POWERSTRUCTURES : the urban form of regulations

This thesis aims to explore the relationship between urban form and law, regulation and policy in the built environment. It depicts the roots, the necessity and exponential growth of regulations across the urbanized world and portrays their effects on urban design and architecture. Through several contemporary case studies, this thesis investigates the power and flux of regulation on the formation of modern cities. It focuses on the hidden mechanisms that construct or dissemble cities, setting the argument for lawmaking as an act of design. Moreover, this thesis depict the design, deployment and operation of a Tangible Regulation Platform, a physical-technological apparatus made for the distilment of regulations. The platform is set to exemplify the effects of regulations on a designated territory, allowing planners, designers, stakeholders and community members a common ground for discussion and decision making. An accessible and self-explanatory tool, this platform illustrates the relationship between urban form and regulations, offering a seamless and transparent process of regulation-based urban design. Lastly, projecting on the foreseen future of law and urbanism, this thesis proposes an alternative data and performance-based approach for the making of new regulations. Beyond excelling the processes of design under regulations, this platform and other new tools are offered to help facilitate a discussion on the way future regulations will be devised, improving both the design processes and their final outcome.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Architecture.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2015

Author dc:creator

• Noyman, Ariel

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Brent Ryan.

• Architecture.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/99301

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/99301