Architecture & Optics of Scale

Guidelines for the Forgotten Subject of Scale in the Public Domain.

Height Fright … Fear of Height in the Suburbs.

As Sydney groans at the prospect of increased residential density, the thorny subject of building height inevitably comes to the fore during approval processes. SEPP 65 remains almost silent on the issue of height, leaving a vacuum for inarticulate and emotional debate. Typically, Development Control Plans specify height as absolute dimensions measured in numbers of storeys or RLs not to be exceeded.

These rigid preconceptions can be stifling to proper urban design processes. If quality architecture is to transcend the sometimes blindly numerical local government controls, then some rational tools for understanding height need to be developed.

Fortunately, such a tool does exist: “Der Optische-Maassstab”. Its description in this paper might assist architects in taking a lead to elevate the debate.

Scale … Tuning Height to Place.

Any height control, prescribed in the absence of context, is probably meaningless.

Height is a linear measurement which, on its own, isn’t very helpful in assessing the desirability of any proposed new building.

Height is only part of the story.
It is the context in which the height is perceived that brings relevance to a building’s vertical dimension. By observing a building from various vantage points we are engaged in an evaluation of its scale as well as the scale of the public space that it helps to define. It is the control of scale that is the more important matter than height.

While height is just a vertical dimension, scale, on the other hand, is a branch of human psychology. Height is a fact; scale is a qualitative perception. Scale can be manipulated to create grandiosity or to ameliorate grandiosity.

Remembering Forgotten Knowledge.

In these first few years of the 21st century it is anomalous that Sydney should be wrestling, seemingly for the first time, with an issue that has been refined through previous centuries in Europe; the concept of scale in civic design.

For the complete paper, please visit SCAPE strategy.