direct access to the
Cathedral Precincts. Following bomb damage sustained during World War II
the redevelopment reinstated the former medieval lane known as Longmarket,
dividing the 19th century block back into two separate blocks. The plan introduced
a new open space on the south-eastern side and was designed in a historicist
manner to recreate the appearance of individual buildings occupying small plots.
Although the appearance is deemed satisfactory insofar as it ‘fts in’ with its
authentically historic surroundings,14 it is important to note that the block cannot
function in quite the same way as its medieval neighbour, because the buildings
are not independent of one another. The interior of the block is raised on a podium
accessed from the street and as such is shared by the buildings surrounding
it. Although the rear confguration is fundamentally altered, the outward facing
units share the pre-eminent relationship between the block and the street that is
characteristic of many medieval towns.

10 THE URBAN BLOCK

0 25 50m 0 25 50m

1.3 (Left) Medieval block, London (note the pattern of plot subdivision within the block, if any, is not
known). (Right) The same block mapped in 1677 by John Ogilby and William Morgan, showing the
dense pattern of plot subdivision, leading in some cases to the development of ‘court’ housing in
what would have started its urban life as a single plot.

0 25 50m 0 25 50m

1.4 (Left) The Buttermarket Canterbury, as subdivided in the 19th century. (Right) The same block as subdivided in the 20th century.

UNDERSTANDING THE BLOCK 11

NEOCLASSICAL AND BAROQUE BLOCK PATTERNS

Prior to the 19th century the accumulated wealth of the British Empire, derived
from its colonies, facilitated new masterplanned extensions to several major cities.
The Georgian terrace (a form of row house) reinvented the medieval townhouse in
the classical manner and recombined it with masterplanned extensions following
classical principles. The results, for example Edinburgh New Town, Bath, the
Gardiner and Fitzwilliam Estates in Dublin and Belgravia in London, were formed
essentially of mews blocks, hierarchically separating the main residence (fronting
the street) from the buildings serving it (accessed from a rear lane called a mews),
and thereby avoiding the need for its wealthy inhabitants to mix with the hoi
polloi. As the mews block lends itself to orthogonal forms, the so-called ‘great
estates’ were largely gridded, albeit with the inclusion of set-piece architectural
compositions characteristic of the period such as crescents and circuses, and by
formal squares and gardens.

With the growth of the middle classes the mews block was recast in simpler
form as the row block, with simple houses backing onto one another or sharing
a rear access lane. This, in a variety of price brackets, formed the staple of
suburbanisation in Britain throughout the Victorian era (mid to late 19th century)
through to the Edwardian period and well into the 20th century. Growing concern
over the deprivations of overcrowding and poverty led in the UK to the adoption
of certain by-laws imposing minimum standards on the block. So-called ‘by-
law housing’, adopted locally from 1840 and nationally by 1877,15 represented
a step up from medieval courts with better sanitation, lighting, separation of
living functions and higher ceilings, etc. Row blocks with a rear access lane also
facilitated the collection of foul waste from outdoor privies.

The newly laid out suburbs of row housing lent themselves to long blocks laid out
in grids but, as illustrated in Figure 1.5, these were generally unrelieved by open
space, parks or gardens.

In comparison, Baroque planning favoured the dynamism of the diagonal and the
circus over the grid, and although not wholeheartedly adopted by the English, this
radically altered the shape of Paris and numerous absolutist states (see Figure 1.6).

12 THE URBAN BLOCK

0 100m 0 100m

1.5 (Left) The gridded blocks of Georgian Belgravia punctuated by formal squares. (Right) Victorian terraced housing from the
19th century.

0 100m 0 100m

1.6 (Left) Paris after re-planning by Hausmann in the Baroque manner. (Right) The Parisian Left Bank – one of the few areas of
Paris unafected by Hausmann.

UNDERSTANDING THE BLOCK 13

BLOCK PLANNING IN THE NEW WORLD

Where the grid lost out to the diagonal in some places (e.g. Washington), it was
adopted in swathes across both North and South America, where with a few
exceptions (e.g. New Haven) it became the default model for colonialization
from the early 16th century in South America through to the late 18th century
in North America.

One of the most well-known gridiron plans, Manhattan, typifes this approach
(see Figure 1.7). The Common Council of New York appointed Commissioners at
the beginning of the 19th century to lay out a plan for Manhattan (known as ‘the
Commissioner’s Plan’), which they duly produced in 1811, based on a repeating
grid of rectangular blocks. At frst glance Manhattan’s grid appears relentless,
but while the width of every block is the same, the length of blocks varies. Its grid
embodies a hierarchy of movement related to the wider avenues and narrower
cross streets. The diagonal of Broadway relieves the monotony by cutting across
the grid, although like Cerdà’s Barcelona, the lone diagonal seems to be an
afterthought. But whereas the grid for Manhattan is largely uninterrupted by
parks or open spaces, there are other, more sophisticated precedents worthy
of closer inspection.

Savannah, Georgia, regarded by Campbell16 as a masterpiece of planned urbanism,

is a relatively early example (see Figure 1.8). Rather than simply repeating near
identical blocks, the Savannah grid is made up of a sequence of discrete but
repeating block modules – superblocks – each imbued with its own hierarchy of
movement, form, function and open space.

Laid out in 1733, each ‘superblock’ comprised a ‘ward’ with a square at the
centre. The western and eastern sides of the square were fanked with plots
reserved for civic and commercial buildings. The northern and southern sides
were reserved for houses. According to Kostof,17 the ward was made up of four
tithings, each composed of ten freeholders with a constable at the head. The
40 house plots in each ward were arranged as row blocks with a shared alley
or service lane. Because the house plots lined east–west streets, the wards
were united visually, and, of course, houses lining the edge of one ward faced
the houses lining the edge of the neighbouring ward as well. The frst wards
became the centre of the growing town, but the module was used for later
expansion well into the 19th century. Beyond that, the surviving wards are no
longer composed of tithings, and most of the central blocks have undergone
a process of plot amalgamation to facilitate the kinds of larger-scale buildings
and uses associated with the modern city (see Figure 1.9). Nevertheless, the
hierarchy of block structure has proved itself to be immensely successful and
adaptable to change, incorporating intimate pedestrian streets with cafés and
restaurants and public parks, surrounded by larger-scale civic and employment
uses (see Figure 1.10).

14 THE URBAN BLOCK

0 100m 0 100m

1.7 (Left) New York (Manhattan). (Right) Washington.

0 100m

1.8 Savannah ward blocks showing the superblock

structure, with smaller blocks nested within a
movement hierarchy.

UNDERSTANDING THE BLOCK 15

0 25 50m

1.9 Mixed-use blocks within a ward in Savannah.

1.10 View of pedestrian street in Savannah accessing the mixed-use blocks.

16 THE URBAN BLOCK

GRIDIRON BLOCKS IN EUROPE

Barcelona was extended in line with an 1858 plan by Cerdà, again using the
tried and trusted gridiron plan, but this time with chamfered square blocks
of around 113m. Although Cerdà’s plan was bisected by a diagonal ‘X’, this
almost seems an afterthought compared to Hausmann’s Parisian adventure.
The contrast in form between the ‘old city’, with its pre-existing medieval form,
and its ‘planned’ extension, is unequivocal (see Figure 1.11). Another gridiron
extension from the same period, but this time following an 1860s plan by Hobrecht
for Berlin, introduced tightly knit rectangular tenement blocks. The density of
accommodation, combined with inadequate ventilation or open space, provided
ammunition for campaigners and modernisers who simultaneously equated both
the medieval block and the 19th century European grid, and by extension the
urban block, as a symptom of urban deprivation and misery.

Contrasting dramatically with Berlin’s cramped apartment blocks, the city of

Copenhagen responded to its housing shortage with far larger urban blocks,
following a planned extension drawn up by its City Engineer, Charles Ambt,
towards the end of the 19th century. These ‘mega blocks’ comprised a more or
less continuous perimeter of apartments surrounding a generous shared open
space.18 Whereas the planned extensions to Berlin and Barcelona comprised
smaller blocks that were then further subdivided into individual building plots, it is
noteworthy that the entirety of the blocks are occupied by single buildings, rather
than being subdivided into plots. Although this is not unusual in Copenhagen, it
is rare in 19th century masterplanning. In some instances the austere ‘street wall’
(i.e. the outside face of the block) hides a courtyard with the proportions of a city
park. Also contrasting with the traditional (outward-facing) perimeter block, the
outer ‘public’ face is not distinguished here from the inner ‘private’ one, and the
internal layout of apartments allows residents freedom of choice over whether
to occupy the ‘front’ rooms as living spaces and the backs as bedrooms, or vice
versa. Rather than adopting a rigorous gridiron plan, and following criticism that
his initial plan was too boring, Ambt’s masterplan is more wilfully shaped than a
standard grid, with changes in the alignments of streets (see Figure 1.12). The
result is more lozenge- or trapezoid-shaped blocks. Taking these characteristics
together – the shared access to green space and the ‘planned picturesque’ –
the Ambt plan can be read as combining elements of garden city thinking (in
particular its association of green space with healthy living) with aspects of the
traditional urban block (a perimeter of buildings surrounded by a connected
network of streets).

As in Copenhagen, the Dutch city of Amsterdam also took a hands-on role in

addressing its shortage of afordable housing at the turn of the 20th century. The
government passed a housing act in 1901 that required municipalities to clear
slums and to establish masterplanned extensions with the express purpose of
providing afordable housing either directly or through housing associations.19
Like Ambt’s plan for Copenhagen, Berlage’s more extensive masterplan for South
Amsterdam (see Figure 1.12) echoes both Baroque principles on the one hand
(an evident concern with axes, perspective and promenades), and the principles

UNDERSTANDING THE BLOCK 17

of the Garden City Movement taking root in the UK on the other (provision of
public open spaces as well as private gardens and ‘breathing space’ for its
inhabitants). The dwellings themselves, comprising stacked apartments, with
the interior of the block given over to private gardens owned by the ground foor
residents, were not innovative in a Dutch context, although the early modernist
expression of the architecture (not designed by Berlage himself) speaks to an
emerging tension between a modernist aesthetic and traditional approaches
to masterplanning.

18 THE URBAN BLOCK

0 100m 0 100m

1.11 (Left) Barcelona post-Cerdà. (Right) The medieval core, unafected by Cerdà.

0 100m 0 100m

1.12 (Left) Extract from Ambt’s masterplan for Copenhagen. (Right) Extract from Berlage’s masterplan for South Amsterdam.

UNDERSTANDING THE BLOCK 19

THE BLOCK IN COLONIAL AFRICA AND ARABIA

Alongside physical factors, there are more nuanced, social, economic and
cultural forces which shape the block, as seen in the contrast between urban
block formation in Western culture and Muslim culture, and the impact of
Western masterplanning ideas on that culture. This is most easily illustrated
with reference to a traditional Arabic urban structure typifed by the Medina,
Marrakech, where narrow derbs give access to a limited number of courtyard
houses (see Figure 1.13). These groupings are based on familial, tribal and
ethnic divisions and predicated on the requirement in Islamic religious law to
shield women from view. Here, the narrow, dead-end lanes serve to restrict
through access and subtle changes in direction are combined with the walled
enclosure of the courtyard dwellings that simultaneously provide shade from the
sun and shield their inhabitants from unwanted intrusion.

The residential clusters themselves formed semi-autonomous social units – a

kind of introverted superblock – each establishing and controlling their own local
mosque, hamam, bakery and shared street fountains.

0 25 50m

1.13 The Medina, Marrakech.

The modern Arabic city is much harder to read. Yasser Elsheshtawy notes in
‘Urban Dualities in the Arab World’ that ‘…it is a setting where one can observe the
tensions of modernity and tradition; religiosity and secularism; exhibitionism and
veiling; in short a place of contradictions and paradoxes’.20 Modern Arabic cities
such as Doha and Dubai are a product of globalisation as much as anything else.

20 THE URBAN BLOCK

 Reliant on a large immigrant labour force, segregation remains a feature, but this is
manifested in less subtle ways: the native population occupying gated compounds
and the remainder occupying shanty towns.

In another African city – Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso – French colonisers at

the turn of the 20th century imposed a rational grid, but as shown in Figure 1.14,
these were walled in and occupied by traditional round mud huts, highlighting the
somewhat farcical imposition of one culture’s agenda over another.

Following independence, the ruling government employed Dutch town planners

led by Coen Beeker to replace informal settlements with a new masterplan
that would regularise land holdings and provide sanitary drainage conditions.
Figure 1.15 is redrawn from a survey by Beeker21 and at frst glance reads as
an ‘organic’ settlement of irregular but connected blocks. As such it difers
from the Medina (which is more impermeable) but on closer examination, the
‘blocks’ are composed of enclosed compounds containing small makeshift
dwellings. The masterplanned grid, in contrast, reads as a wholly rational grid
of blocks subdivided into equal plots (Figures 1.16 and 1.17). The intervention
was politically successful but it is unclear whether it owed its success to the
masterplan or the fact that the people were provided with sanitary drainage and
a legitimate stake-holding in their plot. Sufce to say the masterplan creates
outward-facing plots where previously there were inward-facing ones, taking no
cues from its informal predecessor.

1.14 Aerial view of Ouagadougou taken by Walter Mittelholzer during the early 1930s.

UNDERSTANDING THE BLOCK 21

 0 25 50m

1.15 Informal settlement in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

0 25 50m

1.16 The Dutch masterplan, created by Coen Beeker in the 1980s, showing how
the informal settlement was re-planned..

22 THE URBAN BLOCK

1.17 The same area of Ouagadougou as viewed from above.

UNDERSTANDING THE BLOCK 23

THE MODERN BLOCK

The 20th century witnessed a concerted move away from the traditional
urban block in favour of new approaches to urban form: notably high-density
freestanding point blocks and high-density slab blocks, alongside lower-density
forms that separated car movement from pedestrians. Both approaches eroded
the relationship of the block to the street associated with traditional urban blocks,
and both ultimately failed. Towards the latter part of the century into the 21st
century, as realisation dawned that the widespread social and environmental
problems associated with many such developments were in large part attributable
to the urban forms themselves, attention once again returned to the positive
qualities of traditional urban forms – especially perimeter urban blocks – which
began to be reasserted in urban design theory and practice. A more persistent
trend – suburbanisation – also afected the fortunes of the block, with subtle yet
longer-lasting and more widespread efects.

In the early part of the century the population of Britain’s major cities and towns,
especially London, continued to grow apace and their demand for housing was
accommodated through the ongoing construction of speculatively built estates, very
much in the mode of operation already established by the Georgian estate builders.

The resultant inner suburbs comprised monotonous blocks of row housing,

however, attracting negative attention following World War II. Ironically, areas of
by-law housing that survived both the war and later slum clearance proved their
enduring appeal (once internal plumbing became available) by also surviving
their intended replacement – the tower block – in many cases.

In contrast to the urban extensions masterplanned for Copenhagen and Amsterdam,

the Garden City Movement in Britain favoured a more overtly ‘suburban’ model.
Initiated in Britain by Ebenezer Howard at the turn of the 19th century and realised
in the 20th century, the movement was an altruistic response to the conditions
associated with overcrowding, fuelled by a vision to combine the benefts of town
and country living and working together in the form of new self-contained satellite
towns. Consisting essentially of a diagram, his ideas found expression in the creation
of new towns and suburbs by architects Parker and Unwin at Letchworth, Welwyn
and Hampstead, respectively, and consequently exerted a long-lasting infuence
on the design of new suburban blocks: based loosely on perimeter blocks but
comprising low-density single-family dwellings with individual private gardens
instead of apartment blocks.

Unwin’s initial sketch masterplan for Hampstead sought to group as many houses
as possible around a park, with views of Hampstead Heath. This was to be achieved
using one of Parker and Unwin’s core design ideas: the close. This innovation, the
forerunner of the modern cul-de-sac, combined with a clear hierarchy of entrance,
centre, axis, landmark and edge, provided a clear spatial organisation. Another
‘innovation’ of garden suburb ‘block’ design saw the introduction of shared allotment
gardens in the interior of some of its blocks (see Figure 1.18). This recalls the
structure of the medieval block, where market gardening was a necessity, and harks

24 THE URBAN BLOCK

 back to the rural ideal of the movement for self-sufciency. With the added input of
an extension of the original plan to the north-east by Edward Lutyens, a monumental
square with radiating boulevards introduced a favour of Baroque grandeur that
overwhelms the planned picturesque of the original masterplan, and seems out of
scale with its domestically scaled urban fabric.22

0 25 50m 0 25 50m

1.18 Part of Hampstead Garden Suburb showing the loose perimeter 1.19 Plan of a Radburn block, New Jersey showing segregation
block structure, folded to create closes and enclosing allotment of car and pedestrian movement (note: houses shown
gardens. indicatively).

The Garden City Movement manifested itself in other forms throughout Europe
and North America. For example, the New York Regional Planning Association
formulated a plan incorporating Clarence Perry’s ideas for neighbourhood units
centred on a primary school and community centre, serving a neighbourhood
population of around 5000 people. The concept discouraged through trafc and
its principles were taken a step further by Clarence Stein and Henry Wright’s built
proposals for a new suburb in Radburn, New Jersey (see Figure 1.19).23

Their 1928 plan for Radburn responded to rising levels of car trafc and the danger
this posed to children. Writing in 1957, Stein suggested that the prevailing level of
car trafc rendered the gridiron street pattern ‘…as obsolete as the fortifed town
wall’.24 He observed that the roadbed was the children’s main play space, and that
the grid made all streets equally inviting to trafc, as well as subjecting pedestrians
to 20 risky street crossings per mile.

The essence of the Radburn strategy was to impose a hierarchy of roads serving
diferent categories of road users: service roads for direct access to house
clusters (dead-end streets); secondary collector roads around the edges of the
superblocks; through roads linking neighbourhoods; and highways for connection

UNDERSTANDING THE BLOCK 25

to the outside world. This involved separating pedestrian movement from car
movement and turning the internal planning of houses around so that habitable
rooms (living rooms and bedrooms) would face the pedestrian walkways while
service rooms (kitchens, utility rooms, garages and bathrooms) would face the
access roads. Each house cluster/cul-de-sac was separated by a pedestrian path
linking the collector roads to a centralised linear park. The plan for Radburn was
not fully implemented in New Jersey but enough of it was completed by 1930 for
the rest of the world to take notice.

Interrupted by World War II and following the widespread destruction of many

urban areas, new rationalist planning ideas based on the separation of four main
functions – living, working, recreation and transport – were promulgated by the
Athens Charter, which emerged from the Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture
Moderne (CIAM) held in 1933 (published a decade later by Le Corbusier) and
were widely adopted by planners and architects in their plans for reconstruction
and rehousing worldwide.

Two parallel thought processes further afected block layouts: frstly, the
segregation of pedestrians from cars; secondly, the creation of self-contained
mid- or high-rise point blocks that would accommodate the masses served
by ‘streets in the air’ (a term coined to describe deck-access housing). Thus,
in post-war Britain new development tended to manifest itself in one of two
ways: high-rise residential towers in urban areas, and low-rise estates following
Radburn principles in suburban areas, including new towns such as Stevenage
and Hemel Hempstead.

Le Corbusier’s theoretical projects for freestanding towers and slabs such as his
‘Plan Voisin’ and ‘Ville Radieuse’ produced in the 1930s, and his built work such
as the Unité d’Habitation in Marseille, which included an enclosed internal street
on the 5th foor, inspired numerous like-minded schemes such as the Highpoint
Towers built in 1933 (designed by the Tecton Group) and the meandering Park
Hill development in Shefeld (designed by Jack Lynn and Ivor Smith). But applied
to damper climates, with poor connections and occupied by disadvantaged
communities, they created the perfect conditions for communities to fester
and ultimately disintegrate, creating a new kind of slum scenario with residents
dislocated from the city and deprived of any of the benefts of city life.

Whereas Le Corbusier’s Unité block attempted to internalise the street, British

versions tended to move the access ways back to the outside of the building.
Both versions elevated themselves from the ground plane and thereby negated
the traditional relationship of dwelling to street found in traditional row blocks or
perimeter blocks. Although the back-to-back slum dwellings replaced by Park Hill
were notoriously squalid and crime-ridden, Park Hill also declined, and lay vacant
and vandalised for many years before being taken on as a presently ongoing
regeneration project by Urban Splash (Figures 1.20 and 1.21).

26 THE URBAN BLOCK

0 25 50m

1.20 Partial plan of the Park Hill block, Shefeld, showing the loose
enclosure of shared spaces.

1.21 Aerial view of the Park Hill blocks.

The publication of the infuential Trafc in Towns report in the UK by Colin Buchanan
in 1963 set the scene for a new response to the growing problem of trafc congestion
along similar lines as the Radburn estate more than 30 years earlier. The Buchanan
Report posited that trafc is generated by occupation of buildings, yet historic towns
are not able to accommodate either trafc that has business in the town, or trafc that
is attempting to pass through it. Buchanan recognised that accessibility alone wasn’t
the problem. Cars also generated noise, fumes, ‘intimidation’ and visual intrusion and
he pointed out that the ability to walk around the town unfettered by these intrusions
amounted to ‘…a useful guide to the civilised quality of an urban area.’25 Following
this line of reasoning the report proposed the concept of ‘environmental areas’
comprising discrete cells that would be protected from through trafc by imposing
a hierarchical network of primary, district and local distributor roads. Buchanan

UNDERSTANDING THE BLOCK 27

described this arrangement, saying: ‘The system may be likened to the trunk, limbs,
branches, and fnally the twigs (corresponding to the access roads) of a tree.’26

Buchanan realised that such a system required ‘comprehensive’ intervention over

a wide area and already sensed that the opportunity to impose such solutions on
existing town centres would be hampered by their ongoing development. The idea
gained a great deal of traction in the planning of new towns and new suburbs, and
had signifcant implications for block-based planning.

One such example, New Ash Green in Kent, designed by the architect Eric Lyons
and built in the late 1960s, illustrates the idea manifested in a more subtle way
than Radburn, but with similar implications to the housing accessed by cul-de-
sacs leading to garages and parking courts served by a distributor road (see
Figure 1.22). The backs of the houses are oriented to the parking areas and the
fronts face towards linear green spaces, linked by pedestrian-only pathways.
Here, the landscape is given primary importance, and wraps the block as well
as insinuating itself through them. What is singularly diferent from the Radburn
layout (and evident in numerous other ‘Radburn-type’ layouts around the UK
and elsewhere) is that the individual house plots do not directly line the access
road. This fundamental diference in form is reinforced by the fact that whereas
the house plots lining the Radburn cul-de-sacs are clearly visible across their
low-fenced property boundaries, the ones at New Ash Green and most similar
developments are enclosed by high and impermeable fences. These two factors
together efectively isolate the access roads from direct lines of sight and are
criticised as an inherent problem with the urban form, because the parking areas
and segregated pathways are vulnerable to antisocial behaviours.

0 25 50m

1.22 Partial plan of New Ash Green, Kent.

28 THE URBAN BLOCK

THE POST-MODERN BLOCK

These diferent examples of urban form demonstrate some of the thinking

that infuenced a concerted shift away from the idea of the traditional urban or
perimeter block as an urban form to be followed, much less celebrated. But a
pushback did occur, and one that – directly or indirectly – did lead to a ‘root and
branch’ reappraisal of those urban structures that emerged from the Athens
Charter, which segregated land-use zoning and trends in both suburban and
urban development, and favoured the cul-de-sac, courtyard block and the point
block over its perimeter block forebears.

Jane Jacobs railed at the ongoing attempts by North American planners to

‘improve’ the urban environment along the lines advocated by CIAM in her
famous book of 1961 The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Jacobs was
primarily interested in street life, rather than the block, but realised that the size
and shape of blocks in her native New York were critical factors in generating or
stifing the potential for street life to occur, stating: ‘Long blocks, in their nature,
thwart the potential advantages that cities ofer to incubation, experimentation,
and many small or special enterprises, insofar as these depend on drawing their
customers or clients from among much larger cross-sections of passing public.’27

The British-American architect and design theorist Christopher Alexander issued

another broadside in 1972, deconstructing Buchanan’s idea that designing urban
areas in the model of a tree, with diferent levels of hierarchy and segregation
of uses and modes of transport, is a ‘good idea’. Alexander argued that the
‘natural city’ is not a tree, but a semi-lattice, comprising overlaps of numerous
diferent phenomena that cumulatively add up to more than the sum of their
parts. Alexander decries the ‘tree-like’ features of several city plans and suburbs,
including criticism of the idea of the neighbourhood as a self-contained unit, the
superblock, separation of functions, segregation of play into enclosures and the
segregation of cars from pedestrians.

Further attacks on the functionalist orthodoxy of urban thinking followed soon

after. The civil rights movement in the USA challenged racist agendas behind
certain programmes of urban renewal and highways construction. Feminists
began to critique the sexist assumptions underlying the creation of urban (and
suburban) and domestic space. Meanwhile environmentalists were increasingly
challenging the polluting and alienating efects of car trafc.28 Oscar Newman’s
concept of ‘defensible space’ (published in 1973) lent statistical evidence to
the issues that Jacobs might have felt intuitively: crime was more likely to occur
in the spaces between buildings for which no one felt responsible, compared
to the public streets that bordered them.29 His treatise recommended that the
distinction between public and private spaces should be unambiguous and, in so
doing, served to undermine planners’ confdence in the point block as a housing
model. Alice Coleman’s ‘Utopia on Trial’ was published in 1985 and mapped
the occurrence of antisocial behaviour across 4099 blocks of fats and 4172
individual houses. Importantly, she stressed that the higher incidence of crime
associated with high-rise fats was not correlated with indices of deprivation or

UNDERSTANDING THE BLOCK 29

unemployment.30 This statistical study confrmed the previously held conjecture
that the ambiguous urban spaces surrounding point block confgurations were
socially problematic by design.

Writing at the same time, in 1973, Nicholas Taylor did for the inner London
suburb what Jacobs did for Greenwich Village and Manhattan. His book The
Village in the City extolled the virtues of the terraced house: its mediation of
public and private space, together with ‘…the efortless ability of the traditional
back yard to absorb on equal terms the baby’s pram, the toddler’s toys, the
housewife’s washing lines and the dog’s kennel, every one of them closely
overlooked from the kitchen’.31

Typifying the West’s disenchantment with the kind of wholesale regeneration

characteristic of many post-war projects, Berlin’s International Building Exhibition
(IBA) in 1984–1987 advocated a departure from modernist towers and slabs, and a
return to a more sensitive and contextual approach based on the perimeter block
and referencing the city’s pre-existing urban morphology. Formally, its objective
was to reinstate the function of the block as the ‘anonymous’ urban fabric of the
city punctuated by individual civic buildings, which gain symbolic importance by
contrast to this anonymity, while reinstating the role of the street as the ‘theatre’ of
public life. Rob Krier’s plan for Ritterstrasse (see Figure 1.23) followed the building
line and height of the adjacent 19th century blocks but was further subdivided
with internal courtyards and crossed by pedestrian streets.32 The resulting block
form, which is made up of 35 individual buildings by six diferent architectural
practices, clearly articulates a hierarchy of space from the public life of the street
grid, semi-public internal streets and private courtyards.

0 25 50m

1.23 Block at Ritterstrasse, Berlin.

30 THE URBAN BLOCK

In the USA, the New Urbanism movement also looked to the past to recreate a sense
of neighbourhood and community it felt was destroyed by post-war suburbanisation.
While the built projects espousing the tenets of New Urbanism have been criticised
for their nostalgia (and being aimed at the afuent), they were nonetheless radical for
seeking to create ‘walkable’ and accessible neighbourhoods formed of small blocks
in place of disconnected cul-de-sacs, and in this way at least tried to create the
preconditions for communities to form by themselves.

While their projects have also been criticised for lacking ‘urbanity’, projects such
as Battery Park in New York did in fact facilitate buildings by diferent architects
and developers (provided they followed prescribed guidelines in the form of
a design code). Allowing for this precondition to urbanity to be ‘built in’ to the
masterplan, albeit in a watered-down format, should not be downplayed.

The New Urbanists consolidated their principles in the Charter of the New
Urbanism published in 1999. The principles are articulated across three scales:
the city/town; neighbourhood/district/corridor (used to describe connectors of
neighbourhoods or districts, e.g. avenues); and block/street/building. In this last
category the principles advocate the physical defnition of streets that are safe,
pedestrian-friendly and accessible.33 In doing so, they avoid referring to specifc
block types, but the avoidance of cul-de-sac forms or gated developments is implicit.

Failing urban centres combined with sprawling commuter belts in Britain prompted
the then Labour government to commission an ‘Urban Task Force’ led by Richard
Rogers. Its 1999 report34 was primarily aimed at regenerating urban areas but
advocated urban design principles informed by traditional cities and suburbs. A
recurring theme of the report is the importance of permeability and accessibility
to place-making, referencing the New Urbanists’ critique of cul-de-sac suburban
forms, and the failure of modernist slab and point blocks to create attractive or
safe streets. The report infuenced design policy in many areas including the
subsequent publication of Planning Policy Guidance Note 3: Housing (PPG3),
promoting higher density housing, By Design: Urban Design in the Planning
System, and The Urban Design Compendium, promoting ‘best practice’ in urban
design, all published in 2000. The Urban Design Compendium is notable in this
regard because it widened the discussion from general urban design principles
to include specifc guidance promoting perimeter block types.35

Separately, these various projects, movements and manifestos project a somewhat

bewildering array of ideas and agendas. Taken together, they demonstrate an
emerging consensus that low-density suburbs based on cul-de-sacs, alongside
high-density urban development based on slab and point blocks, needed to be
rethought, and that the solution lies in traditional urban forms. It highlights the
continued relevance of the urban block and the street, and the importance of bringing
the perimeter block back to the forefront of urban design thinking. The continued
relevance of the plot to the block and street remains somewhat overlooked, however,
leading us to assert that the (traditional) urban block is dead, long live the block!

UNDERSTANDING THE BLOCK 31

2
DEFINING
THE BLOCK
Having outlined a brief history of the block and some of the theories underpinning
diferent approaches to designing blocks, it’s important to understand how this
relates to contemporary urban design and ways it might be applied to how we
design now, which requires a more forensic dissection of block types.

This chapter sets out a ‘taxonomy’ of urban forms – block types – describing
various options for any given parcel of land, of which the ‘perimeter block’ is just
one confguration. The relationship of diferent block types to their surrounding
street network is touched upon for each example. It also refers to urban forms that
are not ‘blocks’ in the strict sense of the word, but are central to our understanding
of the block, or are found in hybridised forms of blocks.

33
TERMINOLOGY

The block is described by the Urban Design Compendium as the land area
defned by the grid of streets: ‘It can vary considerably in shape and size according
to the confguration of streets, preferred orientation and topography, for instance,
as well as the nature of plot subdivisions and building types that are to be
accommodated.’1

The development of the land enclosed within the block boundary can then be
interpreted in a variety of ways. The list of potential physical confgurations below
sets out a taxonomy of basic forms that an urban block layout might take on. These
have been organised into fve diferent block types, and a further section on related
urban forms, which includes three signifcant variants of block design that form the
basis of some hybrid block types. Each of the block types (or other urban forms)
has both an exterior face – usually to the public street, but sometimes to a private
street or yard – and a semi-public/private interior within the block itself:

A – The perimeter block

B – The row block
C – The point block
D – The ribbon block
E – The courtyard block
F – Other variants of urban form
Court
Close
Cul-de-sac

The list of types has been arranged on the basis of a rough spectrum, extending
from public-facing through to private-facing.

The ‘street’ is the space that is made manifest by the thresholds between public
and private space, and its success as a place in its own right (as opposed to its
functionality as a conduit for movement) depends to a very large extent on the
design of the blocks themselves: the way the blocks are arranged in relation to
their neighbours, and the control of their edge conditions. This is true for all listed
block types and urban forms however, it is precisely the degree to which any given
confguration engages with the public realm in general, and the street in particular,
that is key.

The merits and compromises involved in designing each of these block types
or forms will be considered here, as well as ways that they might merge and
hybridise. As with any taxonomy, the defnition of types is useful only in so far
as it imposes order across a range of forms that can in some way be identifed
as being diferent from one another. In reality, it is rare to fnd two blocks that
are exactly the same, and the intention is to aid understanding rather than to
compartmentalise design thinking. As such, some existing blocks are ‘pure’
versions of the types listed, while others are more difcult to categorise. These
function as hybrids, sharing characteristics between one or more types. It is the

34 THE URBAN BLOCK

 complexity of the consequent relationships these oscillations of form set up in
the social realm that makes the study of urban form so fascinating.

The discussions that follow revolve around a series of simplifed diagrams, and
corresponding photo examples, each illustrating the main features of the type
(or sub-type). For simplicity’s sake, the diagrams adopt orthogonal shapes. This
should not be taken to infer that the discussion only relates to orthogonal types.
Blocks can (and often do) take on warped or distorted shapes to respond to the lie
of the land, pre-existing forms, natural constraints or the whim of the designer.

2.1 Contemporary perimeter block, Den Haag, the Netherlands.

DEFINING THE BLOCK 35

BLOCK TYPES

A – THE PERIMETER BLOCK

The term ‘perimeter block’ is thought to have originated with Bentley et al.’s infuential
manual for designers, Responsive Environments: A Manual for Designers, frst
published in 1985.2 Based on the premise that ‘all buildings need two faces: a front
onto public space, for entrances and most public activities, and a back where the most
private activities can go’, they pointed out that, applied consistently, the front/back
distinction leads to a type of layout that they called ‘perimeter block development’.

The defning characteristic of the perimeter block identifed by the Urban Design
Compendium is that the edges of the block are lined with buildings. According to
the Compendium, this is the best way to accommodate a diversity of building types
and uses at medium to high densities, while ensuring that building frontages relate
positively to the public realm.3 The ‘pure’ perimeter block, with an unbroken or
continuous lining, is relatively rare; it is unusual to fnd an urban block with no breaks
or gaps and a consistently outward-facing set of façades. The idiosyncrasies of the
perimeter block and its departures from a ‘pure form’ are interesting to ponder as
these will have been determined by a broad range of social, practical and economic
demands, and will concurrently infuence these demands.

The accessible relationship of the perimeter block to its urban context is probably its
most important feature from an urban designer’s point of view. Strategically placing
primary entrances on the street façade animates the street with the comings and
goings of inhabitants, while locating living/working spaces increases the visibility
of daily activity within the block and reinforces the sense of surveillance that
overlooking of the street creates. The street benefts greatly from these features,
although achieving a good design for the rear or inner core is more complex.

The tussle between the outer and inner domains of the block is set up
inadvertently by its form, but quickly becomes the primary consideration for the
designer who needs to negotiate an appropriate line between the push and pull
factors of achieving an active street or an active inner court. This negotiation,
and the impetus on the designer to resolve fronts and backs, fuels an almost
exponential cascade of alternative confgurations in the ongoing attempt to
achieve that ideal harmonious balance between the humming and dynamic
street and the encouragement of the cosy community within the block.

Much of this negotiation hinges on decision-making regarding the location of

entrances, and the placement of occupied live/work spaces that will overlook
the exterior or interior terrain. If all the entrances and living spaces are placed on
the outer perimeter, then the street will be active and overlooked while the inner
court will become a back-of-house zone that feels neglected. If all the entrances
are on the inside of the block, it ceases to be defned as a perimeter block and is
operating as a courtyard block instead. Achieving a happy balance of outer and
inner activity, with a focus on a more publicly oriented outer edge, is a signifcant
design challenge.

36 THE URBAN BLOCK

There is a general consensus that the outward-facing confguration of perimeter
blocks has signifcant social benefts for the life of the street. It does, however,
generate some important design implications, especially for the identity of the
block itself. The primacy given to the streetscape means that the inhabitant’s
experience of entering their ‘dwelling’ is through their own side of the block, and
from the space of the street itself, which is defned by their façade of the block
and the façade of the block opposite: they are therefore less cognizant of the sides
of the block they do not frequent, and more aware of the character/identity of the
street that they enter their dwelling from. The homogeneity of the block itself
as an entity with its own identity is therefore conditional in the perimeter block
confguration (as opposed to, say, the courtyard or square), because its edges/
sides (usually three or four) are never perceived at the same time.

Promotion of the street as the main urban ‘living space’ has a long and relatively
successful history. Where cities have grown incrementally on the basis of small plots
of land, the approach of designing from the streetscape back is systematically viable,
but it can be much more challenging in the contemporary context.

The ownership of parcels of land is usually organised by block, meaning that the
blocks themselves are often designed/commissioned/built independently of one
another, while the space between them (the street) is not subjected to the same
design scrutiny, the upshot being that the designer or designers of the block are
ultimately only considering the design of one-half of the streetscape edges, while
it is the interaction of these opposing edges that will ultimately determine the
success of the street as a whole. The designer(s) of the block may not particularly
value their role as an urban intermediary, and they may not be aware of – or
responsive to – the fact that they are designing four (–/+) diferent perimeters that
are fronting onto four potentially very diferent streets. This aspect of perimeter
block design is, however, important for the designer to take on board, especially
in terms of the alternative psychological ‘territories’ that outward-facing blocks
engender and, crucially, their diminished control in defning these.

There are, however, often ways of ameliorating this situation. On larger developments
of multiple blocks, for instance, the overall masterplan may include a design
code and/or a public realm design that serves to coordinate design across the
ownership divide. Splitting the ownership or development parcels of the whole
block into smaller plots of individual or grouped/phased developments can also
more efectively emulate the way streetscapes emerged historically. Plot-based
approaches to development have gained popularity in Germany (e.g. Tubingen,
Vauban and Rieselfeld near Freiburg) and the Netherlands (Ijburg in Amsterdam,
Homerusquartier, Almere), particularly where land is publicly owned. Although
this was once the default setting for traditional urban planning, plot-based
development in a contemporary setting usually involves a far greater amount of
coordination than orthodox approaches to property development are prepared to
facilitate, and relies on an acceptance that the development will not be ‘fnished’ all
at once. This is at once its strength and its potential weakness.

DEFINING THE BLOCK 37

A1 – PERIMETER BLOCK WITH BACK-TO-BACK PLOTS
Key Features
∙ Clear defnition of the street
∙ Clear distinction between
public and private realms
∙ Row house variants (ie.
denser housing without
garages) tend to push parking
onto the public street where
land ownership restrictions
usually prevent spaces from
being allocated to individual
units/plots

Design Challenges
∙ Designing for rear access to
the units
∙ Addressing the street corners
∙ Parking provision

2.2 Perimeter block with back-to-back plots (diagram).

One of the simplest forms of perimeter block is that of four rows that are placed
back to back. By ‘turning’ the plots to address each edge of the block, there are
no entirely blank gabled edges, although consideration given to side entrances
or fenestration on houses that turn corners can greatly improve the urban ofer.
This type has no shared ‘inner core’, so the primacy of the relationship of the
accommodation to the street is a given, and there is little sense of its own identity.
Rather identity is generated by enclosure of the street between facing blocks.

Potential for mixed use is constrained due to the lack of rear access and narrow
street frontage. In traditional Victorian neighbourhoods, it is commonplace
to find corner shops that have been converted from single-family dwellings,
allowing the proprietor to live over the shop. Figure 2.2 implies a perimeter block
composed of individual house plots, each with a front and rear garden. This
arrangement is common, but the same principles apply to plots comprising,
for example, individual apartment buildings or ofce buildings, with or without
gardens to the front and/or back.

Moving up in scale, the relationship between the outer edge of the perimeter block
and the space defned within it alters somewhat. To achieve higher densities and
mixed uses, housing may take the form of apartments and/or shops, ofces or live/
work units. The ground foor apartments may have rear gardens or the interior of
the block may be taken up entirely by communal space – open space, car parking
or both. Increasing the dimensions of the block also increases the usable size of
the inner space it encloses, thereby gaining an accessible interior domain with a
new secondary ‘frontage’ overlooking it with consequent budgetary implications.

38 THE URBAN BLOCK

The confgurations of larger-scale versions of the perimeter block are probably
endless, but the main types are identifed in the following subsections.

2.3 Suburban perimeter block with back-to-back plots.

2.4 Urban perimeter block with back-to-back plots.

DEFINING THE BLOCK 39

A2 – PERIMETER BLOCK WITH UNINHABITED COURTYARD

Key Features
∙ Clear defnition of the street
∙ Dilutes activation of the street
as car users tend to rely on
access from rear courtyard
∙ Provides for allocated parking
within rear court, without
reliance on on-street parking
∙ Rear courts are often
poorly overlooked with
ambiguous responsibility
for maintenance resulting in
spaces that are neglected
and/or prone to misuse

Design Challenges
∙ Imbuing the rear court area
with a sense of place and
sense of shared ownership
2.5 Perimeter block with uninhabited courtyard (diagram). ∙ Managing security and
refuse storage/collection
The perimeter block with uninhabited rear courtyard is relatively common (see ∙ Addressing the street corners
Figure 2.5). In relation to the English Garden Suburbs of the early 20th century,
some blocks were provided with allotment gardens. In more recent times, with the
growth in car ownership, the type mutated to accommodate car parking within
the courtyard. Due to its vulnerability to misuse, this rear domain is often gated for
use as a controlled parking court for inhabitants of the block. On a positive note,
the type removes the need to provide parking on the street or on-plot parking
accessed from the street. This is useful if there are reasons why it is expedient
to limit multiple driveways from the street, but the street nevertheless sufers if
the car users then opt to enter their properties via the back gate, in which case
the usage and status of the front door is undermined, and the street is deprived
of activity. The quality of this rear domain is often low, given its use as a car park,
bin storage, secondary façades – or even blank fencing – facing onto it, and the
prohibitive cost of providing good lighting or CCTV.

40 THE URBAN BLOCK

 A3 – PERIMETER BLOCK WITH INHABITED COURTYARD

Key Features
∙ Less clear defnition of street
structure; semi-public through
routes may be introduced
∙ Direct overlooking of the
semi-public realm within the
block is achieved through
locating some units within
the rear courts
∙ Allows for allocated parking
within rear court areas, whilst
avoiding the pitfalls associated
with the uninhabited
courtyard solution
∙ Less space-efcient due to
the complexity of achieving
such confgurations

Design Challenges
∙ Achieving a balance of front 2.6 Perimeter block with inhabited courtyard (diagram).
of block vs back of block
that afords units within
rear courts an attractive/
The perimeter block with an inhabited courtyard is an interesting variant of this
marketable setting type (see Figure 2.6). Here, some accommodation is included within the rear court
∙ Retaining an active street itself, which presents the advantages of higher-quality primary façades fronting
front onto the space and the passive surveillance entailed, while also ofering a sense of
alternative character and identity to this quieter of-street domain. The rear courtyard
basically becomes an extension of a hierarchical street network, which allows the
management and maintenance to be centralised, giving fexibility in the ownership
model for the development. Poundbury in Dorset has successfully instituted inhabited
rear courts incorporating pedestrian ‘lanes’, as discussed in more detail later on.

2.7 Inhabited courtyard at Poundbury, Dorset.

DEFINING THE BLOCK 41

A4 – PERIMETER BLOCK WITH COMMUNAL COURTYARD

Key Features
∙ Clear orientation of public
fronts to street with private/
semi-private backs oriented
towards communal space
within the block interior
∙ Opening a publicly accessible
route through the block
increases permeability,
though at the expense of
perceived security and
collective ownership
∙ Quality of communal space
is often compromised by
parking requirements, either
surface or undercroft

Design Challenges
∙ Striking a balance between
2.8 Closed perimeter block with communal courtyard (diagram). communal vs private gardens
and the interface between
them is a key design
The perimeter block that encloses a communal amenity area or garden is challenge for this variant
popular. This is often used by blocks containing apartments and/or mixed-use
accommodation, where residents beneft from a shared garden space, akin to
that of a courtyard block. The rear accommodation benefts from views over
greenery. The model can also be achieved by mixing single houses with private
rear gardens along some or all of its edges.

The courtyard/garden itself might either be ‘closed’ (see Figure 2.8) or ‘open’,
allowing for a pedestrian route through it (see Figure 2.9). If many of these open
block types are located adjacent to one another, it can contribute to a separate
network of pedestrian routes, which can be pleasant for achieving shortcuts and
avoiding vehicular trafc, but draws people away from the main street network, to
its detriment.

42 THE URBAN BLOCK

2.9 Open perimeter block with communal courtyard (diagram).

Funding the maintenance of this communal shared space requires careful

consideration and usually needs to be centralised, which can restrict ownership
options to some form of leasehold with associated maintenance charges.
Encouraging a high usage of this space can be challenging due to its relative
inaccessibility from dwellings. Direct rear access points should be included in
order for the gardens to be well utilised, yet if these fall into general usage as main
entrances, the street sufers from a reduction in activity.

The higher density of living associated with this type means that larger numbers
of cars need to be accommodated. Where density is sufciently high, the cost
of providing car parking under the block can usually be justifed. In out-of-town
locations, however, it is more usual to fnd that the value/cost equation results in
surface car parks within the block interior, at the expense of providing communal
open space.

DEFINING THE BLOCK 43

2.10 Example of a closed perimeter block with communal courtyard in Copenhagen, Denmark.

44 THE URBAN BLOCK

2.11 Aerial view of an open perimeter block with communal courtyard in Helsinki, Finland.

DEFINING THE BLOCK 45

A5 – NESTED PERIMETER BLOCK
Key Features
∙ A block within a block,
blurring the public/private
movement hierarchy
∙ This type of confguration
provides for intensifcation/
densifcation of use
(potentially mixed use),
although typically at the
expense of open space

Design Challenges
∙ Resolving any privacy issues
between backs and fronts
of units, due to reduced
separation distances
involved in this confguration

2.12 ‘Nested’ perimeter block (diagram).

Shifting away from the pure-form perimeter block towards more hybrid options
may also ofer some solutions. The ‘nested’ perimeter block (see Figure 2.12)
is essentially a block within a block, with a densely occupied inner court. The
diagram immediately suggests a number of advantages, ofering a more nuanced
and less polarised relationship between inner and outer, vehicular routes and
pedestrian ways. This confguration is suggestive of row housing, although
more permeable, and similar to the traditional row house with mews, although
less obviously socially hierarchical. The varied accommodation lends itself to a
diverse mix of uses and types of dwelling, while all the external habitable areas
are overlooked and defensible to some extent. Outdoor amenity space is limited
but could be expanded upon in alternative versions. Here, the benefts that more
complex forms of hybrid confgurations may ofer in the creation of successful
dwelling and working places become apparent.

46 THE URBAN BLOCK

2.13 Aerial view of a simple nested perimeter block in Stockholm, Sweden.

DEFINING THE BLOCK 47

B – THE ROW BLOCK

Rows are one of the simplest ways of developing/confguring a block. The

block form itself is not really ‘designed’ but emerges from the pragmatic, and
economically expedient, placement of two rows of houses or buildings with front
entrances and rear gardens, back to back. The buildings may be terraced, semi-
detached or even detached, although in order to function as a ‘block’, the planning
would be dense enough that the front façades would be visible and generally in
alignment. The row block is well established, and although it has a mainly linear
aspect and its purest version produces a rather rigid form, it is nevertheless
important given its relative longevity and popularity with occupants and house-
builders alike. Other more complex block types within the taxonomy are also
likely to use ‘rows’ as a component of their set of parts.

The row’s simplicity lies in the economies of scale of duplicating the same form
along a single direction. However, this characteristic is also the reason for one of
its main detractions, which lies in its relative inability to turn corners efectively,
often leaving blank gables to the short edges of the block, and the consequent
reduction in street quality that this engenders. The street network is active and
overlooked by the fronts of dwellings or businesses in one direction, but can be
austere and vulnerable to grafti on the other. Given the linearity of the row, it also
tends to march on indefnitely, especially where tight economics come into play.
This encourages elongated block forms that can efectively become a barrier to
permeability, or at the least defne a directionality to the network that may or may
not be appropriate.

This type has a wide range of applications and can also accommodate mixed uses
through the tried and tested ‘living over the shop’ model, although this does alter
marketability by omitting the direct relationship between the living accommodation
and the rear garden. In the standard model, each building often ends up with two
entrances (one residential and the other commercial), which has a positive impact
on the interface with the street, given the amount of activity this generates along
its primary edges.

Row housing as a type generally ofers no (or little) shared public amenity space
within the block form. This has the advantage that the public/private ownership
boundaries are easy to surmise and navigate, whilst the requirement for the
complication of an overarching management or ownership structure is avoided.
The individual plots defned by each house and its garden can therefore easily
be sold into private ownership, without any additional annual management fees
charged to the freehold. This model therefore suits the home-owning aspirations
of the British populace well – as well as its predilection for privacy.

48 THE URBAN BLOCK

In older neighbourhoods the traditional form of row housing relegates car parking
to the street. Where parking is efectively in the public domain, it is therefore
unallocated to any household, meaning that parking is available (or not) on a
frst-come, frst-served basis. This arrangement works well in older suburban
areas where there is no alternative available. However, in newer developments
there is added value associated with an allocated car parking space. Further, the
complexities of legally conveying a car parking space that is dislocated from the
homeowner’s plot induces pressure to provide for parking either on-plot to the
front of houses (where they are terraced) or in between, meaning that the houses
become separated, and consequently of lower density.

In past times, lower trafc volumes allowed the street to function as shared space,
and ‘doorstep play’ for children. The volume of trafc experienced nowadays,
however, tends to make the street unsafe as a communal space. Because this is
not compensated for by an alternative shared space, it reduces the potential for
those informal liaisons that help to establish a sense of local community.

DEFINING THE BLOCK 49

B1 – THE ROW BLOCK WITH BACK-TO-BACK PLOTS

Key Features
∙ Clear distinction between
public and private realms
∙ Efcient and economic form
of block that lends itself to
repetitive unit types and
orthogonal forms
∙ Tends to push parking
towards the street
∙ Lends itself to being
elongated along one axis

Design Challenges
∙ Addressing the short side
of the block (gable ends)
and its relationship to the
street network
∙ Avoiding monotony at the
wider scale of the urban
2.14 Row block with back-to-back plots diagram (diagram). realm
∙ Gaining access to rear
Row blocks are a simplifed form of block where development is oriented to two gardens from street
sides of the block (usually the ‘long’ sides) but not the cross-streets (see Figure
2.14). It is therefore similar in type to the perimeter block with back-to-back plots,
but only relates directly to the street along one axis. As such it is not a perimeter
block in the strict sense, although it is commonly found in gridded masterplans.

The simplicity and efciency of the row block has made it a popular choice
for high-volume housing developments, but the relative limitations of its block
formation for place-making should not be ignored. The type gives precedence to
elongation along one axis (through adding additional units) over the other (through
extending the length of gardens). This formation thus exposes undesirable short
ends of a block along one axis, where blank gable ends and fences traditionally
occur, compounded by over-extended monotonous terraces of units along the
other axis. There are also practical issues with this tight-knit confguration, such as
accessibility to rear gardens from the street, which must be either through the unit
itself, or through a designated side passage (which may be shared between pairs
of units, and/or built over at upper foor levels where retaining continuity of the
terrace is required).

Some historic examples take the expediency of the row block to its ultimate
conclusion, placing houses back-to-back without either an intervening open
space for yards/gardens or a lane. This variation of the type has been rightly
discredited for creating slum conditions and is rarely considered an option in
contemporary urban planning practice. Instead, variations of this block with
broken frontage (e.g. semi-detached housing) have tended to be favoured in

50 THE URBAN BLOCK

2.15 Aerial view showing a variety of row blocks, UK.

contemporary practice because they facilitate access to the side or rear more
easily than row housing, but they are less space-efcient, producing less
sustainable densities.

DEFINING THE BLOCK 51

B2 – DUAL-ASPECT ROW WITH SERVICE LANE

Key Features
∙ Efcient and economic form
of block that lends itself to
repetitive unit types and
orthogonal forms
∙ Tends to push parking
towards the street
∙ Lends itself to being
elongated along one axis
∙ All units have ease of access
to rear

Design Challenges
∙ Addressing the short side
of the block (gable ends)
and its relationship to the
street network
∙ Avoiding monotony at the
wider scale of the urban
2.16 Dual-aspect row with service lane (diagram). realm
∙ Ensuring the service lane is
From a practical point of view, the lack of rear access available in the traditional designed to be safe, secure
row block model is inconvenient for storage of bicycles and equipment, and if and well maintained
any works need doing to the rear of the houses or their gardens. Also, with no
accessible ‘back-of-house’ area, household waste needs to be collected from
the front of the dwellings, meaning that the streetscape is routinely occupied by
refuse bins awaiting collection. For these reasons, a variant of the type evolved,
incorporating a rear service lane (see Figure 2.16). The dual-aspect row type also
adapts better to mixed use, by allowing service access and a back-of-house area
for businesses at the rear.

Although it serves a useful purpose, the service lane is just that, and there is a
tendency for them to be poorly maintained and often to attract antisocial behaviours.
The lack of natural surveillance can also make them an attractive route for would-be
burglars to gain access or escape undetected.

52 THE URBAN BLOCK

2.17 Aerial view of dual-aspect row block housing with service lane

DEFINING THE BLOCK 53

B3 – THE MEWS BLOCK

Key Features
∙ Entrances to units on the
rear access lane in this
variant legitimise public use
of the mews, thus afording
clear articulation of public
and private realms
∙ Mews confguration
introduces a hierarchy of
movement but also potentially
of land uses and unit size
∙ Allows for increased/fltered
permeability

Design Challenges
∙ Addressing the street corners
of the block and the entrance
way(s) into the mews
∙ Where the street-facing
2.18 Mews block (diagram). units and mews-facing
units occupy separate plots,
facilitating access to the
Whilst the row block is a versatile and efcient form of block design, its simplicity intervening open spaces
is self-limiting. To create the kind of active street network that urban designers and
planners are striving for – one that is at once efcient, facilitates a range of land
uses or diferent house types and sizes and is convivial along its edges – the row
block needs to be more sophisticated. An interesting variant of the row block that
achieves these aims, and with a long historical pedigree, is the mews block. Here,
the rear access lane is itself fronted with a subsidiary set of buildings, traditionally
occupying the rear of the same plot as the main street (see Figure 2.18). The mews
lane usually runs right across the block, as shown in the diagram, but examples
that are closed at one end also occur. The rear accommodation in a mews is
diferent from the close in that it is an access way rather than an open space. It
difers from the court in that the mews block is designed as a self-contained entity,
where the front and rear buildings on a given plot have a direct and considered
relationship both to one another (even if these have been divided later on), and to
the street or mews respectively. In contrast, the court emerges historically from
a more ad hoc process of subdividing an existing plot and inflling it with smaller
buildings (usually small dwellings).

In its original form the mews ofered a convenient way to serve a large family
dwelling at the front. The development of the ‘great estates’ of London, Dublin and
Edinburgh during the Georgian era made this form of block commonplace. The
mews building was often referred to as a ‘coach house’, with living accommodation
above for the driver or other domestic servants. With the growth of the middle
classes and concurrent decline in the suitability of the house as a single-family
dwelling, the type proved itself extremely adaptable to change. In higher-value

54 THE URBAN BLOCK

areas, such as Belgravia in London, the main house lent itself to conversion to fats
or ofces (or in some cases continued occupation as a single-family dwelling),
while the smaller mews building lent itself to single occupancy or live/work uses.

Meanwhile, in lower-value areas, such as the Gardiner Estate in north Dublin, the
main houses frequently became slum dwellings and the mews buildings were
occupied by low-grade commercial activities such as car repair workshops and
their like. A contemporary renaissance of this type of mixed use can be seen in
mews that are converted into live/work units.

2.19 Street view of a contemporary mews lane, Accordia, Cambridge, UK.

2.20 Street view of mews lane with former coach houses converted to residential use, London, UK.

DEFINING THE BLOCK 55

C – THE POINT BLOCK

Key Features
∙ Freestanding and relatively
independent of the urban
structure surrounding it
∙ Tends to have one dominant
side with reduced activation
of remaining sides
∙ The transition and visible
hierarchy between public/
private is realised at the
larger scale of the urban
street network as opposed
to taking place within the
bounds of the block
∙ Responsibility for shared
space surrounding the
building(s) can be unclear

Design Challenges
2.21 Point block (diagram). ∙ Designing landscaping of
spaces around/between
buildings and ensuring
The term point block needs unpacking, because it refers simultaneously to clarity of responsibility for
the form of the building (i.e. a building type) and a relationship to the area of their maintenance
land defned by streets on which it sits (our working defnition of the block). Put ∙ Design resolution of fronts
together, the point block is generally understood to imply a freestanding building and backs in terms of privacy,
(or buildings) that occupies part of its own block, without enclosing the street in access and servicing
the way a traditional urban block does (see Figure 2.21). In some contexts, the ∙ Compensating for potential
term ‘pavilion’ or ‘solitaire’ is also used to identify this type. In traditional towns and loss of street life
cities, the type is usually reserved for civic buildings in prominent positions, such
as churches or courts, and is thus distinguished from the general urban fabric.
However, the modern movement in architecture also adopted the type – taking the
form of residential towers or slabs – but isolating them from the surrounding fabric
rather than integrating them.

The dilemma raised by pavilion and point blocks is that they generally have just
one ‘front’. The implication is that the relationship of the ‘back’ or ‘sides’ of the
block to the public realm is less clear, and they cannot enclose streets in the same
way as perimeter blocks or row blocks.

The relationship of the edges of the block to the street network is therefore of
critical importance when it comes to assessing the merits of this type. A solitaire
or pavilion block whose physical presence helps to defne the edges of the
street, either directly edging the street or with a narrow ‘privacy’ strip around
it, can have a positive efect on the street network, especially if it has multiple
entrances. Many civic and community buildings take the form of the pavilion or
solitaire, so they are an important and timeless urban (and suburban) feature of

56 THE URBAN BLOCK

the built environment. These often have windows overlooking the street and can
have multiple entrances giving access from diferent sides of the block. These
civic buildings are usually of relatively high quality, with good care and attention
paid to their detailing, and a decent budget to provide attractive and resilient
materials. For these reasons, they have traditionally presented a very positive
ofering to the streetscape, although this has been borne out of their function
and status rather than the afordances of this confguration, which is quite
restrictive in design terms.

More critical issues began to arise with the typology when it was adopted by
the modern movement in architecture as a solution to mass housing in the
aftermath of World War II. Blocks of high-rise fats efectively inverted the traditional
relationship of home to garden by sitting the block in an open space. It is at this
end of the solitaire spectrum – where expansive distances are generated between
the building’s edges and the street network – that this block type departs from its
former role as custodian of civic values. The urban terrains characterised by these
modernist point blocks have been severely criticised in the decades since they
were trialled, for the often wind-blown and ambiguous spaces between buildings
that they engendered.

DEFINING THE BLOCK 57

2.22 Example of a contemporary apartment building in a point block form, UK.

58 THE URBAN BLOCK

2.23 Example of a traditional ‘solitaire’ point block, Helsinki, Finland.

DEFINING THE BLOCK 59

D – THE RIBBON BLOCK

Key Features
∙ Discrete rows of
accommodation arranged
across the block facing in
the same direction
∙ Just one side of the block
addresses the street
∙ Single orientation simplifes
planning for controlled solar
gain

Design Challenges
∙ Activating the street
∙ Impact of car parking
∙ Ameliorating potential
confict between fronts and
backs of adjacent rows
∙ Designing the interface
between backs and the
2.24 Ribbon block (diagram).
public realm

The ribbon block might be considered to be a version of the row block but they
are fundamentally diferent in that all of the accommodation faces in the same
direction (see Figure 2.24). This sets up a confguration that essentially divides
the block into horizontal strips, with semi-private streets/passageways arranged
across the block, allowing access to the front doors along each row, as well as the
rear gardens of the rows opposite. The fronts of each row then overlook the rear of
the row in front. The pattern can continue ad infnitum but is usually intercepted by
vehicular transit routes that visually defne the settlements into block areas.

This type ofers very little of beneft to the urban network. In a standard square
block with four edges, the pattern allows only one set of animated front façades,
two blank gabled façades to the sides of the ribbons, and one set of rear façades.
From a passer-by’s point of view, the entrances all occur ‘buried’ within the block,
and this type does not therefore lend itself to a wide variety of uses, being mainly
adopted for terraced housing or apartment complexes.

On a positive note, although only overlooked on one side, the semi-private

access streets have a good sense of privacy and can beneft from their own
sense of identity and the sense of community this engenders, although careful
consideration of the set-back of the front façades (i.e. front garden length) is
critical to maintain a sense of overlooking of these passages. Maintaining a
common orientation can also help the internal planning of the properties in
relation to sun-paths, and the type also benefts from ofering a largely non-
hierarchical arrangement, depending on the surrounding trafc loads.

60 THE URBAN BLOCK

2.25 Example of ribbon block layout in Paderborn, Germany.

DEFINING THE BLOCK 61

E – THE COURTYARD BLOCK

Key Features
∙ Inward-looking form with
public fronts facing a central
courtyard, where main
entrances are located, while
backs of units face onto
access roads
∙ Good for engendering
a ‘collegiate’ sense of
community within the block
∙ Associated with discredited
‘Radburn-style’ layouts

Design Challenges
∙ Arranging the accommodation
to activate the surrounding
access roads
∙ Ensuring the ‘back’ façades
presented to the road network
are attractive, safe, overlooked
and of high quality
∙ Ensuring the design enables
clear distinctions to be made
2.26 Closed courtyard block (diagram).
between public, semi-public
and private realms within the
The courtyard block is essentially the inverse of the perimeter block. In terms of courtyard enclosure
its urban confguration and massing, it is ostensibly the same, and therefore lends
itself well to a permeable/gridded urban pattern. Yet the courtyard type difers
fundamentally from a perimeter block from both a practical and a social perspective
because its entrances and primary façades are located on the interior of the block.
The urban cloister is a historically important version of a courtyard block, well known
from monasteries and Oxbridge colleges.

The defnition of a ‘pure’ courtyard block is largely determined by the following

factors: that access to the buildings is not on the street network, that the inner core
of the block is a semi-private space occupied by gardens or parking, that there is
no prescribed vehicular route within it (although there may be access), and that
there is a road or street network present around the outer perimeter of the block
faced by the rear façades of the buildings and/or their gardens (see Figure 2.26).
These distinctions are important because this type sits on a spectrum of inward-
facing variants between the ‘cul-de-sac’ and the ‘court’ or ‘close’, as described in
the section that follows.

The attractiveness of the courtyard block lies in its ability to foster a sense of
community among its inhabitants. The clear physical distinction and separation
from neighbouring blocks and the street network gives the inhabitants their own
distinctive sense of identity and belonging – this is an important feature of this

62 THE URBAN BLOCK

2.27 Open courtyard block (diagram).

block type that was historically used by Oxbridge colleges to foster a collegiate
atmosphere of loyalty among their resident population of students.

The clear outlook of the comings and goings of inhabitants around the courtyard
activates its inner core and encourages informal meetings and social interactions
to occur within it. Meanwhile the windows of primary façades act as custodians
of visibility to the inner core, meaning this semi-private space is generally felt by
inhabitants and visitors to be overlooked and therefore ‘safe’. The psychological
infuence of the courtyard block form on the creation of a community is incredibly
powerful, and therefore harbours great social potential in design terms.

The corollary of its community binding qualities is the polarisation of activity

away from the street, which is intrinsic to the courtyard block, and fundamentally
problematic for the creation of an active urban network. The courtyard block
efectively turns its back on the street, which engenders a consequent sense of
indiference or even apathy to the wider neighbourhood beyond. The strength of
the courtyard block is therefore its weakness in an urban sense. Careful design can
go some way to overcoming these issues, and the courtyard block still has some
mileage in urban terms if its pure form is disrupted.

Much about good courtyard block design can be learned from Oxbridge colleges.
These are known for their grand entrances, which are often highly ornate and ofer

DEFINING THE BLOCK 63

tantalising glimpses through to the serene and green enclosures within. The high
quality and stature of the design of these entrances makes a signifcant outward-
facing ofering on one edge of the block, and naturally imbues a sense of identity
to the adjacent thoroughfare. The inner-city colleges often lack a set-back and
directly edge the street, ofering a strong sense of enclosure and overlooking
enabled by their high level of inhabitation, often addressing both inner and outer
edges of the block at once. Careful attention to the detailed design of entrances
ofering visibility of the block interiors, appropriate identifcation of a mix of uses
and consideration of the internal layouts of the accommodation, can all impact
on how successfully the courtyard block operates in urban terms.

If the courtyard block is hybridised, then some of its negative characteristics can
be ameliorated. For instance, if single-aspect accommodation is placed back-to-
back in the manner of the Oxbridge colleges described above, then the negative
consequences of the inactive outer façades can be overcome. This move naturally
results in a much thicker and deeper urban mass, and consequently increases
the scale of the urban grain reducing overall network permeability, but does allow
the positive aspects of the courtyard to be enjoyed as one component of an urban
smorgasbord. In this confguration, the courtyard is more akin to a ‘close’ typology,
as seen at Hampstead Garden Suburb, or if undertaken at a larger scale, a ‘square’.
Alternatively, including a secondary route – probably pedestrian or cycle only –
across the courtyard (see Figure 2.27), facilitates a higher level urban permeability,
ofering a secondary hierarchy of movement for slower trafc. The courtyard in this
instance slightly loses its cloister-like character, but the urban fâneur benefts from
being able to wind their way through such courtyard environments. Though these
routes may detract still further from use of the outer streets, they still represent a
signifcant urban ofering for the user and maintain high levels of permeability.

64 THE URBAN BLOCK

2.28 A typical residential courtyard block showing blank fencing facing the street on the left-hand side, UK.

2.29 Aerial view of an open courtyard block, Dundanion Court, Cork, Ireland.

DEFINING THE BLOCK 65

F – OTHER VARIANTS OF URBAN FORM

Despite the fact they’re not block types per se, the following three variants of
urban form are an important subset of urban block design. The court, the close
and the cul-de-sac could all be defned as derivatives of an ‘inlet’ set, as inward-
facing entities within a larger block type defned by a street network. It is important
to diferentiate these variants from the courtyard block, which although similar
in its inward-facing nature, is fundamentally diferent in that it operates as a
stand-alone block and is generally circumnavigable (although not necessarily
accessible) around its full outer perimeter. Although the three variants defned
here are similar in their inward-looking confguration, they have diferent origins,
and the minor variations between them make for diferent relationships to both
the street or space they front, and to the larger urban network that they stem from.

2.30 Example of a modern court type development at Ilchester Road, London, by Peter Barber Architects.

66 THE URBAN BLOCK

 F1 – THE COURT

Key Features
∙ Typically confgured as ‘inlets’
facilitating densifcation/
subdivision of larger plots
∙ Potential to foster a ‘collegiate’
community spirit
∙ Historically associated with
overcrowded slums but
being reinvented as urban
enclaves suited to small
dwellings meeting modern
standards and expectations

Design Challenges
∙ Providing for car parking
without spoiling the quality
of open space
∙ Ensuring privacy for
occupants of facing units
2.31 Court (diagram).

The court is a small, narrow and densely populated inlet within a larger urban
block. It is usually comprised of a dead-end access lined by a number of individual
plots (see Figure 2.31). The court is similar to the close in that it sits within a larger
urban block, but is dissimilar in its scale and visual relationship with the street
network, often being narrow with no – or limited – vehicular access, and with
limited provision for communal amenity space beyond the common access way.

In its original form the court manifested itself through the intensifcation of the
medieval burgage plot. These plots were occupied by a range of trades, and
gradually subdivided and built up to enclose new streets. The street building
(burgage tenement) emerged as the staple building block of the medieval street.
Saving space, the plot was usually developed up to its front boundary, providing
a direct interface with the street, while the rear overlooked private gardens and
courtyards. Where towns and cities became overpopulated, however, the relatively
generous proportions of burgage plots led to subdivision into smaller and smaller
plots, and in some cases to ‘courts’, where the plot boundary was lined with small
single-aspect dwellings facing inwards.

In the 19th century, the slum conditions of courts discredited them and led,
ultimately, to their wholesale demolition in favour of row blocks. In more recent
times there is evidence that housing shortages, combined with the desire to make
more efcient use of urban land, may be stimulating a renaissance of the court
typology, still single-aspect, but with more desirable living conditions.

DEFINING THE BLOCK 67

F2 – THE CLOSE

Key Features
∙ Typically confgured as
‘inlets’ enclosing a shared
space within larger or
irregularly shaped urban
blocks, enabling denser
inhabitation and more
efcient use of land
∙ Often with an open
relationship to the street
∙ Potential to foster a ‘collegiate’
community spirit

Design Challenges
∙ Moderating the hierarchy
between the units within the
relative enclosure of the close
against their outward-facing
neighbours set around the
2.32 Close (diagram). host urban block
∙ Providing car parking without
spoiling the quality of the
The close is an innovation of garden city design, manifesting as a generously communal open space
proportioned inlet to the larger block. The increased length of the overall perimeter
∙ Landscaping the open
of a large block ofered a more intimate shared space to a cluster of dwellings space and ensuring clarity
recessed from the street. The close itself is usually three-sided, and of similar of responsibility for its
width to length, with one edge of the semi-enclosure defned by its edges remaining maintenance and upkeep
open to the street network (see Figure 2.32). This ofers signifcant advantages
over the courtyard block and the cul-de-sac, in that it remains visually connected
with the street.

The close ofers the inward-facing characteristic of the courtyard block but
difers in that the rear of the accommodation is set back-to-back against other
accommodation, as if it were ‘nested’ within a larger perimeter block on a gridded
street network. The ‘nested’ square/close resolves one of the main difculties
with the courtyard block, which is how its rear façades relate to the street network,
and means that the urban locality still benefts from a permeable urban structure
edged by fronts of buildings around its full perimeter.

Achieving a close is contingent on being nested within a wider urban structure. By

defnition, only a limited proportion of accommodation can be located within such
an inlet: an urban network consisting entirely of abutting squares/closes is not
possible to achieve without culminating in a tree-like branched network, which –
brought to its logical conclusion in the form of the cul-de-sac – sits uncomfortably
in the designer’s repertoire of urban forms. The close is therefore inherently
hierarchical due to its social and economic relationship to both the block it nests
within and to the wider street network.

68 THE URBAN BLOCK

2.33 Aerial view of a close set within a suburban perimeter block of semi-detached houses. This example highlights the blurring of
boundaries between the ‘close’ and the ‘cul-de-sac’ in suburban developments that followed after the garden city movement.

DEFINING THE BLOCK 69

F3 – THE CUL-DE-SAC

Key Features
∙ An inlet within a (typically)
suburban block, comprised
of vehicular access with a
dead end surrounded by
buildings, usually dwellings
∙ Can sometimes foster a
similar ‘collegiate’ community
spirit as a courtyard block,
although low-density models
without a central or common
open space are less likely to
stimulate social interaction
∙ Associated with low
levels of permeability
and consequently higher
dependence on car transport
than traditional block types

Design Challenges
∙ Providing space for social
2.34 Cul-de-sac (dead end) (diagram). interaction to occur for
community cohesion
The cul-de-sac is a group of dwellings or buildings grouped around a dead- while ensuring clarity
end street (see Figure 2.34). The confguration difers from the courtyard block of responsibility for the
maintenance and upkeep
or close in that it usually substitutes communal space for access. Similar to
of such spaces
the court, it is usually two-sided with one closed end. But whereas the court is
∙ Awareness of the implications
essentially an urban phenomenon – an inflling of what originated as a single of car reliance this model
burgage plot – the cul-de-sac is a suburban one. Unfettered by pre-existing plot necessitates and including
boundaries, it usually manifests itself as being much longer than the court or initiatives to counteract
close, with lower-density houses. this, such as limiting the
length of the cul-de-sac and
providing for pedestrian and
Although often enjoyed by residents due to their intimate feel and sense of cycle connectivity between
defensible space, the wholesale adoption of the cul-de-sac as a model for adjacent cul-de-sacs
suburban development thus creates a dendritic pattern of development that
strangles permeability. In an urban network designed specifcally for the cul-de-
sac, swathes of cul-de-sacs can be located adjacent to one another, meaning
that the proportion of accommodation essentially ‘beneftting’ from an inward-
facing outlook is infnitely higher than the ‘close’ or ‘court’ variants are able to
ofer. This goes some way to explain their phenomenal success as the typology
of choice for UK house-builders, but wholesale adoption of this type ofers a bleak
outlook for maintaining the role of the street, and the complexity and conviviality of
urban life associated with it.

70 THE URBAN BLOCK

2.35 A group of three typical cul-de-sacs with semi-detached housing.

SUMMARY
This chapter has established a taxonomy of commonly used block types and
related urban forms, ranging from public/outward-facing (the perimeter block) at
one end of the spectrum, through to exclusive/inward-facing (the courtyard block
and cul-de-sac) at the other. The related urban forms can either occur as elements
that are inserted within urban blocks, or they can negate the block altogether. The
case examples that follow will be analysed with reference to the core types defned
in this chapter, however as will be made clear, some examples are hybrids, and
as such incorporate characteristics of more than one type. It is this potential for
adaptation and innovation of the block that confrms both the continued relevance
of the perimeter block to urban designers and the role that hybrid forms can play in
enriching the urban experience.

DEFINING THE BLOCK 71

3
DESIGNING
THE BLOCK
This chapter sets out the key principles of urban block design. The frst section
(Structuring the Block) gives an overview of the broader parameters and guidelines
informing good block design, from urban structure (the network) and block size
and shape, through to street-block hierarchy, density and grain, and social mix.
Following this, the section on Design Principles provides greater detail on both
the quantitative and qualitative features of block design, and how they interrelate
or occasionally confict. This is followed by a discussion about designing corners
and parking, both of which have important roles to play in achieving successful
block confgurations.

73
STRUCTURING THE BLOCK

Any form of design practice involves multi-stranded thinking, and urban design
practice also requires an awareness and application of multiple scales and
aspects of the built environment to be woven into a complex yet harmonious entity.
These have been notionally separated into three broad strands of design thinking,
operating frstly at the level of two dimensions (the urban structure or network);
secondly at the level of three dimensions (massing); and thirdly at the level of
four dimensions (use and occupation over time). This tripartite model provides a
helpful tool for conceptualising the multifaceted nature of urban design across its
full spectrum of scale, from the city through to the block and plots within it. These
sections also broadly align with the advice, experience and intelligence ofered by
infuential theorists and practitioners that we reference together with urban design
guidance documents that have been produced in the recent past.

URBAN STRUCTURE (TWO DIMENSIONS: PLAN)

PERMEABILITY
Permeability refers to the degree to which an urban (or suburban) area ofers
choice of through movement. As such it is not an ‘absolute’, and the degree to
which any given area is permeable (and indeed the extent to which permeability is
desirable) may vary widely. In general terms, cul-de-sacs (dead ends) by defnition
are impermeable forms of development, compared to layouts with small blocks
that are interconnected by streets or other kinds of routes.

There is already a consensus that permeability lies at the heart of healthy

urbanism. Design at the level of the block therefore presupposes design at the
wider level of the street and block together conceived as a lattice, confgured to
accommodate a range of movement hierarchies and neighbourhood functions
operating at diferent scales. In this way streets and blocks both inform and
are informed by one another to produce urban structure. How that structure is
confgured then determines how permeable it can be. Campbell1 advocates a
reimagining of the discredited model of the neighbourhood as an isolated cell
inherited from Clarence Stein, Perry and others, as an assemblage of blocks
nested within a permeable superblock. For him, the superblock is a collection
of multiple urban blocks, street blocks, open spaces and other uses bounded by
city-scale streets or arterial routes rather than by local streets.

The block itself is an assemblage of parts and need not be seen as an impermeable
unit of urban form in itself. The mews block, for instance, will often allow movement
through its central access street, which efectively halves the size of the block in
terms of its permeability for pedestrians. This is referred to as ‘fltered permeability’,
where a denser network is available for lower-order trafc, allowing pedestrian and
cycle movement to fourish.

Permeable superblocks already exist in some planned cities (notably Edinburgh

New Town and Savannah, Georgia) and their success as urban places is

74 THE URBAN BLOCK

testament to the robustness of the model. This model is also the default setting
for some seemingly unplanned cities such as Tokyo (see Figure 3.1), where
high population densities coupled with limited space have produced a pattern
of ‘superblocks’ comprising an almost labyrinthine network of shared-surface
streets and alleys that are both pedestrian- and cycle-friendly, lassoed by more
heavily trafcked streets.

0 100m

3.1 The Tokyo ‘superblock’ – a permeable network of pedestrian-

friendly streets surrounded by higher-order streets.

Cul-de-sac layouts do not support the articulation of perimeter blocks into land
parcels, as they actively restrict vehicular and pedestrian permeability. As Bentley
et al. argue, however, ‘This is not to say cul-de-sacs are always negative: they
support responsiveness if they ofer a choice which would otherwise be missing.
But they must be added to a permeable layout, not substituted for it.’2 Similarly
Campbell argues that the street network must at least have the qualities of openness
and adaptiveness, because these qualities ‘…are essential for fostering complexity
and structuring complex choices’.3

Figure 3.2 illustrates the relationship between permeability and diferent types
of urban structure in diagrammatic form: ‘gridded’ or ‘webbed’ street networks
are naturally more permeable than dendritic patterns, allowing clear public
accessibility around the network, as well as defning the perimeter edges of
urban blocks. These patterns are typifed in origin by a network of straight streets
intersecting at right angles, while the ‘organic grid’ is a less orderly version of a grid
that might incorporate blocks with more or fewer edges, non-aligned crossroads,
and curved or angled streets that have been distorted for one reason or another.

DESIGNING THE BLOCK 75

Radial and web patterns meanwhile ofer the same qualities of permeability and
adaptability but are planned in order to create and facilitate a central focus. Their
grid layout morphs in order to direct arterial streets toward a common centre, with
a corresponding graduating hierarchy of block types radiating from this, declining
in their density, while increasing in scale toward the outer perimeter.

3.2 Urban structure and permeability. Left to right from top: highly permeable (small blocks):
orthogonal grid; warped grid; ‘organic grid’; medium permeability (mid–large blocks): orthogonal
grid; warped grid; ‘organic grid’; varied permeability (small–large blocks): radial grid; warped radial
grid; ‘organic radial’; impermeable (large blocks with dead ends): orthogonal cul-de-sacs; warped
cul-de-sacs; ‘organic cul-de-sacs’.

76 THE URBAN BLOCK

 Dovey4 notes that often the most obvious measures of permeability based on
average block size (length, area, perimeter) can be misleading and suggests
an alternative measure developed by Pafka, called the ‘area-weighted average
perimeter’, where each block perimeter is multiplied by its area and then averaged
across a study area.

BLOCK SIZE AND SHAPE

There is no ‘one size fts all’ formula for determining the appropriate size of an
urban block. Appropriateness is dependent on understanding the complex
interplay of locational context (urban, suburban, rural), accessibility (transport
links), land use (civic, workplace, mixed-use, residential, etc.) as well as regionally
and/or culturally specifc building typologies.

In a UK context, the smallest sensible perimeter block depth for single-family

housing might be based on a depth (‘thickness’) of accommodation around the
perimeter of 6–10m (providing dual aspect and good daylighting), and a 20m clear
space within the block (generally accepted good practice for privacy), preferably
with a zone of defensible space ringing the outer edge, so totalling a minimum
block width of around 32–50m.

Figure 3.3 shows that the minimum width block produces a form not dissimilar to
the Victorian row block (albeit the Victorian version was less likely to incorporate
defensible space or back-to-back distances). It is also noteworthy that such a
narrow depth of block does not readily allow space for housing along the short
side of the block, without reducing frontage along the long side.

3.3 Minimum block depths.

DESIGNING THE BLOCK 77

Nevertheless the depth of the accommodation (increasing up to, say, 10–14m for
naturally ventilated ofces or apartments with double-loaded corridor access),
clear space to the interior and an outer ring of defensible space can thus be
increased (or decreased as appropriate) from this basic starting point, although
adoption of smaller blocks should not be discounted where a design imperative
takes precedence over accepted privacy sight-distances, for instance.5 The depth
of accommodation of both apartment and ofce buildings is often afected by
parking considerations. For example, if parking is provided under the building
footprint, a depth of around 16m (e.g. 2 × 5m long car parking bays separated by
a 6m wide aisle) is needed.

If the appropriate depth of a block is thus a product of its context, as described

above, determining the appropriate length of the block is similar to raising the
question ‘how long is a piece of string?’ This is where permeability comes to the
fore. Victorian developers often elongated row blocks to as much as 200m for
the sake of economic efciency, but at the expense of permeability.

Jane Jacobs defned her golden standard for walkable neighbourhoods as being a
maximum of 100m in either direction, and this remains a good rule of thumb, with
the caveat that square blocks are less efcient than oblong ones. Accordingly, the
Urban Design Compendium suggests a slightly smaller grid spacing of 80–90m
as a rule of thumb, although proposes this be decreased to 50–70m or 60–80m
in central areas with intensive pedestrian activity. The Compendium illustrates a
range of viable block sizes, from the smallest at approx. 15m × 15m to the largest
at approx. 185m × 115m, advocating a variety of diferent block sizes as best
practice for mixed-use neighbourhoods.6 Dovey meanwhile suggests a maximum
block area of 1 hectare as a good rule of thumb.7

Smaller block sizes ofer less scope for overall density, due frstly to the increased
area of roadways in proportion to development land and secondly to the fact that
the cost and size of vertical circulation means it is less economical to build tall
on a small site. These negatives have to be countered, however, by the fact that
smaller block sizes allow the creation of walkable, fexible, diverse and (as a result)
potentially more attractive neighbourhoods.

The footprint of a block depends on its use (commercial, leisure, residential, etc.),
on the hierarchy of the street it fronts (primary, secondary, tertiary routes) and
on the local context or topography. Rectangular blocks are useful for mixed-use
blocks where the short end can be assigned a commercial or civic use on a busy
route, with residential accommodation lining the longer sides. Square blocks are
generally considered most fexible for a wide range of uses, but as noted above,
are not the most efcient. Block shapes can be distorted in all kinds of ways, and
generally contribute interest to the streetscape, although blocks that completely
lose their fourth side in the skewing or dissecting process and become triangular
can be notoriously difcult to plan.

78 THE URBAN BLOCK

DENSITY AND INTENSITY (THREE DIMENSIONS: MASSING)

MASSING
There are numerous push and pull factors determining the massing of block form.
The initial focus of good design must be to mediate between these sometimes
conficting agendas, and to defne a three-dimensional form that is the ‘best ft’
for the site in terms of its context and programme. On an incrementally phased
or self-build development, these massing decisions will most likely be informed
by parameter plans or a ‘design code’. Where a whole block is assigned to one
‘designer’, the task is more straightforward, but it still involves negotiation with a
variety of parties, including the client, neighbours and the planning department,
yet may not necessarily yield the best outcomes. The logistical situation is
therefore complex on many levels, but the primary physical considerations
determining form and massing could be summarised as: the relationship of the
block to the local context, the spatial proportions of adjacent streets/interior
courtyards, and environmental factors such as solar orientation.

The use, occupation and scale of local context will determine many decisions as
to physical form and massing. The orientation of the block will need to relate to
the primary and secondary streets around it. Decisions about height will need be
made with respect to the existing (and proposed) use and enjoyment of adjacent
properties, and in order to capitalise on local assets such as a square or green
space. The arrangement of higher and lower elements of the block will also
need to take into consideration the heights of neighbouring properties, and any
important views to retain across or from the site (e.g. heritage assets), as well
as views for the enjoyment of future occupants (with the added property value
this can bring). Careful studies of overshadowing and shelter from wind are also
important, particularly in exposed situations and colder climates. Whyte’s well-
known ‘Street Life’ project studied the social use of squares and public spaces
in the USA, and confrmed that shelter and sun/shade are critical factors in
the occupation of such public ‘rooms’.8 Consequently the tracking of sunshine
across an outside space is one of the primary determinants of its use, as well as
moderating wind speed.

Massing must also be carefully considered with respect to the spatial proportions of
the exterior spaces the block defnes. The physical form of a block implicitly creates
a set of urban spaces or ‘rooms’, both around it (the adjacent street network) and
within it (courts or streets depending on its arrangement). Numerous studies have
examined the proportions of urban spaces (height to width ratios, and the sense
of enclosure and defnition they ofer) that are thought to make them attractive and
successful as places.9 The block designer must be aware that the physical mass of
the block form itself – the fgure – inevitably generates an ‘urban space’ around it –
the ground – and that the success of this external realm is perhaps of even greater
importance to the success of a place as a whole than the individual buildings that
make it up. Paraphrasing Gehl,10 the design of the block must prioritise ‘life between
buildings, because the other way around never works’.

DESIGNING THE BLOCK 79

Sustainability also plays an increasingly important role in the massing of
blocks. Solar orientation can afect the environmental performance of buildings
dramatically, while also afecting the quality of life of its occupants. Solar
collectors can be utilised to best efect when thoughtfully incorporated into the
block design to achieve the best possible return, while minimising visual clutter.
Prevailing wind should be factored into the arrangement of form where possible,
to enable efective natural ventilation to take place. The ‘microclimate’ generated
by form can also be moderated by its landscape design, and the considered
integration of physical form and landscape should be considered at the very
earliest stages of design.

The case studies that follow this chapter each demonstrate a slightly diferent
combination of the push and pull factors that have infuenced their massing,
and illustrate the fact that some degree of compromise between these factors
is almost always necessary. Nevertheless, careful judgement needs to be used
in playing one factor of against another to achieve a fnely tuned and tempered
urban environment.

DENSITY
Density tends to be regarded as a ‘target’ of design rather than as an ‘outcome’
of other factors such as accessibility, permeability, assemblage and proximity. But
in lively and vibrant places that people enjoy being in and living in, density (and
its more elusive partner, ‘intensity’) is more likely to emerge as a consequence
of successful placemaking than being a determinant of it. Accordingly, there is
no point in prioritising density as a sustainable ‘thing’ in itself, rather we need to
consider density as just one factor to be considered among many.

The most representative measure of density is the number of people occupying a set
area over a 24-hour period. This isn’t easy to calculate, and the more usual ‘measure’
of density used by house-builders or developers is dwellings per hectare (dph).
This fgure gives a pretty limited sense of the density of actual occupation, given
that dwelling sizes, types and their occupancy levels can fuctuate dramatically,
and that more diverse and complex mixed-use schemes include a range of non-
residential uses not factored into this measure.

Poor sanitation and hygiene associated with high-density development and

overcrowding during the Industrial Revolution was the driving force behind the
Garden City Movement and of suburbanisation generally, giving density a bad
name. Following contemporary research showing how moderate- to high-density
living can contribute to urban sustainability, however, achieving higher-density
development has found its way back up the planning agenda. Higher density
helps to promote walkable neighbourhoods and healthier lifestyles, makes local
services more viable, supports better public transport, promotes diversity and
social contact, makes more efcient use of land and resources and reduces
development pressure elsewhere. Although supported by policy, high density
isn’t on every client’s agenda, and the policy drive towards increased densities

80 THE URBAN BLOCK

on brownfeld sites, together with the increased development costs associated
with these sites (and growing demand for urban living), has compounded the
supply-led development of high-density apartment buildings in urban areas,
while perpetuating the demand-led development for lower-density suburban
housing developments.11

Density is achieved by two means. Firstly, by tightly packing accommodation,

which can have either positive or negative outcomes for inhabitants depending
on the circumstance and use. Secondly, by building ‘vertically’, which allows more
foor area to be achieved as a proportion of the site’s footprint, measured as foor
area ratio (FAR). In terms of physical form, designing a densely packed plan can
dovetail with broader urban objectives such as enlivening the streetscape with
multiple entrances, reduced set-backs and a more direct relationship between
buildings and the street.

In terms of building higher, there is an economic relationship between density

and viability that has a signifcant impact on form. Close-grain plots cannot
achieve comparable densities to medium or course-grain ones, owing to the
simple economic expedient of having to justify the costs of building high (with lifts)
by having a greater number of units per foor to share those costs.12 Housing expert
David Levitt13 points out that in order to keep lift service charges to a reasonable
level it is usually necessary to share the cost between at least ten dwellings, and
preferably between 15 and 20. This creates a tension between the number of
units sharing a core and the height of buildings enclosing the courtyard, which
efectively limits the height of the block. As height increases, however, it becomes
viable to provide lifts with fewer dwellings per core up to seven storeys, above
which it is desirable to provide a second lift as back-up in case the frst one fails.
This is the rationale for high-rise or point blocks as a mass housing solution,
albeit one that brings with it a host of downsides, and it means that it is relatively
difcult to achieve an economical high-rise block form that ofers high density
in tandem with the kinds of building form (e.g. perimeter blocks) that allow dual-
aspect frontage, cross-ventilation or multiple entrances, etc. Campbell points out
that high-density towers are disproportionately low on families and that low-
density suburbs are disproportionately high on families, resulting in unbalanced
communities. For this reason, he argues we must rediscover the ‘sweet spot’ of
urban density, ranging from two to six storeys in height and achieving a density
range between 50 and 150 dwellings per hectare, with sufcient critical mass
to make them sustainable, and with a range of building types to attract more
balanced communities.14

DESIGNING THE BLOCK 81

MIX AND DIVERSITY (FOUR DIMENSIONS: USE AND FUNCTION)

MIX AND USE

The idea of segregating land uses is inextricably linked to the death of the
traditional urban block in the post-war period. The pendulum of opinion has
already swung in the opposite direction, with the widespread acknowledgement
of mixed uses as ‘a good thing’ and a rehabilitation of the block as the preferred
urban form (at least of urbanists). But the pendulum has not swung quite so far
as to provide a mechanism for incorporating mixed uses easily within the same
block (i.e. side by side), much less integrating mixed uses vertically within the
same building or plot (i.e. on diferent levels). Perhaps this is why masterplanning
practice continues to identify the block as a unit of development and land use,
rather than as a unit of diferent things mixed together.

For our purposes, the mixing of uses has a variety of implications for the form
and design of the block, which we explore in a little more detail in the following
section. The difculty comes when the design imperatives of diferent uses don’t
quite align with one another, and uses that might have coexisted in times past (for
example due to a lack of regulation) can no longer share the same space without
signifcant compromises being made.

In a sense this is the challenge for block design, for which we cannot propose a
simple solution, but we argue the way forward lies in a rediscovery of the underlying
structure of the traditional urban block as an assemblage of independent plots, each
capable of articulating its own urban agenda, so to speak.

DIVERSITY AND INCREMENTALISM

Arguably the single greatest failing of urban design in the latter part of the 20th
and early 21st centuries arises from its simultaneous acknowledgement of the
contribution of the traditional urban block – with its fne grain of plots, mixed uses
and diversity of buildings and styles – to the success of established places, with
its failure to provide for these characteristics in new places. It is easy to blame
urban design for these failings but urban design doesn’t control the market, and
it is no surprise that the few exceptions to this trajectory have occurred in places
where the municipality has shown the will and had the means (especially the
ownership or control of land) to enter into joint ventures with the private sector to
buck the trend.

Diversity in successful places is manifested in diferent ways and at diferent

scales.15 Variety of building forms, architectural design and age of buildings, mixed
housing types, sizes and tenures, and a mix and intensity of uses, are all features
of older towns and cities (and hence of urban blocks) that we cherish, but the
conditions that produced these places no longer hold sway. Urban design practice
has instead focused its energy on more readily achievable but less rewarding
outcomes such as accessibility and permeability of urban form and structure
without its essential DNA: the plot.

82 THE URBAN BLOCK

DESIGN PRINCIPLES

The relationship between the block and the street is symbiotic: neither one has any
meaning (or life) without the other. The block itself is a kind of ideogram: it does
not exist merely as a two-dimensional fgure/ground, but as the coming together
of streets, plots, buildings with their occupants and the various activities they
engage in. It is one part of the urban fabric and, through mediating between the
public realm of the street and the private realm of the individual, supports the wider
framework of urban life. Streets usually have blocks on both sides, of course, so we
must also consider the proportions of the street insofar as it is ‘enclosed’ by the
three-dimensional forms of the buildings that make up the block.

The inside–outside relationship between the block and street, i.e. the built edge
or ‘street wall’, is especially signifcant to the success of a street because as
people we are drawn to the edges of spaces in preference to their centre. This
is because edges aid and abet the way we have evolved to move and look. As a
strategy, this trait – known as thigmotaxis, or ‘wall hugging’ – provides us with an
egocentric frame of reference that we can use to construct a mental map of our
surroundings.16 If the edge works, so will the space.

Perimeter blocks also have an inside edge to consider. There are nuanced
relationships between the ‘backs’ of buildings making up the block, and the semi-
public/semi-private spaces of rear gardens or communal areas making up the
interior of the block. In this domain cultural issues surrounding privacy as well as
physical issues such as sunlight, daylight, ventilation and wind must be coordinated
and reconciled with the practical and logistical requirements infuencing building
height and so on.

Put another way, there are relationships between elements of the block and the
street and the block and the courtyard that are ‘syntactic’ in nature. These syntactic
relationships overlap with other parameters that are more clearly derived from
metric relationships, meaning they are qualitative rather than quantitative in nature.
The usefulness of this distinction arises from the fact that while metric relationships
may change arbitrarily, syntactic ones are more enduring. Factors afecting the
width of a building design may change overnight, for example, yet the distance
people are prepared to walk between buildings is more resistant to change.

THE BLOCK AND THE STREET

The degree to which there is a relationship between the constituent parts of the block
(its buildings, users and their activities) and the street is the single most important
factor in determining the potential for the street to be activated. This premise is based
on the observation by Jan Gehl (and others) that there is often a correlation between
the scope for outdoor activities and frequency of interaction of neighbours.17
But as Gehl points out, there is no basis for concluding that social relationships
between neighbours will develop ‘automatically’, merely that design which is
conducive to such interaction may encourage social relationships to develop.

DESIGNING THE BLOCK 83

However, this relationship is also a nuanced one – people expect to be able to
regulate the degree to which their lives are ‘on show’, and to keep some activities
more private than others. Conversely a shopkeeper will want to attract people into
the shop in order to generate business. This calls into question how contact with
the street is fltered according to the nature of the building’s use and the cultural
norms associated with those uses. We argue this depends on four interrelated
factors: set-back distance, transparency, height and surveillance.

SET-BACK DISTANCE
The idea of ‘defensible’ space has been touched upon, and research indicates that
homebuyers feel more secure if their house front is set back from the street.18 This
is one way of putting ‘space’ between the street and the building, and it is usually
demarcated by some diferentiation of the surface combined with some form of
physical barrier such as a fence. In European culture this demarcation signals
that the transitional space is controlled: it is visible to passers-by, but clearly not
part of the public domain. While the provision of a front garden is felt to increase
security and privacy, it is also regarded as increasing opportunities for neighbours
and passers-by to interact, assuming there is an entrance to the house from the
street. Of course, as pointed out by Levitt,19 the front garden and how its boundary
is treated also plays an important practical part, incorporating space for refuse and
recycling bins and utility meters, etc. without necessarily obstructing the view out.

He goes on to suggest there is a fne line to be struck between adhering to the

principle of active frontages by keeping visual contact open, while screening
unkempt gardens from public view. This is the opposite side of the privacy coin,
because passers-by may prefer not to be exposed to the private lives of others.

Setback distance Height

Transparency Surveillance

3.4 The block and the street (left to right from top: set-back distance; height; transparency; surveillance).

84 THE URBAN BLOCK

The distance between the house and the street is usually a function of land value
and consequently, a measure of economic standing: traditional row housing has
little or no set-back, whereas higher-value detached houses are more likely to
have a generous front garden. In Georgian townhouse design, the separation
of the house from the street was usually achieved by a lightwell – a void that
allowed daylighting to the kitchens at lower ground level, and by raising the entry
level a few steps above the street. In this way afuent residents could separate
themselves from the street without the need for a large front garden. The lack of
a private garden was instead compensated by the provision of a large communal
garden to which only residents were given access.20 Contemporary expectations
demand equality of access for people with disabilities, however, so raising the
threshold is not a simple design decision.

3.5 Urban row housing in Amsterdam with no set-back: these residents have colonised the footpath to
create their own amenity space.

The closer the building threshold is to the street, the more readily interaction
between the two can take place. Shops, cafés and restaurants typically front
directly to the street with no set-back, and often ‘spill out’ with their wares or
seating for customers. The closer together they are, the more entrances there
are, and the more active the frontage will be. The same goes for housing, and
the tighter the grain of buildings or plots, the more entrances can be provided to
activate the street.

DESIGNING THE BLOCK 85

HEIGHT
Another way of putting distance between ourselves and the street is height. Perhaps
for similar bio-evolutionary reasons as identifed by Sussman and Hollander, we
feel ‘safer’ sleeping above the level of the street. More subtle changes in level can
be used to create a heightened sense of security but as mentioned above, these
devices need to be reconciled with the need to maintain equal access for people
with disabilities.

The level at which meaningful human contact with the ground is diminished or
lost is perceptual, but Gehl argues: ‘Between the third and fourth foors a marked
decrease in the ability to have contact with the ground can be observed.’21

3.6 This residential development in Hammarby, Stockholm, uses a change in level to mediate between
the public and private realm.

TRANSPARENCY
The next layer of control is the building envelope itself. As alluded to above, most
dwellings are designed with a window to the street, but residents may seek to
control the degree to which outsiders can see in. In traditional English and Irish
culture, the ‘front room’ of a house is regarded as a kind of interstitial space
between the public world of the street and domesticity. This is the room where
visitors would be ‘received’, but it would be occasionally used by the residents
themselves. Intervisibility between the front room and the street is traditionally

86 THE URBAN BLOCK

controlled by net curtains that restrict views in while allowing views out. In
European culture, however, the front room is regarded as a kind of statement: one
doesn’t use curtains unless one has something to hide. The Dutch take this a step
further, regarding the front window as a kind of shop window: the ‘place where one
shows oneself’.22

3.7 Timber screens and a planted zone moderate transparency in this apartment housing in Arabia,
Helsinki.

In contrast, Arabic culture prioritises familial privacy above all else and so
traditional Arabic housing is impermeable to the street. Modern housing in the
Middle East is still derived from courtyard forms and compounds, with careful
control of views. Instead, ‘street life’ as we understand it in the West, is confned
to bazaars, or in modern cities the covered shopping mall.

Designers therefore need to be sensitive to the cultural norms within which they
are operating in order to resolve these issues, the Dutch and Middle Eastern
expectations of privacy being examples from opposite ends of the spectrum.

But windows don’t just put ‘eyes on the street’ in the sense of surveillance – at
a deeper, subconscious level, windows are the eyes of the street. Sussman and
Hollander23 draw on fndings from psychology and neuroscience to show how we
identify with some places more favourably than others if, at a subconscious level,
they recreate faces.

DESIGNING THE BLOCK 87

SURVEILLANCE
A recurring theme in urban design is the perceived beneft of overlooking the street.
At one level, windows enliven the street scene and make it more attractive. More
importantly, streets feel safer when they are overlooked because it deters antisocial
activity. This is only likely to be efective if the rooms overlooking the street are
‘habitable’ in the sense that they are likely to be occupied and used. For this reason,
it is preferable to position habitable rooms facing the street, with bedrooms and
bathrooms to the rear. There are practical benefts to this arrangement because the
inside of the block will be naturally more private, as well as being more conducive
to sleep. Surveillance of the street can also be enhanced by bay windows, because
they allow a wider angle of view.

THE BLOCK AND THE COURTYARD

Block size at the macro level is afected by numerous interrelated considerations

such as the play-of between the costs and benefts of creating permeable and
accessible movement networks. At the level of the individual block, internal
dimensions are afected by further, more fnely tuned considerations, of which
building use, solar access and privacy are key. To complicate matters, solar
access depends on the presence or absence of obstructions and so there is an
interrelationship between block width and height.

BUILDING USE
In general terms the thickness of the block’s perimeter is determined by the
nature and intended use of the buildings surrounding the unbuilt interior or
courtyard. Individual houses break down into wide-fronted and narrow-fronted
forms. Wide-fronted houses are thinner, but less dense than narrow-fronted
houses, which can be packed closer together. Apartments can be confgured to
be ‘dual aspect’ (i.e. having access to both the front and rear of the building), or
as ‘single aspect’ (i.e. having access on one side only). Single-aspect blocks are
occasionally confgured to ‘wrap’ another type of building but more commonly
take the form of arrangements with apartments accessed from a central corridor.
This is more efcient than dual-aspect arrangements because higher densities
can be achieved, however the dwelling units do not beneft from through
ventilation, and only get the sun from one side.

As a rule of thumb, daylight will not penetrate more than 7m and through ventilation
will not naturally occur beyond 14m. Because ofce uses also rely on daylight, these
two fgures taken together tend to result in building thicknesses of 6–7m for wide-
fronted dwellings to 14m for buildings with double-loaded corridors, whether they
are ofces or apartments.

Daylighting will also be improved with taller windows and this, together with the
depth needed to accommodate building services such as mechanical ventilation

88 THE URBAN BLOCK

 Natural ventilation Daylight Wind Separation distance and privacy

Courtyard width and height

Vertical access Fire escape Storey heights

3.8 (Left to right from top) Block thickness and environmental considerations: natural ventilation; daylight and wind; separation distance and
privacy. Courtyard width and height: solar access; vertical access (lifts); means of escape; storey heights.

and lighting, tend to increase foor-to-foor heights, with a cumulative efect on

overall building heights.

Blocks with double-loaded corridors are usually confgured with wide-fronted

apartments on each side to make up for the lack of through ventilation and
ensure adequate daylight penetrates into the back of each dwelling. Overall
building thickness is usually increased compared to dual-aspect arrangements,
but there is still a trade-of between building thickness and liveability. Moreover,
single-aspect dwellings facing north will always be dreary. Consequently, this
form of development is usually avoided on east–west arrangements whereas for
dual-aspect dwellings, east–west alignments have the potential to maximise solar
gain for photovoltaic panels, as well as adding value associated with the demand
for south-facing rear gardens (at least in the northern hemisphere). There is also
a tension between the desire to achieve optimum solar access by facing buildings
in the same direction, and the desire to activate the street on all sides of the block,
which is covered in the case examples.

SOLAR ACCESS AND HEIGHT

Solar access to the inside of the block is a critical consideration afecting the
relationship of block height to block width (as opposed to building thickness),
because this will determine the amount of sunlight received by the courtyard/rear
gardens. In simple terms, the higher the block, the wider it needs to be in order
to create a pleasant environment within the block. For this reason, it is usually

DESIGNING THE BLOCK 89

preferable to position higher buildings on the north side of the block, and/or create
gaps between the buildings to allow solar penetration.

There are, of course, numerous other factors afecting block height, of which
density is a recurring theme. As the height of buildings increases, metric factors
infuencing the height of blocks come into play. Above four storeys, for example,
it is not considered reasonable to have to walk upstairs, and provision of a lift
will usually be expected. Sufce to say for families with young children or people
with disabilities, it is not practical to walk up so much as one or two steps with a
pram, much less four storeys. Height also afects the need for alternative means

3.9 Example of a shared block courtyard, Dublin.

of escape in case of fre, however this is more a matter for building design than
block design per se. Lastly, as height increases, the useability of outdoor spaces
decreases due to wind speed.

PRIVACY
Privacy is a delicate subject. Proximity increases with density and the potential
for confict increases with it. The need for privacy, and one’s perception of it, is
both personal and cultural. In the UK a back-to-back separation distance between
opposing windows of 20–22m is an accepted standard. The Urban Design
Compendium suggests that a separation distance of 20m is a good rule of thumb,
with reduced distances suitable for mews developments. Reduced distances are
also commonly accepted where back windows face gables, or where windows
are not directly opposing.

90 THE URBAN BLOCK

The 22m ‘rule’ is a legacy of the Tudor Walters report on housing for the working
classes, published in 1918 in the wake of World War I, which subsequently found
its way into development control standards.24 The standard is thought to have
emerged from the report’s recommendation to provide a distance of 70 feet
between facing windows of houses, on the basis that this would ensure adequate
sunlight to dwellings (specifcally one hour of sunlight to a ground south-facing
window in London on the shortest day of the year). This was transmuted over the
decades into a standard intended to provide adequate privacy between the facing
windows of dwellings.

THE BLOCK AND THE BLOCK

Most streets are lined with buildings on both sides, and so the design of a block
on one side of the street must be cognizant of the design of the block on the other
side of the street. This fact engenders a feeling of being ‘enclosed’ by the street
walls. As has been explained, we have evolved as humans with ‘wall hugging’
traits, and this sense of enclosure makes us feel secure. Enclosure is therefore a
syntactic relationship between our perception of space, which in physical terms
is a function of the degree to which the street wall is continuous, and its height to
width ratio.

Street enclosure

1:1 ratio (mews)

1:3 ratio (well enclosed street)

1:6 ratio (avenue or square)

3.10 Block height and street enclosure.

DESIGNING THE BLOCK 91

The Urban Design Compendium25 suggests that a height to width ratio of 1:3 is
generally efective (see Figure 3.10), with a suggested minimum of 1:1 for mews
streets, and up to a maximum of 1:6 for squares or ‘very wide streets’.

CORNERS

A recurring theme of urban block design (and especially perimeter block design)
is turning the corner. By defnition corners face two streets, and so ofer the
potential to provide more entrances to diferent parts of the building. Corners are
also visually prominent and this, combined with their relatively high accessibility,
provides both a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge is to design the
corner of the block so that both frontages are activated, or at least overlook the
street. The opportunity is available to include mixed uses in viable locations, or at
least to ‘celebrate’ the corner, making it higher or distinguishing it in some way
that bookends the coming together of two or more streets.

There is a range of strategies for turning the corner with apartment blocks (see
Figure 3.11). An increase from two units per core per level up to eight or more
raises issues to do with the afordability of service charges for lift access. A rule
of thumb suggests at least 15 units are needed to make sharing the cost of a lift

3.11 Strategies for ‘turning the corner’ using diferent confgurations of apartments or mixed uses accessed from a shared core (not to scale).

92 THE URBAN BLOCK

 viable.26 Consequently, there is a trade-of between the viability of designs with
fewer units per core – which provide more entrances but fewer people using
them if no lift is provided because their height is then limited – and designs with
more units per core, which are more efcient and potentially much denser, but
with fewer entrances to the street, and higher numbers of single-aspect units.

PARKING

Parking is a contentious issue, and notoriously difcult to reconcile with the

principles of good urban design in general and good block design in particular. This
speaks to a tension between an individual’s desire to own a car (or two or three)
and to park it where they please, and the collective desire to create attractive and
safe streets that are not car-dominated.

On street On plot (integral garage) On plot (front of house)

On plot (rear court) On plot (between houses)

Undercroft Podium Basement Shared parking structure

3.12 Parking strategies. Left to right from top: on-street; on-plot (integral garage); on-plot (front of house); on-plot (rear courtyard); on-plot
(between houses); undercroft; podium; basement; shared parking structure.

DESIGNING THE BLOCK 93

Car-free developments have been mooted many times but, as will be explored
in the case examples, even the most environmentally conscious schemes have
had to contend with car parking in some shape or form. As illustrated in Figure
3.12, there are a variety of options to be considered, each with advantages and
disadvantages, and each with implications for urban form.

ON-STREET
On-street parking is the default setting for many older towns and suburbs
that were built either before cars or before widespread car ownership. There
are many advantages. Like hot-desking, fewer spaces need to be provided
because not everyone will need one at any given time. Most home-buyers and
employers, however, value parking highly and this approach is not favoured in
new developments. As noted by Levitt, there are practical and legal issues to
contend with. Local authorities in the UK prefer not to take over the maintenance
of on-street spaces and issues may also arise in the conveyancing of land to the
house purchaser of a car parking space that is not part of the house plot they
are buying. The presence of parking on the street is a mixed blessing. On the
one hand, car drivers activate the street in their own small way and this human
presence contributes to the use of the street. On the other hand, manoeuvring
cars and trafc generally can dominate the street scene, making the street feel
unsafe for children.

Nonetheless, the implications of on-street parking for urban form are fairly minimal:
once parking is relegated to the street, the difculties of providing for parking as
part of the block design itself is largely avoided. There is an important caveat to
this: square blocks use up more street with corners than long rectangular ones,
meaning that longer blocks can provide more street parking than square ones, all
other things being equal.

ON-PLOT (INTEGRAL GARAGE)

This option involves parking within a covered space or garage that has been
constructed as part of the dwelling. Because most households tend to use their
garages for storage rather than parking, however, this solution only works where
the garage is provided in the form of a carport or covered space without a door;
otherwise the car is more usually parked in front of the garage. In higher-density
house types with narrow plots this form of parking is often provided efectively
‘under’ the dwelling, where the residents can’t see it. Accordingly, to avoid potential
security issues, it is recommended that this option should be avoided except in
conjunction with house types that are wide enough to accommodate a front door
and a habitable room at street level.

ON-PLOT (FRONT OF HOUSE)

Parking in front of the house is the preference of most residents, but most
designers would argue that the set-back distance needed simultaneously weakens
the sense of street enclosure and allows cars to dominate the streetscape. Parking
on-plot is a sensible choice in some respects. Experience has taught us that if

94 THE URBAN BLOCK

parking is provided out of sight of the dwelling it is less likely to be used and may
result in parking inappropriately on the street or front garden in ways that have not
been designed to accommodate it.

ON-PLOT (REAR COURTYARD)

Parking in rear courtyards seems an obvious solution but there are many pitfalls.
If the courtyard is not overlooked it can become a magnet for antisocial activities
and a potential route for would-be burglars or vandals. One answer is to gate the
courtyard, but a more thoughtful response is to design the interior of the block as
an inhabited space that includes parking, and is also overlooked by dwellings. This
can help to make the parking area work, but still draws life from the street because
residents arriving or leaving by car have no reason to use their front door.

ON-PLOT (BETWEEN HOUSES)

A favourite option of urban designers that is tolerated by both home-owners and
developers is to accommodate parking between dwellings, behind the main
building line. This combines the advantages of on-plot parking with reduced
impact on the building set-back, but only works for detached or semi-detached
house forms.

UNDERCROFT
Undercroft parking refers to parking under the block but at ground level. If the
undercroft is not gated the parking area can feel insecure and will, in any case, fail
to activate the street in any positive way. Undercroft parking is a useful strategy for
areas at risk of fooding but does not achieve urban design objectives.

PODIUM
Many of the issues associated with undercroft parking can be ameliorated by this
option, where parking is provided at ground level but under a shared courtyard
space, with the ground foor parking screened from the street by active ground
foor uses. This can work well if the ground foor uses do not need through
ventilation or daylight penetration to the back, and so is suited to shops or cafés.
This approach has been proposed for mixed-use blocks in the emerging self-build
quarter of Homeruskquartier in Almere,27 however there are few new-build urban
extensions with the population threshold to support enough commercial uses to
wrap a full block. Additionally, the podium level of the car park requires careful
design for planting and ventilation to function as an amenity space as well.

BASEMENT
This is the most unobtrusive solution, but the cost associated with digging, tanking
and ventilating an underground parking structure, particularly if more than one
level is required, means it is only a realistic solution in central urban areas where
values and numbers outweigh the cost. There are, of course, other potential
pitfalls, including the lack of direct access to homes and potential security issues.

DESIGNING THE BLOCK 95

SHARED PARKING STRUCTURE
This option, entailing the provision of a separate shared multi-storey parking
structure, is not encountered very often but it has been trialled in the eco-
conscious Freiburg neighbourhood of Vauban, for example (see Figure 3.13).

Because environmental awareness is growing concurrently with improvements in

electric car technology, however, the provision of car clubs using shared electric
cars allocated to individual blocks could prove to be a gamechanger with the
potential to bring this type of solution back into contention. On a practical level,
of course, no one wants to carry their shopping any further than they absolutely
have to, and so it is more likely to be provided in undercroft, podium or basement
car parks.

96 THE URBAN BLOCK

3.13 Shared parking structure, Vauban, Freiburg, Germany.

DESIGNING THE BLOCK 97

4
ILLUSTRATING
THE BLOCK
This book is concerned with urban form – substance – over style. To provide a useful
reference point for designers, the selected case examples in this chapter focus
on the strengths and weaknesses of the block’s confguration in terms of what it
contributes to the public domain, and how it fosters a sense of its own community.

99
The interplay of politics and economics that pertains to urban development
sets the scene for any project’s latitude before any design work has even
been commissioned. The vested interests and motivations of the client, their
perceptions of market demand and the interlocking cogs of planning and
development processes largely determine the mix of accommodation the project
will include, its quality, its phasing, and the scope and remit of any design work
undertaken. The programme and land use of the block both afect, and are
afected by, the development scenario, which often limits the physical testing of
more daring and imaginative reappraisals of the perimeter block typology. The
demand for housing in the UK has raised fundamental questions about delivery,
and how to go about achieving a successful balance of public and private
investment and control over housing and mixed-use developments.

The relative economic constraints of this present era have meant that there remain
relatively few commissions by the kind of innovative clients or developers that
would encourage the design of block confgurations that stray from the fnancial
surety of tried-and-tested models, and it is telling that the majority of the selected
case studies are the result of progressive public sector involvement.

One of the most signifcant historical trends in the formation of urban blocks
(and suburban blocks, albeit to a lesser extent) is that the prevailing mode of
development has tended to eliminate the traditional subdivision of blocks into
more or less independent building plots, and instead tends to treat the block as
a unifed entity consisting of a single plot, or a series of interdependent ones.
There are few exceptions to this, and the consequence is that the majority of
block developments are the product of a single designer. Despite this trend, the
case studies cover a basic range of diferent approaches to ‘designing’ an urban
block: from those that have been commissioned, planned and designed in detail
by one ‘hand’, so to speak, through to those that have commissioned a plot-based
masterplan where each plot is sold separately and built out on a frst-come, frst-
served basis.

Given the complex history lying behind each block design, each case example
includes a short commentary on the project origins and the development context
of the block: how it came about, who owned the land, and how it was procured,
so that the reader is able to comprehend the project in its wider socioeconomic
context. There is detailed analysis of the block confguration in terms of its form,
arrangement and relevant aspects of its detailed design, followed by a commentary
on its successes and limitations, and its potential for replication in alternative
socioeconomic contexts.

100 THE URBAN BLOCK

 LIST OF CASE EXAMPLES

URBAN

Royal Road Lambeth, London 2013 Panter Hudspith

Chobham Manor Stratford, London 2018 ongoing PRP and MAKE

BedZED London 2003 Bill Dunster Architects

Barcode Oslo 2007–18 Various/MVRDV

8 House Ørestad, Copenhagen 2010 BIG

SUBURBAN

Poundbury Dorset, UK 1993 Léon Krier

Kingshill Kent, UK 2006 ongoing Clague Architects

Abode Great Kneighton, UK 2014 Proctor and Matthews

PERI-URBAN

Court Housing Groningen, the Netherlands 2013 architecten|en|en

Neptune Logements Dunkerque, France 2012 ANMA

Steigereiland Ijberg, Amsterdam, the Netherlands 1997 ongoing Various

ILLUSTRATING THE BLOCK 101

‘URBAN’ CASE EXAMPLES

ROYAL ROAD originated from the need to retain a number of existing trees
on the site (see Figure 4.2). Although this breed of plan form
Medieval London re-envisioned may be criticised for the inefciency of the length of its external
envelope, the corollary of this is that reducing the foor area :
Location: Southwark, London, UK envelope ratio increases the extent of available elevation – in
Date of completion: 2013 this case enabling each dwelling to be double- or even triple-
Urban context: Urban infll aspect, thus maximising natural light and natural ventilation.3
Client: Public (Southwark Borough Council partnered with The dwellings are of high quality for social housing in that they
housing association) all exceed minimum space standards and that residents all
Architect: Panter Hudspith have access to balconies, gardens and/or roof terraces. There
Area: 0.43 hectares are also no communal corridors here: all dwellings either have
Block dimensions: 60m × 68m (largest measurements) their own front door of the street or are accessed directly of
Number of dwellings: 96 duplexes and apartments landings within the four vertical cores.
Land use: Housing only
Tenure: Mixed social rent and intermediate rent The scheme is defned at its corners by T-shaped towers, each
Parking: Car-free project with cycle parking aligned with their respective street edges, jostling to assert their
dominance of position within the somewhat jumbled plan form.
Each ‘T’ contains a central vertical circulation core and one
PROJECT ORIGINS apartment is housed of this, within each of the three arms of
The London Borough of Southwark has pledged to build the ‘T’. Between these corner towers, along the two long sides
more than 10,000 new council homes over the next three of the site, are additional set-back blocks containing duplexes
decades and Royal Road is a pilot scheme for a series of and penthouse apartments, bookended either side by the
new-build housing developments constructed by Southwark towers. These volumes remain visually distinct, connected at
with ‘development partners’, titled ‘Early Housing Sites’. These upper foors by mainly glazed walkways, but allowing passage
pocket developments will eventually go some way to replace through to the courtyard at ground foor level. The massing of
the raft of council housing and land that has been sold of to this scheme therefore breaks up the volume of the block into
private developers in previous decades, including the notorious six elements: the four corner towers and the two rows of set-
demolition of the nearby Heygate Estate in 2011–14. Royal back duplexes. Although the homogeneity of the materials and
Road is the sixth of these Early Housing Sites, and arguably detailing gives the whole development an overall cohesiveness,
the best so far in terms of contextuality and quality.1 The these discrete volumes do ofer their own distinct identities for
site is located just north of Kennington Park on the site of a residents within this. This is important because the surrounding
former elderly care home, sitting beyond the ofcial boundary streetscape, edged by post-war housing estates, lacks defnition
of the Elephant and Castle regeneration district. It ofers and identity, sufering from a surfeit of large scale blank gables
76 new homes at social rent and 20 homes at intermediate and territorially ambiguous landscape.
(subsidised) rent.
The requirement for high density motivated the architects to
The project has received a commendation at the MIPIM AR draw upon medieval inspiration for the scheme, which ranges
Future Projects Awards on the basis of its ‘creative solutions in height from four to nine storeys. The traditional fne grain of
in urban design, site planning and the human qualities of the medieval townscape inspired them to orchestrate a series
dwellings’. Southwark Planning Department also praised the of set-backs and staggered heights, which are used to give a
scheme as ‘an exemplar of high-density development’.2 diferent character to each elevation across the scheme (see
Figure 4.3). This complex articulation of the massing helps
BLOCK CONFIGURATION to break down what could have been an overbearing scale
This is a high-density social housing scheme in an unusual and gives the impression of a more plot-based development.
cruciform block arrangement (see Figure 4.1), with a strong In addition, the architects pushed to try and ensure that
community agenda. The cruciform confguration with set-backs each individual dwelling was unique; this was achieved by

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4.1 Block plan of Royal Road.

4.2 Typical upper level foor plan of Royal Road showing vertical circulation located at the centre of the ‘T’/cruciform block.

ILLUSTRATING THE BLOCK 103

applying localised tweaks to standardised dwelling types permeability, opening the central garden to non-residents
while safeguarding economic viability.4 The broken-up and enhancing the pedestrian network. In reality this inner-
massing combined with these individual tweaks results in city location required gates to be installed, and although the
an elevational variation across the scheme that ofers a feast lightweight ‘friendly’ fencing ofers some visual permeability,
of visual articulation to the streetscape, achieved within its the courtyard remains for residents only.
calming homogeneous framework of brickwork.
Albeit private, the courtyard (see Figure 4.4) is nevertheless
Chamfers are applied to corners at ground foor level, eroding a successful space. The more constrained inner block
sharp angles at entry points to blocks to create welcoming proportions created by the cruciform and deep set-backs of
funnel-shaped passages to main cores. This efective tweak the duplexes make the interior feel more intimate, while the
to the plan prevents the relatively deep entry passages from largely vertical fenestration, generous balconies and terraces,
feeling pinched, opening wider views to public terrain and and low fencing to the rear gardens of the duplexes, all palpably
increasing passive surveillance from the street. In an ideal increase the sense of passive surveillance. The garden feels
scenario, these four passages into the communal courtyard like somewhere you could safely send your kids to play while
would have been openly accessible to the public, which would cooking dinner in one of the lower level apartments and is a
have granted the block an additional hierarchy of fltered reminder that bigger isn’t always better when it comes to inner
courts. Another positive aspect of the scheme detailing is the
fenestration on both the street and the courtyard façades,
which is predominantly full height, lending an elegance to the
façades visually, while ofering tantalising full-height glimpses
into living quarters without over-exposure.

This unusual block confguration sets up a successful

language of set-backs and hierarchies that allows residential
high density to be achieved while maintaining privacy for
residents. There is no mixed use included in the scheme
and although this can’t work everywhere, it does seem a lost
opportunity for a development of this density. The ground
foor elevations at the bases of the T-section towers – adjacent
to the corner pocket-gardens – present an entirely blank face
to the street, with high clerestory windows allowing limited
light to the storage areas within; spaces that could potentially
have been ofered as live/work units, small ofce spaces or
even a café to activate the street.

4.3 Exterior of Royal Road: (top) aerial view; (bottom) exterior view
of block, highlighting the complex use of set-backs.

104 THE URBAN BLOCK

 COMMENTARY
The additional level of complexity that the cruciform towers
instil in their relationship to the street is the most interesting
and unusual aspect of this scheme from the point of view of its
urban form. They set up a block confguration that shouts out
its potential for mixed use, but the necessary decision-making
to achieve this would need to have been unlocked during the
commissioning phase. Notwithstanding what could have been,
this social housing block represents a triumph of planning and
design, ofering a wealth of spatial and formal devices, and
learning from traditional plot-based development, that could be
applied to other schemes.

Successes
∙ The block form enables a higher proportion of double-
aspect apartments than is usually feasible.
∙ The crux of each ‘T’ operates as a natural focal point for
vertical circulation, with the potential to foster interaction
between residents.
∙ The form naturally creates semi-enclosed set-backs
from the street that serve as defensible space for
ground-level units.

Drawbacks
∙ The opportunity for the corner units to be activated by
shops or other commercial uses has not been taken,
and they are instead given over to bin and bike storage
featuring relatively blank façades.
∙ The inner courtyard is not publicly accessible, denying
the potential for fltered permeability the confguration is
suggestive of.

4.4 Interior images of Royal Road: (top) internal courtyard; (bottom)

view into courtyard showing intimacy of enclosure.

ILLUSTRATING THE BLOCK 105

CHOBHAM MANOR eight storeys in height. The blocks sit within a permeable street
network with a hierarchy of four ‘grades’ of route, ranging from
Something for everyone: a multi-faceted block of ‘major’ avenues, through to residential secluded mews and
assorted London bricks laneways. Pedestrian access and choice are given high priority,
ofering relatively small block sizes of under 90m in length, which
Location: Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Stratford, London, UK is efectively halved again once the fltered permeability ofered
Date of completion: 2018 (ongoing) by the laneways and mews is taken into account. The creation of
Urban context: Peri-urban new-build sustainable communities lies at the heart of the design in terms
Client: Public/private partnership (LLDC partnered with of its social, economic and environmental credentials.
housing association and private developer)
Architect: PRP Architects BLOCK CONFIGURATION
Area: 0.68 hectares Phase 1A is a hybrid perimeter/mews block development (see
Block dimensions: 78m × 86m (largest measurements) block plan in Figure 4.5) comprised of 105 dwellings notionally
Number of dwellings: 105 duplexes, maisonettes, apartments organised into fve ‘parcels’ of accommodation that utilise and
and townhouses integrate a variety of housing typologies and commercial or
Land use: Housing with four retail/commercial units retail units on the corners at ground foor. The block perimeter
Tenure: Mixed social rent and private freehold is approximately 16m deep and comprises 93 apartments
Parking: Carports, podium parking and limited on-street and maisonettes (fve of which are designated ‘afordable
parking for residents homes’), and a row of eight fve-bedroom townhouses, clearly
illustrated in the architect’s 3D sketch diagram (Figure 4.6).
The efciencies aforded through vertically stacking duplex
PROJECT ORIGINS and maisonette units, allow frequent own-door entrances to be
Chobham Manor is a distinctive and high-quality block-based ofered at ground foor level, which – combined with occasional
development of family housing based on the edge of the commercial/retail units – help to activate the street. The ground
Olympic Park in Stratford, London. The phased series of eight foor elevations ofer generously proportioned windows from
mixed-use blocks is in development at the time of writing. the living accommodation, increasing passive surveillance,
The multi-toned brick design theme has its roots in traditional although cleverly set back within shallow reveals. A variety
Georgian town housing, but the scheme brings to bear a of planted bufer zones also carefully manage the thresholds
range of contemporary ideas about ‘good practice’ within an between the block and the street and ofer inhabitants the
innovative block-based layout that incorporates a wide range opportunity to contribute their personal identity to the visual
of housing typologies. patina of the neighbourhood as it beds in over time.

Development of the site is under the auspices of the London The design of corners has been carefully considered. The
Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC). LLDC’s remit was confguration utilises apartment units to undertake the task of
to establish a new high-quality urban district and a strong turning three of the corners, while a unique ‘multi-generational’
residential community through their Legacy Communities unit including a rear annexe, successfully addresses the fourth
Scheme (LCS). Chobham Manor will provide 859 new homes, corner. Set-back undercroft garden areas provided at ground
75% of which are family homes (three bedrooms or more), foor level ofer a soft and green treatment that ameliorate sharp
and 28% of which are ‘afordable’ homes ofered through street corners. Figure 4.7 shows the exterior of the Chobham
London and Quadrant Housing Trust (L&Q), with a mixed-use Manor block.
block including a café, nursery and fexible community space
alongside apartments. The complexity of the overall block confguration is enhanced
by inserting a row of four three-bedroom mews houses on a
The masterplan uses the ‘mews block’ as its basis and defnes laneway bisecting the block. The façade of the perimeter block
a series of regular and irregular shaped and sized perimeter continues unbroken and the laneway is entered through a
blocks of approx. 80m × 70m and ranging between three and ground foor coach-style opening, albeit without gates. Although

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4.5 Block plan of Chobham Manor Phase 1a.

Podium courtyard Mews houses with

above undercroft on-plot parking
car park District heating energy
centre located in
undercroft car park
Bio-diverse roofs to
apartment blocks
Townhouses
with gardens

Commercial space

Multi-generation
house

Stacked maisonettes
with rear gardens
Houses on the green
and roof terraces
with dual access and
on-plot parking
Loading bay

Apartments
4.6 3D sketch view of Chobham Manor block Phase 1a.

ILLUSTRATING THE BLOCK 107

4.7 Exterior images of Chobham Manor: (top) townhouses;
(bottom) multigenerational corner house.

the restricted access and sense of cloister-like quietness within

imbues a sense of privacy, the laneway is nevertheless lifted
from amenity status and treated with the same degree of care
and high quality of fnishes as the public block exterior, providing
an attractive inner core for the surrounding residences to
overlook. This laneway is not a standard mews confguration in
that accommodation is arranged along one side only, and these
dwellings face onto the undercroft parking of the apartments
rather than rear gardens, so avail of internal courtyard gardens
for their rear aspect and natural lighting. These four mews
houses adopt a double-width front with carport to one
side and a large picture window to the other side, providing
overlooking of the mews laneway. While the carport gates
opposite might otherwise aford this façade a service zone
categorisation, the high quality of materials and extent of visible
occupation means that the laneway feels safe and cared for. 4.8 Interior images of Chobham Manor: (top) mews houses;
Figure 4.8 shows the interior of the Chobham Manor block. (bottom) mews laneway with coach-style opening to the street.

108 THE URBAN BLOCK

This block, and its almost identical sister alongside, are located Successes
on the south-east side of the ‘garden avenue’ that forms the ∙ The wider range of house types than is usually found
community centrepiece of the overall scheme. In terms of the in a new-build block should attract a more balanced
block’s volumetric, the character and solar conditions of this community (e.g. families, couples, singles and downsizers).
public avenue are aforded priority over the block’s interior. ∙ The blockʼs range of types enriches the streetscape
The arrangement of storey heights within this block therefore and allows the scale of development to respond to the
strays from good sustainable practice in terms of its orientation, surrounding movement hierarchy.
in that the lower four-storey townhouses are located along ∙ The relatively small scale of the blocks, combined with
‘garden avenue’ to the north-west, while the higher seven- the mews confguration, facilitates a high degree of
storey apartment blocks are located to the south-east, which permeability through the area.
does create some overshadowing with the block interior. This is
ameliorated slightly by raising up the outdoor areas within the Drawbacks
south side of the block to sit over the undercroft for this element, ∙ The fronts of dwellings on one side and the backs of
and through locating the semi-public and lower-rise mews lane dwellings on the other sets up a ‘back-to-front’ relationship.
houses to the northern end of the block interior, which doesn’t ∙ The innovative hybrid block type fts a lot into the moderate
sufer overshadowing. Although diverting from best sustainable scale of its site, and the inclusion of the mews makes the
practice, this composition of heights ensures that the overall overall confguration feel slightly over developed.
scale of the neighbourhood remains ‘human’ and proportional ∙ The tight block dimensions compromise private open
to the street widths, and that the public avenue is more likely to space making its interior feel somewhat squeezed.
attract activity and occupation – achieving a negotiated balance
of environmental and social sustainability.

COMMENTARY
The confguration and details of the block design stem to a
signifcant extent from the negotiation of public/private/shared/
individual funding arrangements. Placing impetus on private
developers to provide ‘afordable homes’ – as opposed to social
housing being developed by the local authority – is the norm in
the UK but is not without its critics. This scheme mixes freehold
property owners with residents on part-ownership or social
rent agreements, yet unusually the development agreement
with LLDC stipulates that all residents be subject to service
charges for neighbourhood management, thus allowing
the environment and landscaping to be of higher quality
than normally obtainable though local council tax funding
alone. The block therefore benefts from use of high-quality
landscaping materials that a council would not normally agree
to upkeep.

The high level of thought and consideration that has gone

into the design of the block is laudable, and this scheme
represents an impressive showcase for ‘good practice’ in
its carefully detailed relationship to the street, quality of
materials, combination of dwelling types and mixed use, and
its judiciously navigated social relationship to the merits of the
wider masterplan.

ILLUSTRATING THE BLOCK 109

BEDZED The blocks are essentially a ribbon confguration in terms of
their urban form (see Figure 4.9), with each row facing the
Sun before street rear of the row in front and narrow access lanes in-between
accommodating the south-facing entrances to the dwellings.
Location: Croydon, London, UK The ribbon elements are linked by a series of bridges at frst
Date of completion: 2003 foor level, which makes the combined set of rows read as a
Urban context: Suburban infll cohesive and homogeneous entity. The confguration operates
Client: Public partnership as an urban block in that it could theoretically be continued
Architect: ZedFactory (Bill Dunster Architects) ad infnitum on a grid network, although in this instance the
Area: 0.57 hectares development is ostensibly functioning as a cul-de-sac, given
Block dimensions: 82m × 67m (largest measurements) that vehicular trafc has just one access point of the adjacent
Number of dwellings: 82 mixed-tenure duplexes, and main artery road, and this circulates around the two blocks of
apartments residences with no through route.
Land use: Housing
Tenure: Public rent The project is a block design that has been oriented to the
Parking: Limited on-street parking sun instead of to the street, which allows us to assess the
implications of using sustainable orientation as a design driver
in block confguration. Although its current incarnation is a
PROJECT ORIGINS set piece of a main road, the design also has the potential to
BedZED is a fagship environmentally friendly, mixed-use operate well within a gridded urban network. BedZED also
housing development, with a distinctive visual character and provides a relatively high number of dwellings per hectare, so
strong community identity, located in south London. This provides a good suburban model for discussion.
experimental and slightly eccentric project emerged from
an unusual form of collaboration between an architect (Bill The ribbon block confguration generates a hierarchical set
Dunster, founder of ZedFactory), an environmental charity of routes on the outer and inner block (although this is less
(Bioregional) and a housing association (the Peabody Trust). relevant in this setting given the low volume of trafc on the
The project began in 1999 through partnering with Peabody encircling roadway). Ribbon blocks generally sufer from
to obtain a plot of undeveloped land earmarked for housing the one-sided nature of the inner access routes due to their
from Sutton Borough Council. relatively low volume of use, and from their largely blank side
gables, but BedZED goes some way to address such concerns
BedZED was completed to critical acclaim in 2003 and includes (see Figure 4.11): the fronts of the dwellings are oriented and
82 homes, ofce space and Orchard College. The commercial designed for solar gain, ofering high levels of transparency to
success of the BedZED idea – and the marketable appeal of the dwellings and increasing the sense of passive surveillance
its quirky brightly coloured ventilation cowls – has propelled its of the laneways over and above standard dwelling types. This
property values to at least 10% above neighbouring premises façade treatment is augmented by careful consideration of the
of the same size. relationship between dwellings and laneways, where the depth
of the gardens (varying between 5m and 10m between rows)
BLOCK CONFIGURATION and slightly raised ground levels (approx. 750mm) provide a
The site takes the form of two adjacent ‘blocks’ containing happy medium between space for greenery and privacy for
row housing (see Figure 4.9). The southern, larger block is residents, and their overlooking of the access lanes through
confgured into three south-facing rows on a simple square low transparent fencing.
block of approximately 70m × 70m, including a small inset
courtyard on the north side. The northern, smaller block of The laneways are also provided with a sense of character,
approximately 45m × 45m has two rows of accommodation, enclosure and a degree of activation from the almost arcadian
including Orchard College and ofces, giving the scheme its planted bridges which span over them at frst foor level, linking
low level of mixed-use status. the horizontal rows of housing and providing north–south

110 THE URBAN BLOCK

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4.9 Block plan of BedZED.

4.10 Street view to front corner (south) of main block containing three terraces.

ILLUSTRATING THE BLOCK 111

permeability to residents at this upper foor level (see Figure to establish a ‘model of good practice’ for this block type.
4.12). It is these bridges that provide the most interesting The project does, however, ofer a positive contribution to
aspect of the spatial confguration as they provide access from consideration of future models of this type in the relative
upper storey dwellings to their own private roof terraces sitting maturity of some of its spatial syntax design. More signifcantly,
atop an adjacent block, establishing a north–south trajectory the project manages to efectively disrupt the rigidity of
of usage in addition to the ground-level street running in the standard horizontal ribbon forms through its complex
opposite direction. The side gables of the end row houses confguration of accommodation and unusual use of bridges,
include entrance doors and small windows to increase which generate an innovative woven three-dimensional matrix
overlooking, although these elevations still inevitably read of circulation and inhabitation.
as secondary. The fxed orientation and ribbon nature of this
solar-oriented approach will always render its outward-facing Successes
qualities unidirectional to some extent, although the expansive ∙ The form facilitates repetition of house types.
fenestration, softened corners with occasional side entrances, ∙ The front of every home is oriented towards the
and overall attention to materiality and detail, go a long way to southerly sun, with generous although moderated
address this. provision for passive solar gain.
∙ There is a high degree of permeability within the block,
Where a standard perimeter block confguration naturally at least in one direction (east–west).
encloses a shared collective amenity space at its centre, the
ribbon block type doesn’t, and to compensate for this, a small Drawbacks
shared courtyard has been included at the northern end of ∙ Only one side of the block is activated in the manner of a
the south block. This space is faced by the side gables of the traditional street.
adjacent rows and the rear elevation of the middle row, opening ∙ The lanes running through the block are quite narrow,
the interior of the block to the street towards the north. There making them overshadowed.
are cycle racks and benches ofered here, although the limited ∙ The back-to-front confguration combined with raised
bikes stored here ofer some indication of the perception of front gardens results in a relatively low level of passive
security. The question of how to incorporate shared amenity surveillance of the central laneways.
space in a ribbon block is always tricky, and the territorial ∙ The ribbon form of the block doesn’t lend itself to the
uncertainty with respect to the collective ownership of this creation of a convivial shared space.
northern courtyard illustrates this point. The scheme does,
however, include smaller pockets of clearly overlooked shared
space within the laneways (albeit one-sided), which perhaps
ofer a more successful approach to this dilemma.

The scheme is a fagship because of its eco-credentials and

as such ofers a limited parking quota to encourage the use
of local public transport. A small number of designated car
parking spaces are located in bays adjacent to the fank walls
of each row, with limited overlooking from the small side
windows of the end residences.

COMMENTARY
Developing a block form that prioritises orientation to the sun
over orientation to the street will always involve compromise.
BedZED’s design qualities ameliorate some of the negative
aspects associated with ribbon block forms, although it
perhaps remains questionable whether it goes far enough

112 THE URBAN BLOCK

4.11 Exterior images of BedZED: (top) view towards internal 4.12 Interior images of BedZED: (top) within internal street with
street; (bottom) pedestrian street between blocks. planted bridges overhead; (bottom) sky gardens linked to
terraces by bridges.

ILLUSTRATING THE BLOCK 113

BARCODE BLOCK CONFIGURATION
At frst glance the basic confguration of Barcode appears
Slicing up the mixed-use block – point blocks as a series of eleven elongated ‘point blocks’, varying in size
made good between 70m and 110m long by 5–21m wide, arranged as
strips in a north–south direction and with a minimum distance
Location: Bjorvika, Oslo, Norway of 12m between blocks. However, the form can also be read
Date of completion: 2007–18 as a kind of ‘super-block’, combining some of the attributes
Urban context: Urban regeneration of a perimeter block and a ribbon block. As with a perimeter
Client: Public/private partnership block, all of the four sides of the super-block beneft from being
Architect: MVRDV, A-Lab and DARK frontages to some extent, with special design attention having
Area: 3.53 hectares been paid to the broken elevations to the north and south –
Block dimensions: 150m × 110m (largest measurements) where the short ends of the bars face the transport hub and
Land use: Housing fjord respectively – to ensure that these are not perceived as
Tenure: Private ‘ends’ and still provide welcoming street-facing elevations.
Parking: Basement
The eleven blocks are located on an overall development block
measuring approx. 320m × 120m. This ‘super-block’ is then
PROJECT ORIGINS subtly subdivided into four smaller ‘sub-blocks’ by the insertion
Barcode is an experimental departure from the traditional of north–south secondary access routes, one of which operates
perimeter block confguration that was originally earmarked for as a wide pedestrian plaza, while the other two allow vehicular
the regeneration of this former industrial zone on the edge of trafc in the form of a more traditional access street. Each of
the city centre. The site sits prominently on the edge of the fjord these notional ‘sub-blocks’ then measure in the order of 100m
near central Oslo, in which its towers are dramatically refected. × 100m and comprise either two or three of these elongated
‘point blocks’ with narrow pedestrian passageways around
The scheme design for Barcode was the successful outcome of 9m wide separating them (see block plan in Figure 4.13). The
a competition undertaken by the three collaborating practices. shapes and heights of the blocks were sculpted with reference
The competition guidance (prepared by the Norwegian to their orientation and use and also to retain sight lines of the
government) requested three perimeter blocks, but the winning fjord from the higher neighbourhoods behind (see Figure 4.14).
entry took an alternative approach, veering away from the brief
in the hope they could win over the jury to a more creative and The competition winning team drew up a masterplan and
contextual solution. The team made a convincing case to shift design code, setting loose but carefully contrived parameters
away from the traditional perimeter block typology to open for the design of individual buildings, which were then
up framed views from the north side of the site towards the undertaken by a variety of diferent architects. The code
expanse of glittering fjord beyond, arguing that splitting up the ofered a relatively high degree of freedom, providing a set
site into strips would prevent the development from creating a of basic principles concerning form, volume, entrance and
high and impermeable wall that would separate the waterfront core locations, block heights, materials, programme mix
from the city behind. and arrangement, parking and servicing of blocks, while still
enabling design diferentiation between the blocks. The
The project was initially contentious with local residents – development also took place on an incrementally phased
who campaigned strongly against the development – but the basis spanning over a decade, beginning in 2005 with the
development consortium had both the power and confdence PWC headquarters (A-LAB) at the west end, with the fnal
to see the process through to completion, and the scheme has block at the eastern end (also by A-LAB) being completed in
since dramatically gained in popularity. 2016, all of which are visible in the completed development
of 2018 (see Figure 4.15). This lengthy phased development
demanded that a diverse programme with mixed uses
occurred in each of the blocks. In the sense of its fexible

114 THE URBAN BLOCK

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4.13 Block plan of western end of Barcode (initial phases).

4.14 View of the completed Barcode development from the water.

ILLUSTRATING THE BLOCK 115

4.15 Exterior images of Barcode: (top) 3D diagram showing
evolution of Barcode form; (bottom) view of the rear
elevations adjacent to the railway.

design framework, multiple individual designers and phased

incremental construction, Barcode ofers a healthy example of
European post-modernist assemblage development.

The development difers signifcantly from a perimeter block

in its increased overall permeability. Given that it doesn’t
provide a semi-private interior courtyard – similar to a ribbon
block – the interior of the block benefts from a series of 4.16 Interior image of Barcode (view across access street).
pedestrianised walkways. These external passages provide
multiple entrances into the block and maximise the potential south links are essentially private property, and not public
for publicly accessible commercial outlets, while ofering ‘streets’ in the true sense of the word.
some of the qualities of traditional townscapes such as
Barcelona in their spatial proportions. The retail frontage is Along with its corporate occupiers, Barcode’s convenient and
further increased by the inclusion of an east–west pedestrian attractive location also draws high-income domestic residents,
route that cuts through the blocks at ground foor level, making the signifcant cost of underground parking viable. It is
allowing sheltered access to additional outlets (see Figure this continuous underground service zone that is instrumental in
4.16). These routes difer critically from those in the archetypal enabling the streetscape above to be of high quality and remain
housing ribbon block in that the overall scale and mix of free of parking, deliveries and rubbish collection. This splintered
Barcode allows the individual blocks to ofer frontages on both block therefore removes the hierarchies of public/private, outer/
sides, thus activating a double-sided, public-facing pedestrian inner relationships of traditional perimeter and ribbon blocks,
network with a civic urban quality. In regard to its apparent ofering a subtler and more publicly oriented hierarchy of
permeability, however, it is important to note that the north– navigable and accessible routes. The civic urban quality of these

116 THE URBAN BLOCK

walkways will emerge over time, and their ultimate success will quality. Urbanists claim that good architecture cannot save
also be determined by surrounding localities yet to be developed bad urban form, but the quality of this scheme – deploying
as part of the Fjord City regeneration. point blocks rather than perimeter blocks – suggests this
orthodoxy can be challenged.
Meanwhile the gain in ‘streetscape’ (albeit privatised) is to
some extent ofset by the loss of the semi-public inner core that Successes
a conventional perimeter block ofers. The communal amenity ∙ The allocation of each building to a diferent architect –
space in Barcode is relegated to rooftop gardens, and while regulated by an overarching design code – results in an
these ‘green tops’ are visually attractive with expansive views, attractively diverse yet coherent waterfront.
they lack the physical sense of enclosure, protection from wind ∙ High degree of permeability ofering regular north–south
and sense of overlooking that a courtyard scenario ofers, with streets between buildings, and a ground-level east–west
a likely reduction in usage, especially for families. The narrow passage across the whole site.
inner streets of approximately 12m also set up short distances ∙ The north–south breaks allow sunlight to penetrate
between facing windows, and views between blocks are through the block and facilitates glimpsed views of the
uncomfortably close in some instances. harbour for residents to the north of the railway.

COMMENTARY Drawbacks
This unusual approach has taken strides to challenge the ∙ Privately owned north–south ‘streets’ between the
presumption in favour of perimeter block forms. Barcode is a blocks of accommodation enable a higher spec of fnish
high achiever in commercial stakes: maximising street frontage and maintenance at the expense of freedom of access.
for commercial gain, enhancing pedestrian permeability of ∙ The urban form does not provide for a shared open
the urban network, and ofering an efciently serviced and space within the interior of the block.
high-quality streetscape. Its appeal to the domestic market
is probably more limited, with the reduction in usable shared
amenity space perhaps restricting appeal to high-achieving
individuals and couples over families. The splintered form of
Barcode was generated by the qualities of its specifc location
adjacent to the fjord and transport hub, its large scale, and
its mix of predominantly commercial uses. Meanwhile its
relative inhospitality to families, and reliance on high-revenue
investment mean that potential for replication of this hybrid
super-block layout remains limited to similar inner-city and
highly accessible sites.

The success of this project is in spite of its urban form rather

than because of it. As such, it is unlikely to challenge the
orthodoxy of the perimeter block as the basic urban building
block, with its clearer demarcation of public and private space,
its diversity and fexibility. Rather, the relative triumph of the
scheme as a ‘block’ can be attributed to the application of a
strict design code that makes all the parts work together as a
coherent whole, executed by a group of talented architects:
simply lining up a row of point blocks is not what this scheme
is, and is the reason we should not be seduced by its potential
applicability as a formal solution that could work anywhere
without the same degree of care and attention to design

ILLUSTRATING THE BLOCK 117

8 HOUSE 8 House’s high density and mix of uses enable it to operate as
both a perimeter block and (to a lesser extent) as a courtyard
Streets in the sky with a twist block, with both inner courts and outer perimeter edges
defned by a mix of residential and commercial units. The
Location: Ørestad, Copenhagen, Denmark residential armature of the scheme recalls the well-known but
Date of completion: 2010 discredited model of post-war mass housing euphemistically
Urban context: Urban extension, new suburb branded as ‘streets in the sky’ (or the less snappy ‘streets in
Client: Largely private the air’, as the Smithsons frst posited).5 Perhaps more closely
Architect: Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) related to seminal ‘deck-access’ perimeter block projects like
Area: 2.1 hectares Sprangen in Rotterdam than Park Hill in Shefeld, 8 House
Block dimensions: 260m × 90m (largest measurements) reimagines the simple deck-access approach into a complex
Number of dwellings: 476 dwellings as row houses, duplexes looping helical ramp-cum-street, giving one-sided access
and apartments to stepped ‘row houses’. This unusual circulation route then
Land use: Housing, community, ofce and retail operates as an additional ‘stratum’ of activity, making visible
Tenure: Private sale and rental entrances to dwellings extending from ground level up to
Parking: Limited spaces within adjacent multi-storey car park the tenth foor and traversing around both the inner and
outer edges of the block. Bjarke Ingels describes how they
‘stacked up the ingredients of an urban neighbourhood…into
PROJECT ORIGINS a three-dimensional neighbourhood where social life and ad
8 House is the largest private development ever undertaken hoc interactions normally restricted to ground level, occur
in Denmark, commissioned in 2006 and completed in 2010. throughout the building’ (see Figure 4.18).6
The private nature of the commission allowed the architect
to be commissioned directly, while the progressive outlook of The 1km looping ramped street is what makes 8 House
this largely commercial partnership recognised the marketing special: its most distinctive feature yet also its most curious,
potential ofered by ‘big’ design statements and provided a impacting on both its inward- and outward-facing qualities. The
liberal budget to achieve this objective. The units here are on establishment of a strong residential community is intended to
sale for around 25% above market rate for their foor area. The hinge around informal interactions occurring on this ramped
scheme has gained international recognition for its unique street, where social engagement might foster activation of
design qualities and was winner of the 2011 World Architecture the block’s internal perimeter (see Figure 4.19). In addition,
Festival award for housing. 500m2 of communal social spaces for social, cultural and family
events is available for residents, opening directly of the central
BLOCK CONFIGURATION crossover of the ramps.
The architect, Bjarke Ingels, topically describes 8 House as ‘a
perimeter block that morphs into a knot’ (see Figure 4.17). The In terms of social occupation, the simple act of ramping the
cinched centre of the block defnes internal courtyard spaces access ‘streets’ critically alters the zoning and usability ofered
either side and provides a ground-level pedestrian access by standard fat ‘deck access’. Whereas residents’ personal
route across the block, which efectively slices the mega- occupation of fat deck areas is typically relatively informal and
block of around 260m × 90m into two halves of approximately spills out across the circulation routes, at 8 House, the sloping
130m × 90m each. The predominantly vertically accessed nature of the access requires ‘fattened out’ areas to enable
accommodation (including a ramped street) maintains a occupation, which in turn determines that the zoning between
consistently narrow front-to-back depth of 17m including semi-public and semi-private is more clearly demarcated.
balconies, allowing most units to be double-aspect with a range The fattened areas then naturally become ‘private’ front
of orientations. The whole form is angled to maximise solar gardens for the stepped row houses (see Figure 4.20). The
gain and scoops down from nine storeys at the northern end to ramp to garden dynamic remains very open, where the small
just one at the south, resulting in some dramatic inclines. change in level between each garden reduces the need for
high fences, so boundaries are more subtly demarcated by

118 THE URBAN BLOCK

0 25 50m

4.17 Block plan of 8 House.

4.18 Diagram showing the evolution of 3D form for 8 House.

ILLUSTRATING THE BLOCK 119

 the high level of density achieved on this site, these ramps
should more accurately be regarded as adding a welcome
level of connectedness between the blocks’ many residents
and its visitors.

The ground plane of the block, meanwhile, is occupied by

a variety of international and local businesses, including
community facilities such as a nursery and a café/restaurant
overlooking the water and nature reserve. The foor level of
some of these functions is sunk a metre or two below ground
level, which does limit their visual connectedness to the public
terrain. Their access points are also quite difcult to fathom,
as in some instances there is little to distinguish between
entrances to businesses and entrances to residential cores.
There are signifcant successes though, including the nursery’s
play-space, which animates one of the courtyards as well as a
popular ‘destination’ café, and an interesting cross-section of
businesses housed in the distinctive and variable-sized units.

COMMENTARY
Despite the laudable efort and determination that has gone
into achieving this impressive and immensely complex three-
dimensional confguration of living, working and socialising,
the limited scope it ofers for replicability – in terms of both
cost and practicality – means that we are unlikely to see 8
Houses springing up across the world. Its relevance lies rather
in its reimagining of deck-access housing, which has been
largely abandoned in the UK due to its associations with failed
modernist social housing schemes such as at Park Hill in
4.19 Exterior images of 8 House: (top) view towards south side of Shefeld (see Chapter 1), and in its incorporation of supporting
block from nature reserve; (bottom) entry point of ramped street. community and business uses. There are also some lessons
to be learned in terms of the demarcation of boundaries,
shrubbery and steps. The occupation zones therefore sit on a which are eroded at many levels in the ambiguous territory of
spectrum somewhere between a typical ‘front garden’ and the the ramped street and perhaps overly subtle demarcation of
informal occupation of a shared deck. The slope of the ramp ‘private’ areas, but most notably in the overall visible intensity
is also relatively steep – exceeding UK building regulations for of the scheme, which presents a ten-storey wall of ‘eyes’ from
disabled access. the inner balconies of many dwellings.

The act of raising routes of the ground plane immediately This is nevertheless an interesting and important case study,
precludes free movement without a prescribed access setting a whole new standard for innovation in mixed-use
route back down again. In this regard the scheme could be housing schemes that challenges our presumptions about
criticised for having created an elaborate cul-de-sac in terms deck-access housing, combining visionary with customary
of the ramps’ accessibility, permeability and animation of the traditional and contemporary typologies. The ambitious
wider public realm. They are, however, more fairly compared to unravelling, merging and tinkering of standard approaches to
the standard deck access found in many apartment schemes, circulation and the renegotiation of assumed public/private
yet more thoughtfully designed and openly accessible. So for thresholds creates a distinctive and extraordinary place and a

120 THE URBAN BLOCK

timely reminder of the potential deck-access design solutions
ofer to combine sustainable densities with a social agenda.

Successes
∙ Figure-of-eight form breaks what would otherwise be
one large courtyard into two smaller ones and enlivens
the street façades with indents and inlets.
∙ Crossover point allows access to both courtyards and
creates a natural focus for lifts and stair cores.
∙ Highly responsive to views and context, rising
dramatically from south to north, so allowing sunlight to
penetrate deep into the block’s interior, while maximising
views out to the nature reserve from apartments.
∙ Reimagines modernist deck access to dwellings in the
form of an innovative spiral ramped circulation route
ascending the interior of the block, imbuing the scheme
with a social ‘heart’.

Drawbacks
∙ Tension between the semi-public use of the deck and
the occupiers of the individual private gardens.
∙ Three-dimensional form is complex and expensive to
design and build.

4.20 Interior images of 8 House: (top) ‘streets in the sky’; (bottom)

front gardens extending of the ramped street.

ILLUSTRATING THE BLOCK 121

‘SUBURBAN’ CASE EXAMPLES

POUNDBURY, DORSET, UK in the sense that the complexity of the layout – incorporating
routes through and between the block(s) – blurs boundaries
Reliving times past between what is public at one end of the spectrum, and what
is private at the other.
Location: Dorset, UK
Date of completion: Construction began in 1993, 50% The plan illustrates the principles adopted for many of
complete in 2010, ongoing to 2022 the Poundbury urban blocks: a clearly defned perimeter
Urban context: Urban extension of houses with a more or less continuous building line
Client: Duchy of Cornwall enclosing a looser interior court, which is also overlooked
Masterplanners: Léon Krier and Alan Baxter Associates by fronts as well as backs of dwellings. The perimeter of the
Area: LHS 0.46 hectares / RHS 0.42 hectares block is broken to allow cars into it, but the overall efect, at
Block dimensions: LHS 84 × 81m / RHS 102 × 62m (largest least as seen from the outside, is of a traditional street made
measurements) up of row housing (see Figure 4.23). Most of the houses
Number of dwellings: LHS 25 / RHS 26 are two storeys in height, with three-storey units marking
Land use: Housing prominent corners. In the illustrated example, the corners
Tenure: Mixed ‘step out’ over the footpath, further emphasising the symbolic
Parking: Mews courtyard importance accorded to block corners in contemporary
urban design practice.

PROJECT ORIGINS Both blocks show an innovative feature referred to as

Poundbury is essentially a ‘new town’ initiated by the Prince ‘chequerboarding’, whereby some of the house plots are
of Wales on land owned by the Duchy of Cornwall in Dorset, reversed so that the front of the house overlooks the parking
near Dorchester. Construction began in 1993, and it has been area, rather than the street (see Figure 4.24). So-called ‘coach
criticised for its historicist architecture and nostalgic overtones. house’ typologies are also liberally deployed within the courts.
Its royal patronage also makes it a highly unusual case, yet it These are a common building type in Britain, incorporating fats
is one so redolent of Britain’s own ‘New Urbanist’ movement, over garages (‘FOGs’ in less esteemed company). The majority
and so infuential on subsequent suburban development, that of blocks provide for more than one pedestrian route through,
it is worth revisiting from the point of view of its urban form and fostering the sense of a connected network of streets, alleys
block structure. and courtyards.

The frst phase of development followed New Urbanist COMMENTARY

principles: traditional building forms focused on a walkable The irregular block planning of Poundbury’s frst phase of
network of streets and squares, and referenced the local development demonstrates that the perimeter block typology
architectural vernacular. It also sought to emulate some of the need not be synonymous with gridded layouts, so much so
loftier principles of the Garden City Movement, by incorporating that it has been described as ‘relentlessly informal’.7 In this
mixed-uses and employment opportunities, in the hope it would sense, it can be described as a kind of ‘planned organicism’,
develop into a more or less self-sustained settlement, rather because the impression of organic growth belies the fxity of
than a mere dormitory for commuters. the masterplan that underlies it.

BLOCK CONFIGURATION Behind the scenes the mixing of tenures and house types
Figure 4.21 shows two irregularly shaped blocks (labelled shows a genuine concern to create mixed communities and
LHS and RHS in key info above) forming part of the frst phase neighbourhoods. Arising from its removal of cars from the
of development. The two blocks are separated by a shared- street, however, access to many of the houses is also from the
surface street running north to south that restricts car access back. In many respects this is the Achilles heel of Poundbury’s
to its extremities, and is the reason we are reading it as a ‘block block structure, because it has created street fronts that feel
of two halves’. They can be read either as a pair or as a unit, eerily deserted instead of being the lively traditional streets it

122 THE URBAN BLOCK

0 25 50m

4.21 Block plan of Poundbury.

4.22 Aerial view of Poundbury.

ILLUSTRATING THE BLOCK 123

sought to emulate. In so doing, it has arguably designed the
block around the car, rather than around the pedestrian as was
originally intended.

The predominance of row housing combined with fats

over garages drives the density of dwellings per hectare
signifcantly higher than most suburban schemes in the UK.
Research indicates that this density crosses the threshold
whereby sustainable and walkable neighbourhoods are more
likely to succeed, because they pack enough people into the
catchment within which most people are prepared to walk to
them, rather than drive. This itself is of interest because house
prices at Poundbury are consistently higher than comparable
developments in the surrounding area,8 and shows that higher
densities can be successful.

Development at Poundbury is ongoing and scheduled for

completion in 2022. The Prince’s Foundation is currently
developing schemes based on similar principles at Tregunnel
Hill and the outskirts of Newquay at Nansledan in Cornwall,
but its infuence is evidenced most often on schemes that are
decidedly suburban in terms of their context and character,
with much lower densities and a greater preponderance of
detached and semi-detached house types, which ironically are
indicative of the sorts of development Prince Charles railed
against to begin with.

Successes
∙ The irregular form of the block with minimal or no set-
backs creates a varied and attractive streetscape that is
well overlooked and has a strong sense of enclosure.
∙ Wide range of house types successfully addresses
corners and allows the built frontage to change direction
at diferent angles.
∙ High degree of pedestrian permeability through its
inhabited core.

Drawbacks
∙ Car parking is relegated to the inside of the block,
thereby reducing the frequency of use of front doors,
and diluting the success of the street as a place.

124 THE URBAN BLOCK

4.23 Street view of Poundbury.

4.24 ‘Chequerboarding at Poundbury’, with some houses oriented to overlook the interior parking court instead of the street.

ILLUSTRATING THE BLOCK 125

KINGS HILL ubiquitous tarmac found in many contemporaneous projects,
while generous landscaped verges further enhance the
Planned picturesque character and greenery of the scheme.

Location: West Malling, Kent, UK The seemingly organic nature of the street network, means that
Date of completion: 2006 (ongoing) legibility is arguably limited without access to mapping and it’s
Urban context: New town easy to lose one’s way or to fnd onself down a dead-end street.
Client: Liberty Property Trust UK This is a noteworthy feature because while the masterplan is
Masterplanners: Clague Architects / BDB generally permeable and has deliberately avoided creating
Area: 0.79 hectares a dendritic series of cul-de-sacs, its complexity means that
Block dimensions: 115m × 84m (largest measurements) navigability is challenging in terms of both direction and its
Number of dwellings: 27 public/private boundaries. Cul-de-sacs have instead been
Land use: Housing replaced by a combination of private drives and mews courts
Tenure: Mixed that are more or less permeable to pedestrians, but are
Parking: Mixed (on-plot garage, on-plot car barns)9 designed and signed to send a clear message to people using
them – that they have crossed a threshold separating the public
realm from the rather more ambiguous semi-private realm.
PROJECT ORIGINS
Kings Hill is the site of a former Royal Air Force base that was BLOCK CONFIGURATION
used intensively during World War II before being purchased The illustrated block (see Figure 4.25) is irregular in shape with
from the Ministry of Defence by Kent County Council. The somewhat ambiguous extents. While its southern extremity is
Council selected it for the construction of one of several new clearly defned by the above-mentioned avenue (from which
settlements. The original intention was to develop the site the block is accessed), on departing from the avenue there is
for employment uses, but the decision was taken to ‘add on’ a subtle transition to private drive and pedestrian pathway via
some residential development in 1994, with a view to making a shared-surface street, which itself gives access to a series
the provision of local services beneftting the employment of parking courts that are partially inhabited either by fats over
uses more viable. As time passed, however, the balance of garages or houses. Some of these provide rear parking and
uses shifted inexorably towards residential use, of a scale service access to a frontage of houses facing onto the cricket
requiring a full range of local services – schools, shops, sports pitch (see Figure 4.26).
and medical facilities, etc. – to support the burgeoning new
village-cum-town. Compared to traditional gridded masterplans where each
block is defned by a street, the blocks at Kings Hill are less
The approach to masterplanning can be read as the product of clearly distinguished from one another. The extent to which
several diferent strands of traditional and contemporary urban Figure 4.25 is coloured refects the degree to which, it could
design (townscape, garden city, walkable neighbourhoods, be argued, the block is identifable as a coherent entity, but
defensible space, etc.) tempered by commercial expedience. other interpretations are possible. The point here is that the
combination of interwoven forms is both sophisticated and
The overall urban structure of the place is organised around ambiguous, but not problematically so. In terms of the block’s
a central spine route (conceived as an avenue) that joins each inward- and outward-facing qualities, the confguration works
phase to the next. Along this route there is a sequence of urban hard to address both simultaneously which has imbued the
design ‘set pieces’, taking the form of circuses or crescents scheme with a charmingly jumbled character though also
and culminating in the apotheosis of English rural idyll – a necessitated some compromises in clarity. The efective
cricket pitch – with further informal residential courtyards and interweaving of fronts and backs does, however, prevent the
closes branching of it. The avenue itself is (in comparison to creation of any spaces that are defnitively ‘back-of-house’ and
many UK schemes) generously paved in red concrete block the antisocial activity these attract, while also generating a
pavers with grey granite-coloured detailing rather than the spatially intriguing network for pedestrians (see Figure 4.28).

126 THE URBAN BLOCK

0 25 50m

4.25 Block plan of Kings Hill.

4.26 Aerial view of Kings Hill.

ILLUSTRATING THE BLOCK 127

4.27 Exterior images of Kings Hill: (top) a quintessentially English 4.28 Interior images of Kings Hill: (top) set-back house within
cricket pitch marks the centre of the neighbourhood; (bottom) parking court beyond; (bottom) view within parking court.
pedestrian routes between blocks.

128 THE URBAN BLOCK

COMMENTARY Successes
The development as a whole is an in-direct homage to the ∙ The richly layered network generates a unique sense of
Garden City Movement, without the original Garden City place with a picturesque aesthetic.
Movement’s underlying commitment to achieving social justice. ∙ The engineered geometry of the access roads is
Its form (including the illustrated block) fts the description suburban in character; however, this is ofset by
of ‘planned picturesque’ and in this regard can be seen as a judicious deployment of a range of surface treatments
continuation of Britain’s own New Urbanist legacy in the manner (including shared surfaces), thus avoiding the sense of
of Poundbury. In contrast to Poundbury, there is a sense that the monotony associated with tarmac.
house types have been minimally adapted from standard plans ∙ The size allows for a reasonable degree of permeability
rather than being designed to ft the masterplan or the place as around the block.
such. The overall mix is of generally larger house types wrapped ∙ A range of on-plot and of-plot parking solutions is used to
in a ‘neo-Kentish meets New England’ vernacular and in some minimise the intrusion of parked cars, including fats over
areas they appear to have been somewhat shoehorned into the garages, parking courts, parking barns and garages.
masterplan without prehaps the amount of breathing space they
needed to sit comfortably next to each other. Nevertheless, its Drawbacks
location within striking distance of London has been cited as ∙ Restricted palette of standardised house types within an
underpinning its commercial success, with average house prices organic urban plan means that they do not all sit easily
signifcantly above the local average. with the shape of the block, especially at its corners.
∙ While the entry point to the interior of the block is well
As has already been alluded to, the combination of a variety of overlooked, the inner courts are constrained by the
urban forms – private drive/cul-de-sac, shared-surface street, depth of the units and larger back gardens.
inhabited and uninhabited parking courts, all within a single
block – gives the overall impression of a place that, depending
on one’s point of view, either lacks a clear urban structure,
and as a result is difcult to navigate, or is richly layered, and
doesn’t need one. While the block structure could be criticised
for its lack of clarity and some other aspects,10 there are many
UK suburbs that exhibit much clearer block structure yet are
far less attractive. Clearly there are other factors at work, and
it is suggested that the fexibility aforded by combining urban
forms has allowed the ‘picturesque’ aspects of the scheme to
be manifested in ways that would be difcult to achieve with a
more structured approach.

ILLUSTRATING THE BLOCK 129

ABODE AT GREAT KNEIGHTON BLOCK CONFIGURATION
The main blocks are made up of small numbers (six to nine)
Contextualising the suburban block of houses defned by two streets running in an east–west
direction which are crossed by a sequence of shared-surface
Location: Trumpington, South Cambridge, UK ‘lanes’ running north–south towards a small area of woodland
Date of completion: 2014 to the north of the site. The houses themselves are oriented
Urban context: Urban extension at 90 degrees to the east–west streets so that most of them
Client: Countryside Properties face onto the lanes. The streets themselves are informal in
Masterplanners: Proctor and Matthews Architects character, with build-outs creating pinch points combined
Area: 0.26 hectares with raised tables to help slow trafc. The overall pattern is
Block dimensions: 47m × 49m (largest dimension) interrupted by one apartment block located towards the south-
Number of dwellings: 9 eastern corner. The mews blocks to the south are made up of
Land use: Housing row houses ‘bookended’ by detached units at each end which
Tenure: Mixed act as a kind of ‘gateway’ or precursor to the looser urban
Parking: On-street and on-plot structure that follows (see Figure 4.31).

Parking is provided along both the shared-surface lanes and

PROJECT ORIGINS main streets, with some parking ‘on-plot’.
Abode at Great Kneighton is part of a larger development
planned to accommodate around 2250 new homes on the The architects characterise the lanes separating the house
southern fringe of Cambridge. The developer, Countryside fronts as ‘landscaped ribbons’, and at frst glance, it is tempting
Properties, is a volume UK house-builder which, unusually for the to mistake the overall urban form as a ‘ribbon block’. Closer
UK market, has a strong track record of supporting contemporary inspection reveals that the orientation of the built forms in the
design and innovative approaches to masterplanning.11 The same direction disguises the fact that they do, in fact, form a
development as a whole also provides for schools, a country combination of two-sided blocks (similar in form to traditional
park, children’s play, local services and (in partnership with housing blocks) with some perimeter blocks, whereby the
Liberty Property Trust), a biomedical campus. houses at the short ends of one block have been planned
internally so that their form follows the pattern set by the
The block plan (Figure 4.29) sits at the edge of a larger scheme houses fronting the long sides of the block. Thus, each side of
designed by Proctor and Matthews Architects that transitions the block is ‘fronted’ by a house, and so meets the defnition
in scale and formality from a large formal courtyard (enclosed of a perimeter block, albeit rather loosely confgured.
by apartment blocks and referencing the traditional Cambridge
colleges) through traditional mews blocks (comprised of row The linear forms of the houses, combined with gabled fronts
housing), and fnally the subject blocks, comprised of detached and the use of black boarding, references the local vernacular
and semi-detached houses (with one row of three row houses) ‘long houses’ found in many Cambridgeshire villages.13 In
arranged along a sequence of shared-surface ‘lanes’. The contrast to many examples of ribbon block forms, the north–
architect’s stated intention is to create ‘a relaxed urban erosion’ south ‘lanes’ are staggered and the east–west streets have
at the edge of the development that contrasts with the stronger been slightly cranked in places so that some houses act as a
urban forms of the courtyard and mews blocks, providing a ‘visual stop’, holding the view as one approaches. Together,
link through to the countryside beyond.12 This vision is clearly these devices avoid creating a monotonous feel to the scheme
illustrated in their ‘extended’ aerial concept sketch (see usually associated with open-ended ribbon forms and goes a
Figure 4.30), although some key aspects have altered since long way towards achieving the ‘village atmosphere’ intended
this was drawn, most notably the orientation of the rows of by the designers (see Figure 4.32).
mews houses.

130 THE URBAN BLOCK

0 25 50m

4.29 Block plan of Abode.

4.30 Extended aerial view of Abode concept scheme.

ILLUSTRATING THE BLOCK 131

COMMENTARY
The received wisdom would have it that row blocks (i.e. with
frontage to the long side of the block and fank walls or gables
to the short sides) are a second-rate form because the ends of
the block tend not to be overlooked. Where the gable ends of
houses are solid, they can also act as a blank canvas for would-
be grafti artists. In this case the house gables are punctuated
by numerous window openings as well as corner windows, and
so the criticism does not hold in the same way
as it does to many Victorian-era row blocks.

The scheme has received many plaudits and, bearing in mind

it departs from the received orthodoxy of block planning in
several respects, the high quality of design and landscaping
has been combined with a thoughtful and fresh approach to
the masterplan to produce a pleasant environment.

Successes
∙ Small blocks facilitate a high degree of pedestrian
permeability.
∙ Narrow width of the block is achieved by deployment
of wide-fronted dwellings with relatively shallow back
gardens and reduced back-to-back separation distances.
∙ Gable ends are carefully designed to address both the
street and block corners.
∙ Averts associations with more standard ‘suburban’
estates through unusual visual devices and features,
such as build-outs, pinch points and minimal turning radii.

Drawbacks 4.31 Exterior views of Abode: (top) ‘landscaped ribbon’ between

∙ The modest block size sacrifces garden depth. mews houses and black timber dwellings; (bottom) bookend
∙ The reduced separation distances may compromise corner house marks the transition between higher density
mews and lower density study block.
privacy between dwellings.
∙ The loose arrangement with predominantly wide-
fronted house types is not very space efcient, however
the reduced garden depths compensate for this to
some degree.

132 THE URBAN BLOCK

4.32 Interior views of Abode: (top) ‘shared space’ between house fronts within block; (bottom) circular access road to northern edge of block.

ILLUSTRATING THE BLOCK 133

‘PERI-URBAN’ CASE EXAMPLES

COURT HOUSING BLOCK CONFIGURATION

The blocks lie directly north of a well-regarded and successful
A stylish quartet of red-hued gables post-war housing development ‘De Oude Hoogte’ (translated
as ‘garden village’), and the width of the perimeter blocks for
Location: Cortinghborg, Groningen, the Netherlands Court Housing was determined by extending the existing street
Date of completion: 2013 network of De Hoogte in a northerly direction. In this way the
Urban context: Suburban extension project continues as a natural extension of De Hoogte, yet it
Client: Public (local municipality with housing association) difers signifcantly in its urban confguration (see Figure 4.33).
Architect: architecten|en|en The Court Housing blocks are truncated to approximately one-
Area: 0.27 hectares third of the length of the elongated De Hoogte development
Block dimensions: 56m × 48m (largest measurements) of more traditional row housing, thus greatly increasing the
Number of dwellings: 96 townhouses in four blocks of 24 permeability of the new zone. Meanwhile, the skewing of the
dwellings each block geometry creates unusual funnel-shaped streets that
Land use: Housing open up towards the wall of apartments to the north, thereby
Tenure: Social rent generating a shared amenity space that links the developments
Parking: Car-free project with limited on-street parking together. These trapezoid-shaped streets beneft from well-
considered lawns and planting located to maximise their solar
gain, yet this open space – akin to the shared lozenge-shaped
PROJECT ORIGINS gardens set within the De Hoogte development – is achieved at
This housing development is located on a former sports the expense of continuing the proportional containment of the
feld within the northern ring road of the Dutch town of street structure (see Figure 4.34). In this respect, the scheme
Groningen. In 2010 the city authorities launched a project confguration also veers away from the advantages of the
called ‘Bouwjong’ (which translates as ‘Build Young’) to provide simple tenure-ship model that row housing traditionally ofers,
afordable housing for young people in a bid to not only attract by generating shared landscaped amenity space that requires
students to the city, but to keep them after they graduate, by some form of shared management and funding arrangement.
ofering attractive starter homes. Moreover, the shared amenity space is provided in-between the
blocks (rather than within each block enclosure) so is efectively
The Bouwjong project designated four zones in the city shared by the accommodation lining each side of the street
where 4500 ‘youth housing’ units could be developed. One rather than each block.
of these zones for youth housing is Cortinghborg, where
architecten|en|en’s Court Housing is located. Court Housing The scheme, typifed by its angular roofs and stylistic colour
is one segment of a tripartite development of three schemes hues, is comprised of four blocks sitting side by side, each
by diferent architects. Directly to the north is an apartment providing 24 terraced houses and 96 residences in total. The
scheme by Diederendirrix architects, taking the form of a accommodation is primarily housing, although the corner
dramatic 400m linear wall of accommodation along the edge of units ofer scope for occupation as live/work units. The project
the ring road to the north and acting as a sound barrier for the doesn’t include parking within the blocks; instead there is
lower-rise Court Housing to the south. A 70m high round tower provision for parallel parking on the surrounding streets, where
designed by De Unie Architecten, of 220 units, also sits on the the visual presence of vehicles is minimised by the generous
east end of the site and combines student accommodation extent of green landscape provided around them. The urban
with apartments. The Court Housing element is much lower blocks themselves are relatively small in scale, each measuring
density than its neighbours and provides amply proportioned 65m × 45m, while the row house plots are approx. 5.1m wide
homes with gardens, attractive to young families, thus aligning by 9.9m long, allowing a certain generosity of proportion to
with project Bouwjong’s objectives to ofer incentives for the these double-aspect terraced dwellings. The block forms
student population to settle in the city on a longer-term basis. are ostensibly ‘row blocks’ in type, although these have been
reconceptualised into perimeter block form. The design works
hard to successfully address many of the accepted pitfalls of

134 THE URBAN BLOCK

0 25 50m

4.33 Block plan of Court Housing.

4.34 Aerial view of Court Housing.

ILLUSTRATING THE BLOCK 135

 this most rudimentary block type, and much can be learned
from the approach taken here.

Externally, the scheme strongly refects the local vernacular in

terms of its scale, detailing and some of its edge conditions,
although with a distinctly contemporary vibe (see Figure
4.35). While the adjacent De Hoogte housing, which these
contemporary blocks loosely refect, ofers low-level shrubbery
and a 1m set-back from the pavement, the Court Housing blocks
meet the street in a much bolder way, with large door-scale
windows located directly on the street edge and no transition
zone ofering privacy (see Figure 4.35). This works better in
situations where the façades open onto shared amenity space
but is perhaps more problematic on the façades that directly
abut the roadways, where blinds are more likely to be drawn. The
‘special’ corners, meanwhile, cut away the volume at ground and
frst foors to provide outer corner units with undercroft gardens
(see Figure 4.35). These are surrounded by a fne mesh fencing,
ofering a tantalising glimpse of the occupation within while
largely retaining residents’ privacy. These eye-catching, white
rendered corner cutaways reference the local vernacular but
also play an excellent role in turning the blocks inside out, artfully
enlivening the streetscape.

Another key aspect of the design is the treatment of what would

have been considered the ‘side streets’ of a row housing type,
usually edged by the blank gabled sides of the houses. At Court
Housing, ‘special’ dwellings have been designed to address this
blank gable condition, which efectively turn the two-directional
row housing type into a four-directional perimeter block, ofering
entrances and windows to living spaces onto the ends of the
blocks. The volumetric nature of the ‘specials’ also visually ties
together what would be two independent rows into one entity, by
maintaining some full-height façades on each side of the block,
all linked by a continuous roof structure. This lends the scheme
a pure, almost Roman courtyard block roofscape when viewed
from above, imparting little evidence of a hierarchical nature to
the two sides of the block. These ‘specials’ also go a little further
than addressing simply the corners and are also used to provide
one-of residences in the middle of the widest ends of the
blocks. The care and design attention given to achieve a visually
continuous façade treatment around all four sides of the block is
impressive and efective, with strong potential for replication.

4.35 Exterior views of Court Housing: (top) angled street connection These reconceptualised ‘row’ blocks are based on traditional
to De Hoogte, (bottom) access to shared rear access route. Dutch row housing, which ofers a shared rear amenity

136 THE URBAN BLOCK

 COMMENTARY
The development process for this large-scale and ambitious
project was unlocked by the municipality agreeing to underwrite
signifcant loans to property developers and housing
corporations on the basis that they would agree to work
together. The plans for the zones were then developed using a
participatory process involving community consultation, during
which public exhibitions of the proposals were displayed, and
an associated book was even published in collaboration with
Delft University of Technology. The whole zone is under the
management of a local housing association (De Huismeesters
Groningen), providing afordable homes for rent rather than
ownership. Court Housing therefore emerges from a specifc
set of circumstances that frstly promoted targeting of a specifc
age segment of society, and secondly, beneftted from the
support of the local authority in its fnancing and in pushing an
agenda of quality through collaboration. Such a confguration
is achievable when a development has an overarching landlord
(the housing association in this case) but provision of this
4.36 Interior views of Court Housing: (top) a glimpse of the generous and un-demarcated landscape – with associated
contrasting walls to the inner court; (bottom) the expanded fnancial overheads – has management maintenance
inner access route. implications that require careful consideration.

passageway with externally accessed storage units/sheds. Court Housing is most interesting for the way it successfully
In this case, however, the typology is modifed to expand the addresses some of the downsides associated with row blocks.
scale of these access routes, transforming them into more In its skilful turning of corners, visual strength as a block
generous shared courtyard spaces (see Figure 4.36). This form, adoption of small scale blocks, subtle referencing of
subtle move alters the balance of public and private outdoor the vernacular, and expanded amenity areas, Court Housing
space within the block enclosure, in recognition of the ofers many useful lessons in block design that could be
informal interactions and community bonds that often occur applied elsewhere.
within such amenity spaces. This shared space is efectively
‘borrowed’ from the rear gardens of residents, a move which Successes
aligns with the objectives of such a housing association client, ∙ The block successfully addresses each side of the street.
whose priority of establishing a strong sense of community ∙ The block size is relatively small, allowing a high degree
is high in comparison to the retail value associated with of permeability.
every square metre of the rear garden provision. In addition ∙ Single-entry service lane in the centre of the block(s) is
to this expansion of the rear passages, the storage units gated and doesn’t raise the same security issues as with
accessed from rear amenity passages are also enlarged in open-ended service lanes in traditional row blocks.
some instances and provided with windows so as to become
occupiable as garden rooms. These extended dwelling spaces Drawbacks
– directly overlooking the rear passageway – shift what is ∙ Parking is pushed to the public street, which can be a
traditionally a simple access route into a kind of semi-private drawback for residents.
street, with informal overlooking imparting the consequent ∙ The block does not incorporate any set-back from the
benefts of defensible space. pavement, and the extent of curtaining visible refects this.

ILLUSTRATING THE BLOCK 137

NEPTUNE LOGEMENTS The waterfront edge itself – the ‘front’ of the four blocks – is
composed of apartments facing south-west over the docks,
Relaxed regeneration with a pinch of sea salt arranged into what appear on frst glance to be a series of
12 grandes maisons, each clad dramatically in refective
Location: Grand Large District, Dunkerque, France silver with tall gabled fronts, and a narrow zone of set-back
Date of completion: 2012 façade between each (see Figure 4.39). These maisons vary
Urban context: Peri-urban renewal in height between fve and six storeys, with the uppermost
Client: Partnership of public authority, private developer and storeys squeezed into the narrowing slope of the eaves, and
housing association are referred to by the architects as ‘The Gables’. The regular
Architects: RSHP (concept masterplanners) and ANMA rhythm of the recessed links between these 12 ‘gables’ lends
(masterplanners and project architects) the waterfront façade an elegant vertical proportionality, while
Area: 0.46 hectares also serving to minimise the visual impact of the two complete
Block dimensions: 62m × 74m (largest measurements) breaks between blocks where minor access streets occur.
Number of dwellings: 81 apartments The architect describes how the relatively tall mass of
Land use: Housing ‘gabled’ accommodation to the south-west provides a
Tenure: Mixed social rent and intermediate rent, and ownership wind barrier between the docks and the courtyard areas
Parking: Limited on-street residents’ parking with integral behind, which are semi-enclosed by lower three-storey
garages accommodation embodying a very diferent visual character
of timber and brick.14

PROJECT ORIGINS The specifc block illustrated is the largest of the four, with a
This project is a peri-urban exercise in industrial regeneration length of 74m and a depth of 61m. The block (and its immediate
striving for block-based diversity. The so-called ‘Neptune neighbours) is comprised entirely of apartments and operates
Project’ – centred on the former Dunkerque shipyards – was as a hybrid of both courtyard and perimeter block forms, given its
initiated by municipal authorities in 1991 to address swathes ofer of entrances from both outside and within the blocks. The
of abandoned land to the north of the city centre following simple rectangular block is visibly demarcated by the shape of
the demise of the shipyards a decade earlier. The brief aimed its perimeter accommodation, yet remains highly permeable
to turn the city to face the waterfront and was progressive in to pedestrians with four full-height access points separating
terms of its ambitions for diversifcation, combining private the physical massing of apartments, and free-fowing open
and rented housing with community amenities into a dense access to the internal courtyard areas within (see Figure 4.40),
and cultural new ‘peri-urban’ neighbourhood. The masterplan where loosely planned stepping-stone routes are laid out
was commissioned with phased provision for 23 building along presumed desire lines. This low-level broken massing
and landscape projects to be undertaken by a team of local combined with the resident-occupied and planted inner courts,
architects, landscape architects and artists. lends the whole scheme an egalitarian, friendly and welcoming
interior. Its soft centre, however, contrasts somewhat with the
‘Grand Large District’ is the second phase of the Neptune exterior sides and (to a lesser extent) rear of the blocks, which
renewal project. The 216 dwellings completed in the whole are dominated by garage doors at ground level. This dead
Neptune phase efectively achieve ‘blind tenure’, without any frontage presented by the garage fronts, is moderated to some
apparent distinction between diferent types of ownership extent by the dual-aspect nature of the accommodation, which
or occupation. The complete (and as yet unfnished) ANMA combined with entrances to vertical circulation cores, helps to
masterplan will eventually include over 1000 homes. prevent the back side of the block from entirely turning its back
on the street.
BLOCK CONFIGURATION
The blocks are comprised of four hybrid perimeter/courtyard The confguration adopts another unusual feature in that the
blocks arranged in a row, as a set piece (see Figure 4.37). row of taller waterfront ‘gable’ accommodation is separated
from the inner courtyard it shares with the lower-rise

138 THE URBAN BLOCK

0 25 50m

4.37 Block plan of Neptune.

4.38 Aerial view of Neptune.

ILLUSTRATING THE BLOCK 139

4.39 Exterior views of Neptune (front façade of block showing ‘The Gables’).

apartments, by a narrow through service route. This access COMMENTARY

road allows for some residents’ parking, both parallel, and The progressive approach to regeneration and masterplanning
head-on facing into the shared courtyard on a shared surface. underpinning the Neptune Project, means this block is situated
This divided block confguration creates an inner court of two on a network that is unusually pedestrian-friendly, which has a
halves, and in this sense sets up a hybrid form of block in which signifcant impact on the arrangement of forms. The perimeter
the separated low-rise accommodation that defnes the three of the block here is very loose, with a relaxed circulation
sides of the courtyard garden becomes almost reminiscent arrangement and relatively free fow of movement into and
of the ‘close’ that we have seen in traditional garden suburb across the inner courts. The inner and outer characters of
designs. Such a confguration might be criticised for being the block become merged in this context, and both courtyard
naturally divisive, defning a hierarchy of communities, however and street façades are difcult to distinguish, presenting a
at Neptune, the tall waterfront rows and the rear timber similar outlook and accessibility. The relationship between
courtyard rows both include a mix of tenures – an achievement the dwellings and courtyards is similarly relaxed, and homes
of the diversity prerogative that was enabled by the multi- are designed with the expectation that life will spill out into
headed client. communal areas. The casual yet carefully executed approach
to demarcation of territory, combined with well-considered

140 THE URBAN BLOCK

sightlines and circulation, sets the scene for a lively and
contented community to establish itself here. The fltering of
trafc allows this informal confguration, but as an ambition of
healthy urbanism that best practice is striving for, this almost
car-free project could ofer plenty of lessons for the design of
similar blocks in the future.

Successes
∙ The linear bars of accommodation leave the inner
courtyard open and permeable to the street network,
achieving a good balance between efciency and
permeability.
∙ Surface parking provided inside the block is thoughtfully
integrated into the landscaping so it does not dominate.
∙ Tenure blind.

Drawbacks
∙ Parking for the courtyard units is primarily in integral
garages, creating some lengths of ‘dead’ frontage.
∙ The street side of the block that fronts onto the main
access road lacks a defensible set-back space and
residents have responded accordingly with heavy blinds
and security shutters that have a negative impact on the
quality of the street.
∙ The ends of the blocks do not turn corners or address
the way into the courtyard in a meaningful way, and
adjacent spaces are consequently vulnerable to misuse.
4.40 Interior views of Neptune: (top) interior courtyard of block;
(bottom) pedestrian route winding through blocks.

ILLUSTRATING THE BLOCK 141

STEIGEREILAND reduced its exposure to risk by entering a public–private
partnership whereby it pledged to provide the land and most
Plot-based block design of the infrastructure, and in return agreed to sell the land at a
pre-agreed price.
Location: Ijburg, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Date of completion: 1997 (ongoing) BLOCK CONFIGURATION
Urban context: Peri-urban The illustrated block is confgured as a simple rectangular
Client: Multiple private clients ‘mews block’ (see Figures 4.41 and 4.42), with three- and four-
Architect: Multiple storey townhouses/duplexes facing the main east–west streets,
Area: 0.79 hectares small-scale apartment buildings niftily turning the corners, and
Block dimensions: 104m × 80m (largest measurements) a secondary mews lane serving a subsidiary frontage of mainly
Number of plots: 16 mews and 32 townhouses/apartments two-storey detached dwellings. Traditional mews blocks, with
Land use: Housing their main frontages facing the long sides of the block, usually
Tenure: Mixed expose blank fank walls to the short sides. Here the apartment
Parking: Carports (mews) and street buildings on each corner include generous fenestration to the
short sides of the block, while the end mews houses that edge
these side streets have their main entrances located on this
PROJECT ORIGINS side (see Figure 4.43). The turning of corners and location of
The block is located on Steigereiland, one of six man-made entrances were factors stipulated in the overarching design
islands collectively known as Ijburg, sitting in Amsterdam’s code, and the outcome clearly illustrates how the benefts of
eastern harbour. The project was identifed as a VINEX location both control and freedom can add up to something greater
(a new development area identifed by the Dutch Ministry of than the sum of its parts.
Housing, Spatial Planning and Environment) in the late 1980s
(originally named ‘New East’ or Nieuw-Oost) and was given The block is an interesting inversion of hierarchical mews
the go-ahead by the municipality in 1996, with Steigereiland relationships familiar from the Georgian era, where the larger
and Haveneiland comprising the frst phase of development. homes were located on the main streets and ‘serviced’ by
the smaller mews dwellings at the rear, where servants were
The advance provision of infrastructure in Ijburg has been often accommodated. At Steigereiland, however, the higher
likened to the rolling out of a ‘red carpet’, where a publicly value and larger properties are located to the rear, sheltered
owned, dedicated delivery organisation (Project Bureau Ijburg) from the main street, where the mews becomes a secluded
acted to continuously mediate between all of the utility and ‘enclave’ as opposed to an access route (see Figure 4.44).
infrastructure providers. To facilitate close grain plot-based Notwithstanding that the contemporary Netherlands is a
development, the municipality – the City of Amsterdam (DRO) far less hierarchical kind of society, this does represent a
– not only reclaimed the land itself but took this one step reversed ‘social status’ from the Georgian origins of the block
further. By preparing its own masterplan (in collaboration with type. Here the shared surface demarcates a semi-private zone
local architects), acting as the land developer and funding the that efectively discourages through trafc, while maintaining
infrastructure upfront, it retained tight control of the design pedestrian permeability.
method and delivery, to the extent of preparing its own design
code, and even appointing a ‘block coach’ to coordinate the COMMENTARY
input of individual architects working in a local area. Whereas most blocks are undertaken by a single developer,
the devolved ‘plot-based’ approach adopted in Steigereiland
The development method involved setting out and constructing and elsewhere across Ijburg cut out the middleman so to
the piled foundations for individual plots, thereby removing the speak (i.e. the commercial developer), allowing small-scale
logistical difculties of diferent builders having to operate side developers, individuals and small groups to both design and
by side. These ‘serviced plots’ were then sold to developers develop their own plots. In this sense, the block (and others
who had to comply with the DRO design code. The municipality surrounding it) has been developed in the ‘traditional’ manner,

142 THE URBAN BLOCK

0 25 50m

4.41 Block plan of Steigereiland.

4.42 Aerial view of Steigereiland.

ILLUSTRATING THE BLOCK 143

allowing a diversity of designs (and uses) to emerge and,
crucially, bestowing a potential for individual plots to change
over time in a way ‘single project’ blocks cannot achieve.
Although the individual buildings were required to conform
to a design code stipulating overall building parameters, the
result is a rich tapestry of unique buildings that still achieves
a coherence of form.

Perhaps the biggest challenge to promoting a plot-based

approach to masterplanning is that it infers decoupling
masterplanning from the design and procurement of the
buildings themselves, and allowing a greater range of diferent
designers and developers to contribute. This, in turn, requires
an acceptance that placemaking happens over much longer
time horizons than individual building projects, and as such,
is bigger than any single architect. It involves a culture shift
away from the ‘starchitect’ as omni-infuential visionary
creator, to accepting the more humble role of facilitator in
the frst instance and, subsequently, to accepting the role of
contributor to the plurality of urban fabric.15 This kind of ‘bottom
up’ development, as championed by urban designers such
as Kelvin Campbell, allows blocks to evolve in a more natural
way, and this Ijburg block demonstrates the richness and
complexity, as well as the distinctive fne-tuning of space and
place that can successfully emerge from such a scenario.

Successes
∙ The incorporation of a mews lane that is open at 4.43 Views towards the block corners and external streets at
both ends and overlooked by dwellings on both sides Steigereiland, showing the diversity and grain achieved by
the plot-based approach to development.
creates a high degree of permeability and feeling of
‘eyes on the street’.
∙ The combination of townhouses, urban villas and
apartments should attract a more balanced community.
∙ The development of plots (and in some cases small
groups of plots) by a range of diverse interests and
designed by diferent architects has resulted in a high
degree of design diversity and visual interest, making
the block inherently adaptable to change.

Drawbacks
∙ Tight control over the design code and procurement
routes are required to maintain high standards of design
overall in this type of plot-based development.
∙ The quality of design of the individual buildings is
variable, highlighting that diversity in some cases can
be a weakness.

144 THE URBAN BLOCK

4.44 View towards interior mews lane.

ILLUSTRATING THE BLOCK 145

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REFERENCES 149
24 Jonathan Tarbatt, The Plot: 4 Ibid. 12 In this case a block of
Designing Diversity in trees stands in for the
the Built Environment – A 5 These lost favour in the countryside, with allotment
Manual for Architects and UK soon after their heyday gardens and older suburban
Urban Designers, London, in the 1960s and 1970s development beyond.
RIBA Publishing, 2012, because of their inherent
p. 107. social and practical 13 Countryside Properties
issues, yet have remained with Proctor and
25 English Partnerships and more popular and Matthews Architects,
the Housing Corporation, common in Europe where ‘Abode, Cambridge’,
Urban Design Compendium, diferent management Design Council, https://
London, English arrangements and social www.designcouncil.org.
Partnerships, 2000, p. 88. conditions prevail. uk/sites/default/fles/
asset/document/DC%20
26 David Levitt, The Housing 6 Kelly Minner, ‘8 House/ CABE%20HOUSING%20
Design Handbook: A Guide BIG’, https://www.archdaily. CASE%20STUDY_2_
to Good Practice, Oxford, com/83307/8-house-big ABODE_310316%20
Routledge, 2010. (accessed 14 October FINAL.pdf (accessed 14
2019). October 2019).
27 Jonathan Tarbatt, The Plot:
Designing Diversity in 7 English Partnerships, 14 Nicholas Michelin, ‘Grand
the Built Environment – A Car Parking: What Works Large Neptune’, ANMA
Manual for Architects and Where, London, English practice self-publication.
Urban Designers, London, Partnerships, 2006, p. 124.
RIBA Publishing, 2012, 15 Jonathan Tarbatt, The Plot:
p. 140. 8 Graham Norwood, Designing Diversity in
‘Poundbury: A Look at the Built Environment – A
Prince Charles’ sustainable Manual for Architects and
CHAPTER 4 village in Dorset, on its 30th Urban Designers, London,
1 Hari Phillips, ‘Royal Road: birthday’, Daily Telegraph, RIBA Publishing, 2012,
Panter Hudspith Architects 26 April 2017, https://www. p. 82.
at Elephant and Castle’, telegraph.co.uk/property/
Architecture Today, vol. buy/poundbury-look-prince-
251, September 2014, pp. charles-sustainable-village-
28–37. Available from http:// dorset-30th (accessed 14
media.designersfriend. October 2019).
co.uk/panterhudspith/
media/Royal_Road_in_AT_ 9 The term ‘car barn’ is widely
Sep_2014.pdf (accessed 14 used in the UK to denote a
October 2019). carport or garage structure
without a door.
2 Bridin O’Connor, Group
Manager, DM Strategics 10 For example some of the
Team London Borough houses appear to overlook
of Southwark Planning the private gardens of
Department, http:// other houses.
panterhudspith.com/
project/royal-road/ 11 Countryside Properties has
(accessed 14 October received numerous design
2019). awards for contemporary
schemes – at Horsted
3 Ibid. Park, Kent, and Accordia in
Cambridge, for example.

150 THE URBAN BLOCK

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BIBLIOGRAPHY 151
INDEX

Page numbers in bold indicate Campbell, Kelvin 14, 74, 75, 81 height and street 84, 86, 86, Haussmann, Georges-Eugène
fgures. Canterbury, UK 10, 11 91–92, 91 13, 17
Cerdà, Ildefons 17, 19 height to width ratio 91–92, height
Chobham Manor, Stratford, 91 density and 80, 81
8 House, Copenhagen, Denmark London, UK 106–109, 107, parking 78, 93–96, 93 solar access and 89–90, 89
118–121, 119, 120, 121 108 privacy 60, 77, 78, 84, 86–87, street and 84, 86, 86, 91–92,
close 24, 34, 54, 66, 68, 68, 69 89, 90–91 91
A Coleman, Alice 29–30 separation distances 77, 77, height to width ratio 91–92, 91
Abode, Great Kneighton, Congrès Internationaux 89, 90–91 Helsinki, Finland 45, 59, 87
Cambridge, UK 130–132, d’Architecture Moderne set-back distance 84–85, 84, Hindle, Paul 9
131, 132, 133 (CIAM) 26, 29 85, 94 history of urban form 5, 6, 11
African cities 20–21, 20, 21, Copenhagen, Denmark 17, street–block relationship African and Arabic cities
22, 23 19, 44 83–88, 84 20–21, 20, 21, 22, 23
Alexander, Christopher 29 8 House 118–121, 119, 120, street enclosure 91–92, 91 antiquity 6, 7–8, 7, 10
allotment gardens 24–25, 25, 40 121 surveillance 84, 88 Buchanan Report 27–28, 29
Almere, Netherlands 37, 95 Cork, Ireland 65 transparency 84, 86–87, 87 Garden City Movement 18,
Ambt, Charles 17, 19 corners 92–93, 92 ventilation 88–89, 89 24–25, 25, 40, 68, 80
Amsterdam, Netherlands court 34, 54, 66, 66, 67, 67 see also structure gridiron plans 14, 15, 17–18,
17–18, 19, 37, 85 Court Housing, Groningen, diversity 82 19
Steigereiland 142–144, 143, Netherlands 134–137, 135, Dovey, Kim 77 medieval period 9–10, 11
144, 145 136, 137 Dublin, Ireland 12, 54, 55 modern block 24–28, 25, 27,
Arabic cities 20–21, 20, 87 courtyard block 34, 62–64, 62, Dundanion Court, Cork, Ireland 28, 29
area-weighted average 63, 65 65 Neoclassical and Baroque
perimeter 77 courtyards Dunkerque, France 138–141, blocks 12, 13
Athens Charter 26, 29 parking 40, 43, 93, 95 139, 140, 141 New Urbanism 31
perimeter block with post-modern block 29–31, 30
B communal 42–43, 42, 43, E Radburn principles 25–26,
back-to-back housing 50 44, 45 Edinburgh, UK 12, 54 25, 28
back-to-back plots perimeter block with Elsheshtawy, Yasser 20 ‘streets in the air’ 26, 27
perimeter block with 38–39, inhabited 41, 41 superblock structure 14,
38, 39 perimeter block with 15, 16
F
row block with 50–51, 50, 51 uninhabited 40, 40 Hobrecht, James 17
fre escape 89, 90
Barcelona, Spain 17, 19 relationship with block Hollander, Justin 86, 87
foor area ratio (FAR) 81
Barcode, Oslo, Norway 88–91, 89 Howard, Ebenezer 24
Freiburg, Germany 37, 96, 97
114–117, 115, 116 cul-de-sac 31, 34, 66, 68, 70, front gardens 84, 85
Baroque blocks 12, 13 70, 71, 75, 76 I
basement parking 93, 95 insulae 6, 7–8, 7
G
BedZED, Croydon, London, UK D garages 93, 94 International Building Exhibition
110–112, 111, 113 daylighting 88–89, 89 (IBA), Berlin 30
Garden City Movement 18,
Beeker, Coen 21, 22 deck-access housing 26, 27 24–25, 25, 40, 68, 80
Bentley, Ian 36, 75 see also 8 House, J
gardens
Berlage, Hendrik Petrus 17–18, Copenhagen, Denmark Jacobs, Jane 29, 78
allotment 24–25, 25, 40
19 defensible space 29, 70, front 84, 85
Berlin, Germany 17, 30, 30 77–78, 84
block shapes 78
Gates, Charles 7 K
Den Haag, Netherlands 35 Gehl, Jan 79, 83, 86 Kings Hill, Kent, UK 126–129,
block sizes 77–78, 77 density 80–81 Georgian era 12, 13, 54, 85 127, 128
Buchanan, Colin 27–28, 29 depth of blocks 77–78, 77 Greece, ancient 7 Kostof, Spiro 9, 14
building thickness 88–89, 89 design principles 83 gridiron plans 14, 15, 17–18, 19 Krier, Rob 30
by-law housing 12, 24 building thickness 88–89, 89 Groningen, Netherlands
corners 92–93, 92
C courtyard–block relationship
134–137, 135, 136, 137 L
Le Corbusier 26
Cambridge, UK 55 88–91, 89
Abode, Great Kneighton daylighting 88–89, 89 H Levitt, David 81, 84, 94
Hampstead Garden Suburb, UK lifts 81, 89, 90, 92–93
130–132, 131, 132, 133 height and solar access
88–89, 89 24–25, 25, 64 lightwells 85
colleges 62, 63–64

152 THE URBAN BLOCK

London, UK 10, 11, 12, 13, 66 courtyard 40, 43, 93, 95 with back-to-back plots superblocks 14, 15, 16, 74–75,
BedZED, Croydon 110–112, garages 93, 94 50–51, 50, 51 75
111, 113 on-plot 49, 93, 94–95 dual-aspect with service lane surveillance 84, 88
Chobham Manor, Stratford podium 93, 95 52, 52, 53 Sussman, Ann 86, 87
106–109, 107, 108 shared 93, 96, 97 mews block 12, 54–55, 54, 55
mews blocks 54–55, 55 on-street 49, 93, 94 Royal Road, Southwark, London, T
Royal Road, Southwark undercroft 93, 95 UK 102–105, 103, 104, 105 Taylor, Nicholas 30
102–105, 103, 104, 105 pavilion block see point block thigmotaxis 83, 91
Lutyens, Edward 25 perimeter block 24, 31, 34, S Timgad, Algeria 6, 7
Lyons, Eric 28 36–37 Savannah, Georgia, USA 14, Tokyo, Japan 75, 75
with back-to-back plots 15, 16 Trafc in Towns report 27–28
M 38–39, 38, 39 separation distances 77, 77, transparency 84, 86–87, 87
Manhattan, New York, USA with communal courtyard 89, 90–91 Tudor Walters report 91
14, 15 42–43, 42, 43, 44, 45 service lanes 52, 52, 53
with inhabited courtyard
Marrakech, Morocco 20, 20 set-back distance 84–85, 84, U
Marseille, France 26 41, 41 85, 94 undercroft parking 93, 95
massing 79–80 nested 46, 46, 47 shapes of blocks 78 Unité d’Habitation, Marseille,
medieval period 9–10, 11 with uninhabited courtyard shared parking 93, 96, 97 France 26
mews block 12, 54–55, 54, 55 40, 40 Shefeld, UK 26, 27 Unwin, Raymond 24
mix and use 82 permeability 31, 64, 74–77, size of blocks 77–78, 77 Urban Design Compendium,
modern block 24–28, 25, 27, 75, 76 solar access The 31, 34, 36, 78, 90, 92
28, 29 Perry, Clarence 25, 74 to courtyards 89–90, 89 urban structure 74–78, 75,
planned picturesque 17 daylighting 88–89, 89 76, 77
see also Kings Hill, Kent, UK
N solitaire block see point block Urban Task Force report 31
plot 6, 82 Steigereiland, Amsterdam,
Neoclassical blocks 12, 13
on-plot parking 49, 93, 94–95 Netherlands 142–144, 143,
Neptune Logements,
subdivision and V
Dunkerque, France 138–141, 144, 145
amalgamation of 10, 11 ventilation 88–89, 89
139, 140, 141 Stein, Clarence 25, 74
plot-based development 37 vertical access see lifts
nested perimeter block 46, Stockholm, Sweden 47, 86
Steigereiland, Amsterdam, Victorian era 12, 13
46, 47 street 6, 34
Netherlands 142–144, enclosure 91–92, 91
New Ash Green, Kent, UK 28,
143, 144 height and 84, 86, 86, 91–92, W
28
podium parking 93, 95 91 walkable neighbourhoods 78
New Urbanism 31
point block 24, 26, 29–30, 31, perimeter block and 37 wall hugging 83, 91
New York, USA 14, 15, 25, 31
34, 56–57, 56, 58, 59, 81 relationship with block Whyte, William 79
Newman, Oscar 29
Barcode, Oslo, Norway 83–88, 84 Wright, Henry 25
114–117, 115, 116 set-back distance 84–85, 84,
O post-modern block 29–31, 30
Olynthos, Greece 7 85, 94
Poundbury, Dorset, UK 41, 41, on-street parking 49, 93, 94
organic grid 75, 76
122–124, 123, 125 surveillance 84, 88
Oslo, Norway 114–117, 115,
privacy 60, 77, 78, 84, 86–87, transparency 84, 86–87, 87
116
89, 90–91 ‘streets in the air’ 26, 27
Ostia, Italy 8, 8
Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso see also 8 House,
21, 21, 22, 23 R Copenhagen, Denmark
Radburn, New Jersey, USA structure 74
Oxbridge colleges 62, 63–64
25–26, 25, 28 block shapes 78
ribbon block 34, 60, 60, 61 block sizes 77–78, 77
P BedZED, Croydon, London, density 80–81
Paderborn, Germany 61 UK 110–112, 111, 113 diversity 82
Panerai, Phillippe 6 Ritterstrasse, Berlin, Germany massing 79–80
Paris, France 12, 13, 17 30, 30 mix and use 82
Park Hill, Shefeld, UK 26, 27 Rogers, Richard 31 permeability 31, 64, 74–77,
Parker, Barry 24 Roman Empire 6, 7–8, 7, 10 75, 76
parking 78, 93–96, 93 row block 12, 13, 24, 34, 48–49 urban network 74–78, 75,
basement 93, 95
76, 77

INDEX 153
IMAGE CREDITS

CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 3 4.31 and 4.32

1.1 and 1.17 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 3.8, 3.9, Tim Crocker
Google Earth (Digital Globe) 3.10, 3.11 and 3.12 4.34, 4.35 and 4.36
1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, 1.8 Jonathan Tarbatt Bas Gijselhart, BASE
1.9, 1.12, 1.18, 1.19, 1.20, 1.22 3.6, 3.7 and 3.13 Photography
and 1.23 Jonathan Tarbatt/Loci 4.38, 4.39, 4.40
Jonathan Tarbatt Stephane Chalmeau
1.10 CHAPTER 4 4.42
Alamy 4.1, 4.5, 4.8 (bottom), 4.9, 4.13, Siebe Swart Photography
1.13 4.16, 4.17, 4.18, 4.21, 4.25, 4.27 4.43 and 4.44
Jonathan Tarbatt (bottom), 4.28, 4.29, 4.33, 4.37 Steigereiland
(Redrawn from survey and 4.41
information provided by João Jonathan Tarbatt
Magalhães Rocha and José 4.2 and 4.3 (top)
Pinto Duarte) Enrique Verdugo
1.14 4.3 (bottom) and 4.4
ETH-Bibliothek Zurich Morley von Sternberg
1.15 4.6 Scott
Jonathan Tarbatt Cromack PRP
(Redrawn from survey by Coen
4.7 (top) and 4.8 (top)
Beeker)
PRP
1.16
4.7 (bottom)
Jonathan Tarbatt
Richard Chivers
(Redrawn from plan by Coen
Beeker) 4.10, 4.11 (top) and 4.24
RIBA Pix
1.21
Urban Splash/Commission Air 4.11 (bottom)
Phil Sayer
4.12
CHAPTER 2 ZEDFactory
2.1, 2.3, 2.4, 2.17, 2.20, 2.22,
4.14
2.23, 2.28, 2.33 and 2.35
Shutterstock
iStock
4.15 (top)
2.2, 2.5, 2.6, 2.8, 2.9, 2.10, 2.12,
MVRDV
2.16, 2.18, 2.21, 2.24, 2.26, 2.27,
2.31, 2.32 and 2.34 4.15 (bottom)
Jonathan Tarbatt DNB
2.7 4.19
RIBA Pix BIG
2.11, 2.13, 2.14 and 2.15 4.20 (top) and 4.20 (bottom)
Shutterstock Iwan Baan
2.19 4.22
Hélène Binet Google Earth (Digital Globe)
2.25 4.23
Alamy Alamy
2.29 4.26 and 4.27 (top)
Dundanion Court Residents Liberty Property Trust
Association 4.30
2.30 Proctor and Matthews
Morley von Sternberg Architects

154 THE URBAN BLOCK