GRAND URBAN RULES

Grand Urban Rules is a tribute to the city`s will to form, manifest in its vast number of steering regimes. The book contains a total of 115 significant ingredients for the Grand Projet of our contemporary metropolis. Not always positive but always powerful, these rules are the inverted, abstracted and extracted image of a city`s actual situation. Setting standards is first and foremost a cultural act. We read cities by their rules! Rules link the physical with the social city, connecting quality with quantity and latent characteristics to manifest ones. Thereby and almost unnoticed, they have become design instruments. In fact, regarding rules as tools offers a valuable (urban) design attitude - departing from an approach that wants to control everything, and moving towards a non-fatalistic form of control between freedom and coercion.

010 publishers

ISBN 978 90 6450 666 6

STUDIO ALEX LEHNERER

- recent Better Days Projects and Urban Interpretation

LOCATION

The good thing is: we are only 131 miles away from Normal.

Studio:
3915 N. Pine Grove Avenue #2
Chicago, IL 60613
USA

at UIC:
Asst. Prof. Dr. Alex Lehnerer
School of Architecture
845 West Harrison Street, 3100 AA
Chicago, IL 60607
USA

email

ANOTHER SIX ENDLESSLY OPEN CITIES

These cities are endless not because they are limitless but because they are not flat. It is the City of the Seamless Runabout, the City of the Cheery`O`s, the City of the Golden Globe, the City of the Endless Commute, the City of the Continuous Roof and the the City of the Invasive Flora. Whatever city phenomenon you are looking for, it can be found in one of these cities. (at the IABR `09, Janis Rucins, Matt Vander Ploeg, Lluis Victori, Ryan Hollon, Andrew Brosseit, Renee Ciolino, Liliana Aguirre, UIC)

STADTIGEL

A city on a sphere out of cardboard, 5 m in diameter, 1500 kg.

Exhibition project for the 4th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam 2009/10

It is a city on a sphere, but not necessarily a global city, maybe a city globe: endless - or better - beginningless. There is neither periphery nor center. The city's openness is simultaneously based on its seclusion. Once within one can never leave again. The city has a specific form; its physical presence is obvious. Nevertheless, the city can never be experienced in its totality. There is no outside vantage point from which all of the 80 square meters of city surface can be coherently perceived. Equally due to its curvature, the city can never be represented by an urban plan. Its street layout is almost impossible to be drawn correctly on a plain surface. Therefore, not a plan but a set of deliberately chosen rules originate specific localities and connect the city's infrastructure to its built mass and distribution of program. Thereby, the sphere's surface forfeits its former homogeneity, gets ruptured and spatially differentiated. Although already being aware of the impossibility of such attempt, the spectator wants to follow the streets all over the globe. However, the track will be lost, at the latest, when the streets bend over the top or the bottom of the sphere. Despite such partial cognition, the spectator is still convinced that the city's network is continuous. This belief makes you walk around this object. And yes, not one single dead end street can be found.

with Kaisersrot

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CHICAGO SERIES

Happy shapes invented by the Planning Department.

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DUS:

THE SECOND SUN

2010 Chicago Prize Competition, 1.Prize
by DUS (A.Lehnerer, M.Funk, L.Pepple)

THE DEPARTMENT OF URBAN SPECULATION

A different kind of research practice, Chicago.
www.departmentofurbanspeculation.com

MND:

MUNICH, NORTH DAKOTA

The American namesake as vehicle to speculate
on Munich`s actual city limits.

Research project with Chris Stark.
On display at Architekturwoche A5 in Munich, BY
16.7. - 24.7.2010

OFF-GRID

on Archinect (Darya Minosyants and Ryan Johnson, UIC)

PARKING

You only need to be in control of the parking requirement ratio - then you can indirectly control the whole city!
(AIA Award, Andrew Brosseit and Bart van Lakwijk, UIC)

KAISERSROT

Solutions you cannot draw! Urban and architectural research.
(TV Doc. on SF1, 7.1.2009)

CHICAGO RULES!

Inclusionary Regimes within the American City.

For further information and ongoing projects, please contact us.

A GOOD
KINDERGARTEN

A building
suitable for all ages.

BURNHAM`s REVENGE

Burnham cut himself -
in this unsolicited contribution to the 2009 Centennial.

CUTTING TYPES

After Chicago having celebrated Burnham in 2009 only one question remains: is there still a chance to become a better Burnham?
(Paul Kazmierczak, Maureen Rahman, UIC)

RECENTLY RECENT

GO:

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BR:

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A GOOD
SETBACK TYPE

GOOD

THE PRAIRIE IS NOT FLAT EITHER

An exploration of the Midwestern will to form without the urge to ever mention the term `sprawl` or `suburbia.` (ongoing)

PR: