Week 10

Detailing the Place

By Dr.A.Seeboo
What is meant by detail?
• What is meant here is the design of the buildings and public
territory, and most particularly, the interface between them.
• The building elements include elevations, corner treatments,
roof lines, doors and windows, materials, floorscapes of colour and
texture, for example.
• The public realm elements concern the street, the pavement
and the square and include planting, street furniture, lighting and
public art.
• The interfaces are the steps, the fences, front gardens, hedges,
walls, windows and doors – the hinge between the horizontal and
vertical planes.
Why detail is important?
• Detailed design is where the identity and quality of a place is finally won
or lost.
• Good design does not necessarily shout for attention.
• Often the detailing of buildings, streets or squares is quiet and
unobtrusive.
• It is essential to be highly aware of the quality of detailing for it can:
• make or break a place;
• stimulate the commitment of the developer, the community and the
authorities involved to the maintenance of high standards;
• allow all the users of a place to enjoy it, in a balanced and efficient way;
• create and retain value; and above all
• ensure distinctiveness, whether a central square or great avenue, or a
quiet street.
Positive Outdoor Space
• One of the most important tenets of good urbanism is for buildings
to give positive definition to the shape and function of outdoor
space, and for this outdoor space to be designed to encourage a
range of activities to take place.
• Buildings contribute to the public domain - encouraging people
to meet, talk and linger.
• The detailed design of urban space means attending to the building
line and three-dimensional mass that helps create the character of
streets and squares, later brought to life with planting, street
furniture, public art and the whole host of other ingredients that
give these spaces their warmth and vitality
Positive Outdoor Space
Positive and Negative Space
• Define the space, its function and character
• Open space should be designed positively, with clear definition and
enclosure. There should be no ambiguity or left over space. This can be done
by giving each outdoor space a clear function, character and shape, and
clarifying boundaries through the positioning of adjacent buildings, walls,
fences, trees and hedges. The appropriate primary function of the space will
depend on the facilities it contains in relation to demand, the characteristics of
surrounding uses, users and circulation patterns. Streets, squares and parks
can be conceived as a linked variety of ‘outdoor rooms’, whose character varies
according to whether they:
• go to places, or destinations for staying, eating, meeting or events;
• go through or past spaces, such as favoured streets or squares;
• stop in places, to sit and watch the world go by; or indeed
• a combination of all these things - providing multi-functional spaces where
people live, work and are entertained.
Positive and Negative Space
• Define the space, its function and
character
• Every town has a variety and hierarchy of
spaces. It is important to be clear about how
each development contributes to this hierarchy,
varying treatment according to the type of
space (whether a path, street or marketplace),
the character (whether it is to be used for
informal recreation or is to have a formal civic
status, for instance) and size.
Building Lines and Setbacks
• Be direct
• A common building line creates continuity of frontage and
provides definition and enclosure to the public realm. It can also
help ensure new development is properly integrated into an existing
street.
• Minimising setback distances increases the ability of a building to
interact with the public realm.

• Table 5.1 provides rules-of-thumb for building line set-back

distances, indicating how these vary according to locational setting.
Building Lines and Setbacks
• Table 5.1 provides rules-of-thumb for building line set-back
distances, indicating how these vary according to locational setting.
Building Lines and Setbacks
• Face up
• Streets, parks and waterways which are not overlooked can
sometimes feel unsafe, especially at night.
• Park fences can also create a negative visual impact. These public
spaces are intrinsic assets to be enjoyed, yet often neighbouring
buildings ignore this.
• Buildings facing onto public open spaces create an identity and a
sense of ownership and care.
• Facing the park or water also tends to command higher values,
which off-sets the cost of creating single-loaded streets (with
buildings on only one side).
• Thus buildings should front the public realm, running accessways or
footpaths along boundaries so that this face is used as the front
door.
Enclosure
• Create enclosure and definition
• It is the three dimensional mass of each building which defines the
public realm. Building elevations and the cross-sections of public
spaces should therefore be scaled to foster a sense of urbanism so
that streets, squares and parks are defined by appropriately scaled
buildings and/or trees fronting onto them. The following height to
width enclosure ratios serve as a guide, and need to be checked to
ensure that they enable sufficient daylight (see 3.4.1):
Active Frontage
• Get the rhythm right
• Making frontages ‘active’ adds interest, life and vitality to the public
realm.
• This means:
• • frequent doors and windows, with few blank walls;
• • narrow frontage buildings, giving vertical rhythm to the street scene;
• • articulation of facades, with projections such as bays and porches
incorporated, providing a welcoming feeling; and, on occasion,
• • lively internal uses visible from the outside, or spilling onto the street.
Active Frontage
• Reach out to the street
• Devices can be incorporated into a façade so that a building reaches out to the
street. Views into a building provide interest to passers-by and make its
function apparent, while views out put ‘eyes on streets’, and contribute to
safety. At the very least, windows can imply the presence of others.
• Adding visual interest and animation to façades means:
• • the more windows and doors onto the public realm the better.
• • using transparent glass for windows, where privacy allows, rather than mirrored or
frosted glass that only allows occupants to benefit from views out;
• • enlivening edges with balconies, bays, porches, awnings, colonnades or other
projections that provide a more comfortable threshold in inclement weather, prolonging
activities and enabling uses to overlap into the street;
• • considering level changes between the ground building level and pavement, with
steps up to house front doors or raised terraces for pubs or restaurants, for example. A
change of up to 450mm is often desirable to give a sense of privacy and surveillance,
but take care not to constrain access – particularly for the disabled.
Active Frontage
• Reach out to the street
Building Depth
• Plan shallow
• Building depth has a critical impact on the need for artificial lighting
and ventilation. This affects the variety of uses that can be
accommodated. Table 5.4 provides a guide for assessing the impact
of building depth on natural ventilation and lighting, and hence
robustness.
Building Depth
• Orientate for flexibility
• Sometimes it is preferable to orientate a building so that its long
side faces onto the street. Making the plan shallow in this way can
create a more versatile form for designing continuous frontages.
Corners
• Turn the corner
• Corner sites are visually prominent, have two frontages and can
potentially offer more entrances to different parts of the building.
They therefore provide special opportunities for mixing uses. Houses
on corners need to face two ways; many standard building types
used by housing developers are rarely able to do this. More tailored
designs will be required or new types devised. Corners are best
emphasised by incorporating prominent entrances and/or windows
at the apex, expressing the height by, for instance, using a ‘mansion
block’ of apartments, or incorporating a special use into the mix.
Corners