Academic / 2022

City Building Blocks

An inventory of nineteen city block types, from a 7.5 metre detached lot to a high rise on a mid-rise base, each with its floor area, storeys, units and the number of people living and working in it.

Project type: Block typology inventory
Location: Ottawa, Ontario
Status: Academic
Area: Nineteen types, 7.5 m lots to high rise
Role: Sole author, ARCS 2303

Bird's eye perspective of the assembled model from the southwest, the block types set out along the street grid with towers at the corners — Exercise 2.4, the street design that followed the inventory. The block types are assembled into a piece of city and then tested.

An inventory rather than a design. Nineteen block types are drawn to the same convention and tabulated the same way: single family detached on 7.5 and 10 metre lots, row housing sorted by orientation and garage position, back-to-back, stacked towns, mid-rise blocks with and without commercial at grade, high rise freestanding and high rise sitting on a mid-rise base, corner conditions, and office buildings.

Each entry carries its gross floor area, storeys, units, sidewalk setback, and how many people live and work in it. That last pair is the point: it converts a typology into a density, which is what makes the types comparable when you are deciding what a street should be made of.

Everything in Renewal Square and Market District later leans on this kind of counting. Produced for ARCS 2303.

Top view of the same model showing the courtyards inside each block and the street pattern between them — Exercise 2.4, the street design that followed the inventory. The block types are assembled into a piece of city and then tested.

Key plan locating the four street sections and the two intersections across the block layout — The two intersections, drawn inside a turning radius so the geometry can be checked rather than assumed.

Intersection 1 drawn twice, at a forty metre radius and at a wider radius, with lane markings, crossings and street trees — The two intersections, drawn inside a turning radius so the geometry can be checked rather than assumed.

Intersection 2 drawn as a four way crossing with the lane arrangement, planting and pedestrian crossings marked — The second intersection, and the first of the street sections.

Street section 1 with the buildings hatched either side, the carriageway, footways, planting and street furniture drawn to scale — The second intersection, and the first of the street sections.

Street section 2, a wider carriageway between taller blocks with a planted median and lighting — The remaining street sections. Each one pairs a building height with a street width, which is the whole argument of the exercise.

Street section 3, a narrower street between a low block and a tower with seating along the footway — The remaining street sections. Each one pairs a building height with a street width, which is the whole argument of the exercise.

Street section 4, the widest condition with parking, trees and a generous footway on both sides — The remaining street sections. Each one pairs a building height with a street width, which is the whole argument of the exercise.