Regulated Landscape

REGULATED LANDSCAPES Diagramming Scottish Building Standard 4.3: Stairs and Ramps Scottish Building Standard 4.3 regulates the geometry of stairs and ramps to provide for safe and comfortable access within and around buildings. It sets limits on the going, rise and pitch of stairs, recognizing that the more public a stair – the less familiar it is to its user – the more shallow its pitch should be. It sets limits on the length of a flight, noting that short flights pose a trip hazard, while long flights are tiring, requiring regular breaks. It limits the pitch and length of ramps, ensuring that the steeper a ramp, the more frequently it is broken. And recognising that the ground is never truly level, it establishes categories of gently-sloping ground, as well as considering the minute falls required for surface water drainage.

The limits set by the standard are principally bodily indices – measurements of accepted limits to comfortable gait, to the duration and extent of acceptable exertion, and of our familiarity with, and attentiveness to, our environment. In complying with this standard, our built environment becomes both an anthropometric index, and a regulatory devise; it measures, represents, and limits, bodily movement.

This also requires the regulation of the natural environment. Not being built to our measure, the natural terrain is frequently inaccessible; being variously too steep to ascend comfortably, not providing regular resting places, offering trip hazards, as well as being liable to ponding.

This project – Regulated Landscapes – makes a series of proposals for accessible routes across a natural terrain. Each proposal begins by taking a specific clause of Scottish Building Standard 4.3, and using it as a means of measuring the accessibility of that terrain. Seeking to maximize the accessible area at the same time as minimizing the modification of the terrain, each proposal explores tolerances within the regulation that allow for a close fit between the bodily abstraction and the specific terrain. In doing so, the project enjoys the control of regulation as a means of measuring, and coming close to, the irregularity of the land.