Rules · Cities · Geometry · Plans
Take the lines of the roads that arrive at the site from its surroundings and bundle them into a grid that bends and swells to meet them, instead of imposing a rigid orthogonal grid.
Zaha Hadid Architects’ competition-winning masterplan for a new sub-centre on the Asian side of Istanbul (2006) starts from the local street network: its lines are carried into the site and deformed into a continuous field of streets, so that the new district stitches into the old one while taking a character of its own. Schumacher presented it as the model of “parametric urbanism”.
A saddle surface in which two opposite corners are raised and two lowered is a hyperbolic paraboloid; it contains two families of straight lines, so it can be formed with straight boards and yet has double curvature.
y = k·x·z (or any bilinear patch through four points not in one plane)
Define a form by a few parameters and a rule, and let every element vary continuously with them, instead of repeating identical elements.
floor i: rotation = i × θ, scale = 1 − (1 − τ)·(i ⁄ n)^1.3
Place a point (or curve) in the design and let a property of every element (size, rotation, opening) be a function of its distance from that point.
r(panel) = r_min + (r_max − r_min) · d ⁄ d_max
Make the building types a continuum governed by parameters: let the perimeter block morph by gradual steps into a block with a tower, and into towers alone, so that neighbouring blocks differ by degree, never by collage.
Govern the height and density of every block by a continuous field that rises towards the main axis and the centres, so that the skyline is a smooth landscape rather than a set of isolated peaks.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “A soft grid drawn from the context”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/kartal-soft-grid. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.