Design Codes and Guides
at Spawforths
Having created codes and guides for residential developments, urban extensions, and new settlements, we are well placed to guide both private and public clients through the complex design and development processes which accompany successful design codes.
Our Design Code and Guide Services
Design codes produced by Spawforths have included strategic ‘spatial’ codes which cover large scale layout and character issues, as well as ‘detailed’ design codes implemented at the point of delivery.
A Spawforths design code is based on several key aspects of a successful place. We embed within our design code work industry best practice and our in-depth research develops a breadth of knowledge regarding the subject site and its context. We base our design coding in commercially focused design development and iterative processes, ensuring that a code aligns quality of place with viable and deliverable places.
At a strategic level, our spatial design codes set key parameters of layout, such as locations for green and blue infrastructure, key movement routes, and scale and massing. A spatial design code can address key issues of neighborhood development reserving detail issues until later in the design process.
As a multi-disciplinary practice, Spawforths are able to draw together expertise which ranges from highly strategic to detailed aspects of delivery and construction. Our detailed design codes are based on principles of liveable and healthy places and underpinned by a deep understanding of delivery and viability.
Design guides set the ambition for design quality in any type of development. They define best practice principles in design, without setting prescriptive requirements which may prohibit creative responses to new places and regeneration opportunities. A design guide may often accompany a development across many years and phases of delivery, allowing a coherence to place over time, but being flexible enough to recognize and support changing societal, market and economic changes.
At Spawforths, our multidisciplinary urbanism teams have created many design guides for a range of clients and for a range of sectors. At the core of any Spawforths design guide is a focus on delivery, viability and market understanding which ensures proposals are not only aspirational, but also inherently deliverable.
