‘Urbanism’ has become a familar posture among architects, so familiar that it has recently become a target for ridicule. The actual developments of cities today make the neo-Sitte-esque contextualism of the 1970s look even more Utopian than the International Style. There are many and varied socio-economic and political determinants in many differing situations which might explain the hopes of the past and their distance from the realities of the present. However, much of the problem with urbanism is not to do with actual urban conditions or the success or failure of particular projects, but rather with how the concept of urbanism was framed in the architectural profession and academy. It ought still to be possible to develop a few operative concepts and a way of having a shared discourse on the architectural aspects of city sites. But at the moment we are caught between vast rhetorical claims for such work as ‘theory’; and a new naturalism that sees the city as generic global and beyond architecture. These notes are intended as a provocation both to the institutionalisation of urbanism and to the idea that it has become passé.

In 1961, a group of young designers practising under the name of Atelier 5 completed Siedlung Halen near Berne. This private housing development was the first built example of the compact, low-rise housing type conceived by Le Corbusier for vacation use in the south of France. It was the forerunner of the newly resurgent carpet or mat planning form. In addition, Halen was a social experiment likened by its designers to the Unité d'Habitation at Marseilles, reinterpreted to fit closely with the local topography. Beyond its undisputed claim to history, its success resides, as in the case of the Unité, in having raised the standards of a particular housing form. Attention to the welfare of users has since become a hallmark of the work of Atelier 5. This paper describes the genesis of the project, its form and social outlook.

The house is not widely known but has been praised by a distinguished circle since its completion, including Aldo Van Eyck and Christian Norberg-Schulz. It represents a fusion of European revision of modernism as a model of the continuity of ‘The Other Tradition’ with avant-garde American design concepts of the late 1960s. Quite distinct from the work of the New York Five, for example, it is, the author claims, nonetheless related to it through the architect's teaching involvement with the Yale and MIT schools from 1960. Today it remains a significant architectural icon, and following the death of its owners is in need of formal listing and statutory protection.

‘The advice of the architect is very much needed in the councils which take political decisions about how to use our resources and what to build’, wrote the structural engineer, Ove Arup (1895–1988) in this 1970 paper. ‘The architect is in a way the counsel for the people…and, if he doesn't speak up, there is nobody else to put the case for humanity in an informed way.’ But Arup added that competence in building is essential. ‘Nobody will listen to your advice about how to run the state if you can't run your own business.’

This paper suggests the removal of one of London's most conspicuous and familiar monuments, the Marble Arch, to a site in Park Square, Regent's Park, where it would serve to link the axis of Portland Place with the Broad Walk, as evidently intended by Nash. Not only is the current site of the Arch not the original one, the author argues, but its whole setting and environment have been compromised since it was moved there from the front of Buckingham Palace in 1851. Fresh research into the history of the Marble Arch is presented in the article, with particular regard to its experimental use of exposed marble in the British climate.

This paper sets Alberti's rules of architectural proportioning in the context of Renaissance mathematical practice. While Alberti makes didactic use of the well developed theories of harmony from music, it is shown that his architectural usage is not analogous to musical systema, even though the arithmetical foundations are shared. The common base for fifteenth-century musical theory and Alberti's architectural recommendations is Pythagorean arithmetic, derived largely from Nicomachus. Alberti also develops a geometrical approach involving magnitudes derived from the cube. Neither the diagonal of a face, nor the diameter of the sphere which circumscribes the cube are commensurable with its side. Alberti makes use of rational estimates for the square roots of two and three, and these ratios are evident in his work. Some examples are indicated for the purpose of linking theory to practice, but it is not the intention of this paper to analyse specific buildings in depth. The purpose of the paper is to suggest a potent theoretical frame within which future empirical investigations might flourish.

The Museum of Natural History, London, typified the state of environmental service design in large public buildings when construction started in 1873, as described in an earlier paper in arq, vol. 2. Its exemplary systems included both ventilation with heating and the architect's use of towers, especially the novel multi-sleeved versions which he described as ‘thermosyphonic’, as ventilation exhausts. This paper describes how, both in critical design decisions during construction and in physical adjustments made after its occupation in 1881, the Museum reveals both contemporary practices and the professional skills of its architect and engineer.

This paper is a practical pocket philosophy of building construction. It sets out a way of thinking about building construction in terms of principles, rules and compensation, and illustrates their application with a range of examples. Its basis lies in reflections on the way things work and the way they fail, and a search for a simple pattern in this. Its aim is to set out a system which by virtue of its simplicity will serve as a guide both to those designing and to those interpreting buildings. The ideas it contains were first set out by Lyall Addleson and the author in Performance of Materials in Buildings (Butterworth Heinemann, Oxford, 1991). The focus of these ideas is those parts of a building which act as containers, separators, and modifiers of environments or, in other words, the construction of the building envelope.

Computer models of entire cities are becoming increasingly common. The uses to which these models are put are varied and include the visualisation of proposed changes, the marketing of the facilities a city has to offer, and the mapping of socio-economic data. Developments with the Internet mean that city models can be widely accessed and it is now possible to both construct and view these models on personal computers. This paper discusses some issues relating to the construction and use of large urban models and draws upon the authors' experience of constructing one for the City of Bath.