journal of ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM

ISSN 2029-7955 / eISSN 2029-7947

2016 Volume 40(4): 322–334

doi:10.3846/20297955.2016.1246988

THE TOPOLOGICAL RELATIONS OF CORNER BUILDINGS AT

STREET JUNCTIONS
Richard HERRIOTT

Design School Kolding, Ågaden 10, Kolding 6000, Denmark

E-mail: rhe@dskd.dk

Received 30 May 2016; 4 October 2016

Abstract. As in furniture and product design, the handling of features such as junctions of street facades is a matter worthy of
consideration. The article considers the role of the corner and corner buildings in the architectural relations of the street. It exa-
mines the role of corners in the urban structure and the reasons why they are no longer much used. A typology of corner building
arrangements is proposed. Referring to affordance, legibility and Weber᾽s (1995) psychological approach to perceived architectural
space, the paper discusses the value of clearly articulated corner constructions using selected examples.
The dominant modes of building in the post-WWII period tend towards two extremes: high rise/high density and low rise/low
density, both often characterised by disconnected building masses. Both modes reject the well-developed formats generally used
up to the 1920s. These relied on moderate density, moderate height and conjoined buildings to create clearly defined, legible streets
characteristic of an integrated urban fabric. This paper argues that certain morphologies make for better corner designs leading
to more understandable street layouts. It also argues that quantitative recommendations in planning guidance are insufficient to
ensure desirable outcomes in street design.
Keywords: urban planning, corner design, building typology, Modernism, morphology, affordance.

Introduction glect of street-to-street edges. It will be argued 1) that

In the song “New Killer Star” (Bowie 2003) there is the corner provides the joint where facades meet at
a cryptic line: “all the corners of the buildings, who junctions and 2) that corners ensure an advantageous
but we remember these, the sidewalks and trees?”. The arrangement of facades and so conceal the potentially
corners of buildings are neglected, and so too are the unattractive elements such as gables and rear walls (see
way buildings join to buildings in urban areas. The Fig. 1, centre and right images).
lyric draws attention to an ambiguity concerning so- The methodology used is to review a selection of
mething both forgotten and important – for why else literature on urban typologies; to present examples of
refer to it? The aim of this article is to examine the corners and street designs from Northern Europe, the
topology and geometry of street corner design and the United Kingdom and Ireland; to discuss the role of the
corner’s role in the urban fabric, and redress the ne- street in the urban fabric and examine its relation to

Fig. 1. The aesthetic ideals of the vernacular street corner (middle) have more in common with a modern vehicle
interior (left) than do the mid-20th century design (right). Notice the flow of surfaces in the centre and left image.
The corner buildings on the right don’t flow.

322 Copyright © 2016 Vilnius Gediminas Technical University (VGTU) Press

http://www.tandfonline.com/ttpa
Journal of Architecture and Urbanism , 2016, 40(4): 322–334 323

change in planning ideals characterised by the Congrès (1974) critique of socialism this paper is anchored in a
International d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM), before view that the failures of planning are due to 1) flawed
presenting a typology of corner junctions. models inspired by worthy social goals in the period
The ideas presented are informed by an experience up the mid-1970s and thereafter 2) excessive deference
of industrial design which places considerable empha- to market-based mechanisms and an overreliance on
sis on solutions for conjoined parts, overall coherence quantitative factors (setbacks, traffic, parking require-
and detail craftsmanship (See Fig. 1, left image). The ments, for example) as determinants.
relation is metaphorical in that whilst industrial pro- Concerning terminology, a corner is defined for this
ducts are assembled in a single process, a street assem- article as where one or more buildings are arranged
bly may take many years to reach completion. So, when at the junction of two thoroughfares. Depending on
discussing the “assembly” of a street’s elements one is the context, this loose definition includes the relations-
talking as if the street is the result of single process. hip between facades or the relation between buildings
The similarities are that there is a joining of separate at junctions. Further, this paper refers to classical or
entities into a newly connected whole and this con- vernacular versus modern street design. This term
junction may feature formal articulation (decoration, “classical” (not “Classical”) is a working shorthand
expression). The differences relate to the time scale of for pre-CIAM approaches to urban planning and not
the process, the scale of the objects and the materials. a reference to the architecture of antiquity or sub-
What the author wishes is for the reader to consider the sequent revivals of that style. The term “modern” (not
resultant masses of a streets block as if assembled as a “Modern”) is here used as shorthand for post-CIAM
whole (For this, compare the three images in Fig. 1). In approaches and, more generally, contemporary archi-
some cases they are and in some cases the buildings are tecture and planning. For practical purposes these
not the result of simultaneous construction processes. terms conflate a temporal definition and to some extent
This paper draws on the work of Kevin Lynch and a stylistic definition. Of course, some contemporary
Rob Krier (1979, 1994) on the basis that way-finding, designers refer back to pre-modern approaches and,
sense of place and arguments concerning urban form before CIAM, some designers were already using alter-
are of perennial importance. Although their work is native approaches to planning rather than those which
not new it is still of continued relevance. The issues predominated up to 1933 and the period immediately
they discuss remain problematic. The study draws on thereafter. It is also noted that in some regions the turn
Lynch’s (1960) concepts of legibility and Weber’s (1995) away from the dense urban form occurred earlier, such
psychological approach to the perception of space. The as the British suburbs of the 1860s.
article concludes with a discussion of how the corner The conceptual framework draws on Lynch’s (1960)
typology might be renewed in line with contemporary concepts of legibility and Weber’s (1995) psychological
goals for densification and sustainability. approach to aesthetics which has three pillars: that one
In order to retain the focus of the article on cor- can perceive (1) intrinsic value, (2) order and wholeness
ner morphology, the author has decided to resist the and (3) a hierarchical structure. I will also make use
temptation to deal with the many social, political and of the concept of affordance, more commonly used in
economic forces that shape cities. To begin dealing relation to industrial design. It is relevant here as a me-
meaningfully with these factors would require more ans to discuss how the form of a street suggests what is
space than it possible to devote to these nonetheless possible for the viewer to do. Norman (2002: 9) discus-
important points. ses affordance in relation to objects: “An affordance is
The principle research questions are: what is the a relationship between the properties of an object and
common morphology and typology of street corner the capabilities of the agent that determine just how
design? How have changes in urban planning changed the object could possibly be used”. These three theories
the expression of corners over time? What role do the together explain (1) how one understands one’s place
corners have in the urban fabric? in space, (2) whether or not the space is aesthetically
satisfactory and (3) how one can move in the space.
Theoretical and conceptual framework Referring to Figure 2, one can read the landmarks of
Scruton (1994) defends traditional urban design from the street (rather clearer in the left picture), judge if
a conservative viewpoint, placing emphasis on the the appearance is satisfactory and understand without
private; this paper is written from a position from the ambiguity which direction one can move.
left of the political spectrum. That view emphasises Acknowledging Vollmer’s (1993) discussion on the
the public and the civil. While Scruton (1994) sees demarcation of science, this work does not allow for
the failures of planning as an endorsement of Hayek’s reproducibility or predictability. It does however meet
324 R. Herriott. The topological relations of corner buildings at street junctions

Fig 2. Two corners buildings, with and without decorative elements

the requirements of fecundity and simplicity in that The data set (the built environment) is large and
considering the architecture of corners one can un- in this study has been treated as a collection of more
derstand the key aspect of classical town architecture and less relevant examples from which to choose. By
and the consequences of the novel approaches applied “built environment” I am referring to urbanised areas
in the 20th century. The concept is also simple in that ranging from long-established city centres through to
it posits that the corner building has an essential role suburbanised areas of recent construction. The literatu-
in unifying the urban fabric and ordering the internal re selection drew from the library of the Aarhus School
and external topologies of the “urban theatre”. of Architecture and the State and University Library,
Aarhus, Denmark. The State and University Library is
Methodology a copyright library with full access to all major perio-
The methodology deployed in this study is essentially dicals either in hard copy or e-format. Google Scholar
empirical. The data consist of examples drawn from provided supplementary material. The specific search
the built environment and a selection of the diverse terms “corners” and “the corner problem” produced
literature discussing architecture and urban planning. much non-relevant material concerning a detail of
I have not attempted a quantitative analysis. There Classical (ancient Greek) architecture. The search met-
seems no unambiguous or non-contentious means to hod settled on the use of “street” and “urban planning”
define and separate signal from noise (examples and to create a large list of potential target sources. Further
non-examples), to borrow from Shannon (1949). A searching required inspection of the resultant sources
quantitative analysis also would not address the qu- via the abstracts or tables of contents and indices. The
alitative aspects this paper focuses on. At issue is how literature selected here satisfied the requirement of re-
corners are formed and not their spatial distribution ferring to street design where it has a bearing on corner
or their number in urban areas. architecture, either by inference or direct reference.
The buildings and urban areas which have infor-
med the underlying assumptions of this article are Literature review
from Germany, Denmark, Switzerland and the United The literature on street corner design is sparse despite
Kingdom and Ireland. I do not address the urban re- a wealth of publications on urban planning and urban
alms of Southern Europe which has different urban space generally. The following volumes constitute an
traditions related to light and the reduced prevalence important set of references in the study of urban spa-
of front gardens. The photographs show Danish and ce but direct insights on the corner per se are notably
Irish buildings primarily, selected as exemplars of ty- absent.
pical forms. As such this work is closer to historical The Image of the City (Lynch 1960) considers the
research and the humanities than science but it still importance of paths, edges and landmarks. The corner
presents observations and interpretations that can be is not singled out for analysis of its role in unifying
examined and contested. urban space but the role of paths is. Lynch does note
Regarding delimitation, in this article I will not that “junction nodes occur automatically at major in-
address corner building found on squares or plazas. tersections, and by their form should reinforce those
This class of corner in the urban fabric has a different critical moments in a journey” (Lynch 1960: 84). It is
set of requirements, being an inwardly-orientated not clear whether Lynch is thinking more of the space
corner surrounding an area of congregation and not made by the thoroughfare or the buildings surroun-
transit. ding it.
Journal of Architecture and Urbanism , 2016, 40(4): 322–334 325

In Urban Space, Krier (1979: 15–62) proposes some The main finding here is that the entire bibliography
outlines of typologies of squares and streets and the of this article, one devoted to urban design in its va-
effect of building sections and elevations. The corner rious forms, is almost bereft of references to the corner
building is not addressed though Krier does hint at as an element of the urban landscape. A similar point
the existence of corners in a diagram, reproduced may be made about industrial design literature and its
below (Fig. 5). Lynch (1984) and Rossi (1984) do not discussion of assembly concepts. Much of the art of
make detailed reference to streets or street junctions. industrial design deals with junctions and joins: how
Moughtin et al. (1992) concede “little analysis” of the things are put together: “…for those qualities of appe-
form of streets has been conducted but go no further arance which hitherto have been universally required
with the matter. Moughtin et al. (1995) devote a chapter are the qualities of workmanship: a good surface, a neat
to the decorative aspects of corners. fit, a clean job...” (Pye 1978: 71). But these problems
Madanipour (1996) offers some insight on the re- are implicit, hidden inside ideas of craftsmanship and
lationship of urban space to the architecture of indivi- aesthetics in the abstract.
dual buildings. The book only notes the role of streets
as one of the main elements in the streetscape. While Towards a typology of street corners
Cuthbert’s (2003) Designing Cities neglects street cor- In order to put a proposed typology of street corners
ners and street design, Southworth and Ben-Joseph into context, this section explores two related aspects.
(1997) address street width, scale and geometry in Firstly, there is a discussion on ways to conceive of the
terms of evolving design standards, a means for social street as a space. Secondly, the paper describes changes
control and traffic accommodation but not the relation in the way buildings and roadways relate to each other
of buildings to the streets or junction design. in terms of the Gestalt concept of the figure-ground
Streets and Patterns (Marshall 2005) “takes up the pairing. As the urban structure gets less dense, buil-
challenge of how to create better urban spaces without dings form figures on a ground that is hard to perceive.
compromising the basic functionality of circulation Taken as a given is the concept of façade hierarchy
and access”. The words “corner” and “corner buil- such that some visible walls have a higher importance
ding” are absent from the text. The Art of City Making than others. In short, the entrance façade generally has
(Landry 2006: 5) also omits to mention relevant terms higher importance than the rear or gable walls. The
but again talks about the value of streets. In Urban terms can be fluid such that in modern constructions
Design Futures Geuze (2006) discusses the role of the the entire building may have no clear gable or rear.
street and why they are seldom used in new urban are- In classical urban settings, gable walls are often party
as. Building Types and Forms (Steadman 2014) exhaus- walls leaving only the entrance façade and rear visible
tively runs through possible built forms for different (see Fig. 3). In post-war urban settings the gable wall
types of urban block and sites (e.g. p. 247). Steadman becomes visible (see Fig. 4).
provides an analysis of building depth, daylighting
requirements and the consequences of the site layout
on floor plan but the corner building is not addressed.
This is despite corner buildings having distinct charac-
teristics related to internal construction.
Of the literature reviewed, Moughtin et al. (1995)
and Holsten (1999) make the greatest contribution.
Moughtin et al.(1995: 51) write that the corner “when
given emphasis with decorative treatment becomes
memorable in the mind of viewer. It then takes on
added significance, performing the role of landmark”.
This adds detail to Lynch’s concept of landmarks.
Holsten (1999: 251) discusses the social significance
of the corner. Brasilia, which is one of the most clear-
ly articulated visions of the CIAM model of modern
city, is bereft of street corners: “The discovery that
Brasilia is a city without corners produces a profound Fig. 3. Classical street blocks, Aarhus, Denmark. The corners
disorientation”. demarcate the paths forward, left and right
326 R. Herriott. The topological relations of corner buildings at street junctions

Fig. 4. The classical street discontinued. Post-war development is visible in the background as exposed gable
walls (highlighted in the image, right). The windowless gable walls do not suggest habitation

Understanding the street (1999: 252) and Moughtin et al. (1992: 133) also use this
metaphor. This paper opts for the view of the street as
The debate on urban density is a long one and quite a space defined by the surfaces of building masses sin-
inconclusive. The definitions of desirable density are ce the buildings dominate the space. Arnheim (1977:
contested. There is insufficient space here to recapitu- 76) formulates this as the street as a figure: “the walls
late the main points of the topic or to attempt a firm are experienced as the sides of urban canyons […] his
definitions other than to refer to examples: the pre- eyes direct his course through an open channel”. Krier
CAIM city centres are examples of higher density; car- (1979) shows the “canyons” of the classical city versus
based suburbia is typically low density. Confounding the disjointed facades of suburbia (Fig. 5 top left, bot-
this very rough distinction is the fact that Modern tom left).
architects found ways to attain high densities per site While description of streets as if carved out from
while avoiding other attributes of the classical city large blocks is visually accurate, it is functionally misle-
centre (see Fig. 8 below). For this section the focus is ading. Buildings are aligned around thoroughfares,
on the street corner, the folded street façade and its roads and lanes, a process of addition not subtraction.
geometrical articulation, as the anchoring element of Market squares and, later, formal parks were defined
an urban landscape. and buildings were arranged around them. One can say
How are the street and block to be perceived? Is the streets look as if they are carved out of blocks of solid
street a bounding space or is the space carved from a
mass of brick and concrete? Weber (1995: 137) defines
the two main ways in which the relation of buildings
and space can be understood, as buildings set in a space
or as spaces bounded by building surfaces:
“…At one extreme in this relation is the ar-
chitectural solitaire: the isolated structure
that dominates the surrounding space […] at
the other extreme are regularly shaped urban
spaces, such as the Neoclassical boulevards of
Paris, with their similarly articulated founding
facades. Most often, however, buildings and the
spaces between them compete for dominance,
as the spatial boundaries present visual centres Fig. 5. Diagrams on the left by Rob Krier (1979) and interpreted
which draw attention away from the primary (right) by the author. The top diagrams show the urban
spatial figure”. space of street block and corners. Lower, the landscape of
free-standing structures. The pairing develops a point made
Trancik writes (1986: 8) “in the compact, evolved by Krier (1979: 81) about how in the modern city the street/
form of traditional European cities, streets and squares building relationship is weak. Whilst Krier᾽s diagram isolates
are carved out of the dense mass of buildings”. Holsten the facades, the author shows schematic blocks or buildings
Journal of Architecture and Urbanism , 2016, 40(4): 322–334 327

Fig. 6. The street block (left) compared to the free standing

large building (right). The street block’s functional, less
decorative, surfaces are effectively concealed and the facing
streets all have a public aspect. For the free standing block
only one facade has a public access. The others may be
decorated to look as if they do, often they do not

Fig.  7. The top drawing shows blocks with the facades in

material. I would prefer to say what they are and rather contact with the footpath edge. The lower drawing shows
than what they seem to be. They are volumes massed building set back from the footpath. The arrows indicate
together and aligned to thoroughfares. possible avenues. In the lower drawing the avenues are less
The CIAM movement desired to “free” buildings clearly perceived
from the street (Neal 2003: 4; Holsten 1999: 245). The
emphasis on private cars led to demolition, street re-
alignment and the building of boulevards in place of While it is true to say that the attractiveness of inte-
smaller carriageways. In some cases, corners were a grated urban areas is partly a function of their central
specific obstacle to traffic flow and were removed to location, it is not the whole explanation. People value
increase cornering speeds, exposing the rear and gable these places also because of the way they look and the
walls of the remaining buildings. amenities offered. The aesthetic and amenity appeal of
The last and contemporary phase of urban plan- these areas is largely dependent on their structure. It
ning, coincident with the second, is to avoid party is the legibility (Lynch 1960: 3) of the street fabric that
walls, to allocate large spaces to parking and to align allows the rest of the forms to make sense. The close fit
the buildings in ways discordant with existing building of buildings to the paths informs the viewer of how to
lines, primarily to optimise lighting and to achieve move through the area.
rectilinear building plans (See Fig. 6). Ford (2000: 8) The problems with the disjointed and fragmenta-
notes that most of the modern urban landscape consists ry landscapes of car parks, verges and free-standing
of “free floating” buildings and it makes little sense to buildings have been observed by some practising ar-
talk about the space between buildings but buildings chitects themselves. The debate is too complex and
in space. Marshall (2005: 221) describes this as “point well-developed to be discussed in detail. One or two
blocks or development pods appended off a skeletal examples must suffice. For example, architects Willie
network of distributor roads”. The street corner is thus Miller Urban Design (2014) write: “the shape-making
reduced to being that place where the road changes and form-giving that once passed for urban design or
direction. The road᾽s path is usually separated in space the underwhelming architectural master plans for the
from the nearest building’s corner. It is as if the walls of property development industry wrapped up in ele-
a maze and the path through it become detached from mental philosophy about space, sunlight and open-
each other (see Fig. 7). ness just don’t cut it anymore”. New Urbanists such
That streets have much to do with the quality of as Leon Krier (1994) have focused on the problems
the settlement (Lynch 1984: 429) is something of an of large-scale, free-standing buildings as much as on
understatement. In this paper this is taken as a valid the matter of style. For many critics the problem with
assumption rather than a point to argue at length. A Leon Krier’s intervention in the New Urbanist deba-
counterpoint to this is the work of Gans (1968) who te is that he has a preference for the use of Classical
accuses both modernists and defenders of the street and vernacular forms. This has distracted very largely
(such as Jacobs 1993) as demonstrating the same falla- from his point that the subjective appeal and the le-
cy, the planning fallacy: “it leads [Jacobs] to ignore the gibility of the street require not only certain scales of
social, cultural and economic factors that contribute to building but that they be related to one another in a
vitality or dullness” (cited in Moughtin et al. 1992: 131). quite defined way.
328 R. Herriott. The topological relations of corner buildings at street junctions

Tradition interrupted connected at various levels”. Underlying Zevi’s recom-

The previous section dealt with how streets and urban mendation is that the list of functions (Zevi 1978: 7)
spaces appear. This section deals with why they look determined architecture which “leads to a rejection of
the way they do. The custom of organic and locally- all traditional norms and canons”. Zevi does not consi-
evolved design solutions has been interrupted since the der that the list is written by the architect who is free to
CIAM conception of planned cities was implemented choose what might be on that list (see also: Michl 1995).
(Moughtin et al. 1992: 129; Mumford 2009: 3). Park Hill, Separation of functions, accommodation of motor
Sheffield (1945) is by no means atypical (Fig. 8). That traffic and a focus on buildings not streets as the unit
conception was based on the functional organisation of development has resulted in a disintegration of the
of regions, cities and neighbourhood units (Mumford urban fabric (Moughtin et al. 1995). Considerations
2009: 25). The roots of this attitude are in a positivist of light in-fall have also over-ridden other conside-
view of architecture (“Taylorism”) that assumed such rations in alignment. Consider the aerial photo in
an approach would result in better buildings and cities. Figure 10 (below). The north-south buildings of subur-
Le Corbusier asked for “standardization, industriali- ban Aarhus, Denmark, have been marked out. About
sation and Taylorization” (cited in Mumford 2009: 3)1. six or seven substantial east-west blocks are present
The destruction of city centres during the Second World compared to about forty five north-south blocks. This
War offered an opportunity to test ideas of new urban design solution reduces living opportunities for those
form on the newly cleared plots. Düwel and Gutschow who might have traded off reduced daylight for proxi-
(2013) writes that “In the early 20th century, multi-storey mity to the urban centre. At street level, one does not
residential buildings and corridor street frontages were perceive the ordering apparent from the plan view.
rejected absolutely, for reasons that went far beyond hy-
giene and sanitation concerns”. For an example of the
disdain in which the street was held, the Architect and
Building News (1941, cited in Düwel, Gutschow 2013:
293) showed a photograph of Coventry’s medieval core
over the caption “This must not happen again”. Düwel
and Gutschow (2013) cite the politician and entrepre-
neur Alfred Hugenberg who wrote in Die Neue Stadt
(1935) of Berlin streets: “The endless accumulation
of tenements, all similar in form, looks monotonous
and depressing. There is no trace of artistic thought”
(See Fig. 9). As late as 1973 writers such as Bruno Zevi
(1978) recommended concepts such as the Plug-In
City by Archigram which was a “forest of skyscrapers

Fig. 9. Image from Hugenberg᾽s Die Neue Stadt. “…no trace

of artistic thought”, wrote Hugenberg (cited in Düwel,
Gutschow 2013).

Fig.  8. Park Hill in Sheffield (1957–1961): influenced by

modernist principles of urban planning. Note the few
corners, the disconnection of the building from the road

1 Industrial design has spent the best part of three decades trying
to get away from the ill-effects of standardisation. First, via ergo-
nomics, then design-methods thinking and finally user-centred Fig.  10. No conjoined corner buildings  – an aerial photo of
design integrating psychological elements with physical factors. suburban Aarhus, Denmark. The arrow points north
Journal of Architecture and Urbanism , 2016, 40(4): 322–334 329

Scharoun’s 1954–1961 Charlotttenburg-Nord project the relation of the facade, gable walls and rear of the
(Syring, Kirschemann 2004) achieves the same effect structure (discussed below, see Fig. 11). For pre-mo-
with a disconnection of building masses and main ro- dern buildings these three categories are sufficiently
ads. There are no corner buildings. well understood terms not to require further elucida-
tion. In modern buildings the categories are perhaps
Types of corner harder to judge since free-standing blocks, for exam-
This section is concerned more with the topological ple, may have outer walls that are all treated as a main
relation of buildings to each other where they are si- facade or may be arranged such that the functional
tuated at street junctions. It is less concerned with the front and functional rear wall may be continuous.
formal articulation the resultant building or buildings. Another division in Modern architecture might be that
For example, whether one or two buildings meet at the between fluid corners as exemplified by the School of
corner is of greater importance to this study than how Amsterdam and designs that break up the main volu-
the resultant geometry is articulated, whether if it is mes in attempts to articulate functional elements (ne-
castellated or a right angle (see Fig. 2), for example. oplasticism). Erich Mendelsohn’s work (Stephan 1988)
For this reason the buildings in Figure 11 (below) are e.g. the 1928 Petersdorff department store Breslau, and
shown diagrammatically. 1928 Schocken department store, forms an interesting
“Corners and walls are mutually dependent on intermediary exploiting the potential of curved glass
each other for the definition of a space….it is corners and cast concrete to give decorative expression to the
which tell us where we are” (Thiis-Evensen 1987: 121). corner through the dominant mass of that element.
Moughtin et al. (1995: 49) discuss the corner in terms of The corner is not a secondary mass but either equal or
decoration: “the design of the corner where two planes primary with respect to the adjoining masses. However,
meet is a visual problem giving scope for expression underlying this one can fit Mendelsohn’s examples into
in the design of almost any artefact, the design of the category 2 (below, Fig. 11).
urban scene is no exception to this rule. Indeed the From this typology one can understand the re-
handling of the corner is often an indication of the lationship of the three types of wall to the rest of
quality and mastery of the designer”. Moughtin et al᾽s the street. Semantically, the facade is the face of the
(1995: 49) typology is based on geometry under three building. The other surfaces lack this communicative
categories: angular, curved and towered corners. This relation to the public space. In descriptive terms, the
study finds this classification incomplete and proposes building has one main surface that will “address” the
a larger set of types (discussed below, see also Fig. 16). public area. The gable and the rear wall do not have
Following from this notion a system is proposed, one this capacity except in unusual circumstances. Those
based on the number of buildings at the corner and designs that expose a gable wall (without windows) to

Fig. 11. Typologies of street corner

330 R. Herriott. The topological relations of corner buildings at street junctions

view are signalling that one of the streets is of lesser im- suburbs derives in part from the absence of clearly ar-
portance. Some buildings turn their backs to the streets ticulated corners.
such that the surface facing the street is functionally a The offset butt joint avoids placing a building on a
rear wall (See Fig. 12). corner with a non-standard garden (which might be too
Some of the design solutions outlined above are large) at the front and avoids dividing up the expected
attempts to address problems inherent in the closed rear garden in a non-standard way. The consequence
corner (see Figs. 12 and 13, for example). These inclu- of the offset butt joint is to create an exposed gable
de ownership of the backyard, interior illumination, wall and long garden wall facing onto the secondary
building alignment, the cost of constructing with non- street. The first building to face the secondary street is
right angles (a problem for the mitred corner) and fire set back from the line of the main thoroughfare by the
regulations. The use of the offset butt joint (Fig. 11, total length of its garden plus the length of the site on
number 5) gives British and Anglo-Irish suburbs of the the primary street (see Fig. 11, number 5). This dimi-
Georgian and Victorian period their peculiar fragmen- nishes the clarity of the start of the subordinate street.
tary quality, with their long stretches of gable and gar- A similar problem, though to a lesser degree, attends
den walls and direct views of the rear walls of houses. to the butt joint (Fig. 11, number 4, and Fig. 14). For
Some of the solutions are dependent on certain the disjointed corner the precise relationship of the
land-ownership traditions. The L-plan monoblock road junctions and buildings is illegible at ground level
(Fig. 11, number 2) can be made to work well in dense (Fig. 11, number 8).
urban areas with ownership divided vertically, into ap- From these examples, it is apparent that the geome-
artments. In Scandinavia, the custom of social co-ope- try of the junction defines the space where the streets
ration allows residents to share a single back yard. Infill intersect and the affects the clarity of the affordance of
developments in the 70s and 80s varied the concept by the area. Since the perceived openness of the junction
placing the entrance off the street so the wall facing increases rapidly as the radius of the junction increa-
the street lacked doorways (see Fig. 12) . The dispersed, ses, small differences in the way the corner is treated
unstructured and exposed character of Scandinavian have a large effect. Bevelling or rounding the building

Fig.  12. Late 20th century corner from Silkeborg, Denmark.

Note the absence of a pedestrian entrance. These entrances
are on the opposite side of the building, associated with off-
street car parking (see Ford 2000: 8)

Fig. 14. Butt-joint corner, though with an additional flourish.

The side facing the camera is half gable wall, and half a
secondary facade (lacking a doorway, which is on the
primary façade, left). The architect missed an opportunity
for a corner building that suited this site᾽s views over the
Duke of Leinster᾽s Dublin mansion (now the seat of national
Fig. 13. Disjointed corner. Dublin, Ireland government in Ireland)
Journal of Architecture and Urbanism , 2016, 40(4): 322–334 331

for the way buildings themselves, fit together as street

blocks. There are problems arising from conforming to
the topology of the block with its shared party walls.
It is a problem of degree but not of kind. There are nu-
merous problems associated with all design solutions,
not least high rise residential construction (see Gifford
2007, for example) and low-rise sprawl. It is not the laws
of physics nor the “Zeitgeist” that determine the form
of the urban environment. It is a matter of policy and
culture among practitioners.
Concerning the scope for implementing such a de-
sign choice, two possibilities exist. The obvious one is
Fig.  15. The service area between the Musikhus and the that construction of new areas might be conceived in
Scandinavian Conference Centre, Aarhus. This is a large and terms of conjoined facades and fully integrated corner
uninviting expanse in the middle of the city designs, as per Rob Krier’s design for Kirschsteigfeld
in Potsdam, Germany. More unconventionally there
corner and having a setback, to accommodate turning is also the possibility of creating new corners by infill
vehicles, can quickly create a junction which feels out of construction. This is relevant in Scandinavia where
proportion to the heights of the surrounding structures post-war urban growth has favoured blocks of apar-
(Scottish Government 2010). tments arranged on sites according to the needs of light
What emerges from this consideration of corners is in-fall (see Fig. 10 above). Whilst much publicity goes
the way in which some solutions avoid exposing gable to new, ever taller, “iconic” high-rise buildings, there
walls and back walls so that the main streets are faced is tremendous potential to change and improve the
only or predominantly by primary facades (Trancik character of suburban neighbourhoods by connecting
1986: 34). Access to the rear for deliveries or services free-standing, parallel blocks of apartments. From a
can be made possible through archways or small gaps in design point of view, the results are likely to be aest-
the facade. The contemporary preference for free-stan- hetically interesting since they would offer a chance to
ding buildings avoids some of the compromises needed add material, textural and volumetric variation to what
when buildings are constructed with party walls. It also can be rather uniform and characterless areas. Further,
accommodates the greater scale of buildings required. infill development of this type must be considered low-
However, the large, free-standing building leaves three hanging fruit when it comes to densification of older
or more extra walls to be decorated to some level of suburbs. The alternatives of further city expansion or
acceptability (Trancik 1986: 34). It also means that increasing density in the city centre by allowing taller
three minor and non-communicative walls are expo- buildings are both problematic in themselves.
sed. Roads whose length are taken up by side walls or
rear walls end up turning into the functional equivalent Discussion
of laneways or service roads (see Fig. 15 above). Aesthetically, the corner of streets matters as much as
the fitting together of the parts of a piece of furniture
Solutions or a consumer product. It is inconsistent that designers
The question arises as to what can be done to design focus on the importance of the form of joins in auto-
better street junctions. At one level, the question re- mobiles, consumer goods generally and the cut and
lates to regulations. The building regulations which stitching of clothing but not joins in the city fabric.
have evolved over the last 75 years need to be revised. Among the many possible causes of this is that the
Motor vehicles are now not seen as the most important focus has been on the wrong level of organisation, the
mode of transport. Planning guides tend towards the individual building, when the design object is the built
quantitative in which terms it is hard to express or environment taken as a unified whole.
articulate this issue. Arising from this consideration of the corner, the
At another level, architects and their clients must topology and hierarchy of facade, gable and rear-wall
consider engagement with the limitations imposed by come into focus. Deriving from this observation one is
building conventionally-realised corners. It is a para- then in a position to articulate what might be so unsa-
dox of contemporary design that so much is made of tisfactory about some contemporary buildings or ne-
the efforts taken to resolve the small-scale elements of wer additions made to the classical urban fabric. In the
craftsmanship yet there is not much concern evident first instance, it is not a problem of architectural style
332 R. Herriott. The topological relations of corner buildings at street junctions

if we can define style as that aspect of a building that is below) shows three simple ways of scale increase. There
non-functional or discretionary. The problem resides are hybrids, of course, which are not shown. Diagrams
at a level higher, in the structure of the urban fabric. 1–3 in Figure 16 represent the first three steps of incre-
With private interests trumping public ones, the free- asing building size in five directions.
standing building is permitted to disrupt the pre-exis- The historic city block can be considered in a new
ting urban fabric. In economic terms, the free-standing way in the light of this growth problem. Diagram 4 in
unit externalises the costs inherent in the compromi- Figure 16 shows a non-parametric conception of buil-
ses required by the dense urban fabric of block, street, ding growth. It essentially takes the organic growth
corners and facades. The free-standing building might pattern of a street block and applies it to one single
itself be measurably better but, in qualitative terms, building. The use of corner arrangements brings to
its relation to the city fabric is worse. We even have a light a solution for large volumes of building. That so-
visual theory to explain this: Gestalt theory which is lution is that when a volume of building reaches a cer-
about seeing the whole. The architecture of the free- tain size, there must be a discontinuity in the growth.
standing building can be criticised for not integrating In conventional architecture this phase change is the
into a harmonious whole. The disrupted streetscapes point the designer considers deploying light wells and
of post-war cities and de-ruralised areas in suburbia atria or subdividing the required volume into smaller
and between towns do not conform to the same prin- segments to create two or more conjoined volumes.
ciples a good individual building conforms to. This is In the organic growth of the pre-Modern period the
a paradox of architecture, that the rules applied at one corner is where the street block has reached a maxi-
scale (the building) are not applied at a larger scale (the mum length and further volume is accommodated by
street and city). building at or near right angles. This process continues
The consideration of the classical street corner and until the enclosed area of the plot reaches something
what made it possible leads onward to the nature of approximating the size of street block we find com-
scale in modern buildings. The diagram below (Fig. 16, fortable. Behind this very roughly sketched out idea is

Fig. 16. How buildings can grow: (1) height (2) width (3) height width and depth, (4) Annular growth with
direction changes at critical dimensions
Journal of Architecture and Urbanism , 2016, 40(4): 322–334 333

a possibility for further work based on a quantitative constitutes “good” urban design also have an idea of
analysis of block lengths/widths, building heights and what “good” urban design is. This other conception
building depths. There is enormous room for variation is equally prescriptive but is often hidden behind the
within this conception, as much as within the range of terminology of necessity (planning codes, market pre-
accepted parameters defining garments, furniture and ferences, for example) as if such “necessities” are not
automobiles. Thus considered, the increased scale of the result of negotiation and trade-off. Every school
modern buildings can be accommodated in ways that of design thought is, in its own way, prescriptive. Even
avoid an exposed rear or gable wall. Instead it opens up preferring the outcome of random processes unrelated
for exploring a format which can bring to urban are- to architecture (e.g. favouring free market solutions) is
as an important characteristic lost with free-standing to prescribe an acceptable or “good” outcome.
buildings of types 1–3 that disregard road alignments
and the sheltering quality of moderate enclosure. References
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is Assistant Professor of industrial design at the Design School
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in Kolding, Denmark. He holds a PhD awarded by the Aarhus
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