Let the wall of a façade curve in plan (concave, convex, concave) so that the front answers the street, the light and the space within, and the order bends with it.
Rules · Cities · Façades · Roofs
Houses to a prescribed model
Give settlers free plots and privileges, but oblige them to build to the prince’s model designs, with the same height, the same eaves line and the same mansard roof, so that the streets read as continuous fronts leading to the palace.
To fill an empty town quickly, the margrave’s letter of privileges offered newcomers free building land, freedom of worship and years of relief from taxes and dues. In return they had to build to standard designs, and the ordinances specified which type went where: taller houses on the Circle facing the palace, lower ones in the side streets, all under mansard roofs. Many were timber-framed and plastered so that they passed for stone. The uniformity is the point: the ordinary house becomes part of the prince’s composition.
Related rules
Put the prince’s palace at the centre of a circle of thirty-two straight rays; give nine of them, between the wings of the palace, to the town, and send the other twenty-three through the forest as rides, so that every street and every ride ends on the palace tower.
32 rays at 11¼°: 9 streets + 23 forest rides
Lay the parterres next to the house, low and flat so that nothing blocks the view from its windows; set bosquets and groves beyond them, and lead long allées out toward the horizon, so that the garden always seems larger than it is.
Plan a town as a park is cut through a forest: with many straight streets, squares from which several streets branch, and broad entrances, so that there is regularity in the details and variety, even a certain disorder, in the whole.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Houses to a prescribed model”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/karlsruhe-model-houses. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.