Aesthetics and Design Review: Managing Design Outcomes

A special issue of Buildings (ISSN 2075-5309). This special issue belongs to the section "Architectural Design, Urban Science, and Real Estate".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2017) | Viewed by 6203

Special Issue Editor

Department of Architecture & Planning, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), NO-7491 Trondheim, Norway
Interests: urban design; public space management; facility management; building construction; building performance; building evaluation; architectural tectonics; architectural design

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In an essay advocating for planners to become more involved in planning and managing sensory qualities of the environment, Kevin Lynch lamented the fact that “aesthetics is often considered a kind of froth, difficult to analyse and easy to blow away” (Lynch, K. Managing the Sense of A Region; MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, USA, 1976). We have moved on and there seems to be a great respect amongst those planning our streets and cities that appearance does matter. While this evolution may in part be able to be attributed to the writings of Lynch and others, there is also much stronger evidence to suggest that aesthetics really do matter. Sensory perception of designed and natural environments can affect people’s cultural, physical and economic wellbeing. One example can be seen where local and national governments refer to their most attractive places in an effort to lure tourists, business investment and high calibre workers to live there. Attractive places can also affect public health outcomes as they are known to encourage more people to walk and cycle there, often for longer periods. Aspects of people’s psychological and emotional wellbeing are tied to the places they inhabit, with aesthetics being a key factor influencing place attachment and civic pride.

Recognising that built environment appearance does matter to their constituents, many local governments are now involved in managing design outcomes through planning approval processes. Whether these outcomes are managed through simple, rules based approaches akin to zoning, or subjected to review and approval by experts or panels of untrained but interested members of the public, the goal is to ensure that all new building work meets the expectations of the public who have to live with the consequences of decisions made by designers, their clients and planners, each of whom is motivated by their own agenda.

Questions then arise to the competence of those who offer opinions about the design proposals of others in the context of planning approval processes; about the legal and ethical principles such review processes raise and the quality of design guidelines.

This Special Issue of Buildings invites papers addressing the thorny matters of aesthetics in the built environment and design review as part of planning approval. In particular, we invite papers dealing with topics such as:

  • Visual preference studies that might help guide and inform design review
  • Relative power; what are the legal and ethical issues around design review
  • Cultural influences on people’s aesthetic perceptions and on design review
  • Justice in the process; how does design review undertaken by experts compare with that which involves non-experts. Should the views of experts be privileged?
  • Economic dimensions of aesthetics and design review
  • Streetscapes and design management across multiple sites

Papers related to the above themes, and also those dealing generally with case-studies, are welcome.

Dr. Morten Gjerde
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Buildings is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Environmental aesthetics
  • Design review
  • Streetscape design
  • Visual preference
  • Urban design
  • Development control

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

13 pages, 5646 KiB  
Article
Artistic and Engineering Design of Platform-Based Production Systems: A Study of Swedish Architectural Practice
by Gustav Jansson, Emma Viklund and Thomas Olofsson
Buildings 2018, 8(2), 34; https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings8020034 - 21 Feb 2018
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 5669
Abstract
Research on platform-based production systems for house-building has focused on production and manufacturing issues. The aim of this research is to explore how the architectural design process contributes to the industrialised house-building industry from the perspective of creative design work. It also aims [...] Read more.
Research on platform-based production systems for house-building has focused on production and manufacturing issues. The aim of this research is to explore how the architectural design process contributes to the industrialised house-building industry from the perspective of creative design work. It also aims to describe how constraints affect architectural design work in the engineer-to-order context, when using platform-based production systems. Architects with experience in using platform-based building systems with different degrees of constraints were interviewed regarding creative aspects of the design work. The interviews, together with documents relating to platform constraints, were then analysed from the perspective of artistic and engineering design theories. The results show the benefits and issues of using platform constraints, both with prefabrication of volumetric modules, as well as prefabricated slab and wall elements. The study highlights a major research gap by describing how architectural work, from both the creative artistic and engineering design perspectives, is affected by constraints in the building platform: (1) the architectural design work goes through a series of divergent and convergent processes where the divergent processes are explorative and the convergent processes are solution-oriented; and (2), there is a trade-off between creativity and efficiency in the design work. Open parameters for layout design are key to architectural creativity, while predefinition supports efficiency. The results also provide an understanding of the potential for creativity in artistic and engineering work tasks through different phases in design, and how they are related to constraints in the platform. The main limitation of the research is the number of interviewed architects who had different background experiences of working with different types of platform constraints. More studies are needed to confirm the observations and to understand how creativity and efficiency interact with divergent and convergent design processes. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Aesthetics and Design Review: Managing Design Outcomes)
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