Governments are placing increasing emphasis on design codes, building regulations, and planning statements to guide the conduct of architects, and to fashion much more of the design process but there has been little research on what architects feel and think about this, and how it is affecting what they do and their daily patterns of work.
The book offers insights into a number of important relationships: the impact of regulations on architects and their designs; the use of regulations to create or sustain shared bodies of knowledge and common understanding between different actors (i.e. designers, contractors, regulators); and, the social issues of how risk is shared (between designers and the state) for creating and ascertaining that the minimum (design) conditions are satisfied.
The book develops two lines argument:
1. Regulation is core to architects’ practices, and, in turn, such practices define, in part, the scope and possibilities of regulation. If one accepts this proposition, it seems incumbent on research to centre the understanding of architects’ practices within the broadcloth of the rules and regulations that, in turn, are part of the broader contexts within which architecture unfolds.
2. While conceptions of design may preclude explicit incorporation of regulations and building standards, such standards do influence, in variable ways, aesthetic and/or design outcomes. Regulations ought to be conceived of as much more than technical instruments, or part of a non-creative process somehow removed from architects’ practices.
