Why are most buildings rectangular?

Architectural Research Quarterly

Volumn 10, Issue 2, 2006, Pages 119-130

  Steadman, Philip ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON   (United Kingdom)

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Indexed keywords

EID: 85008541069     PISSN: 13591355     EISSN: 14740516     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S1359135506000200     Document Type: Article

References (13)

1. Albert Farwell Bemis and John Burchard, The Evolving House, 3 vols., (Cambridge, MA: MIT, Technology Press, 1933-36).
2. The Evolving House., vol. 3, Appendix A, pp. 303-316. Bemis extrapolated these data to the entire housing stock of the United States, based on the frequency of different house types, to give a figure of 88.5% rectangularity. He also measured the rectangularity of the structural components of a sample detached house with hipped roof, bow windows and dormers. He found that 97% of those components by number were rectangular.
3. Mario J. T. Krüger, ‘An approach to built-form connectivity at an urban scale: system description and its representation’, Environment and Planning B, vol. 6 (1979), 67-88.
4. This proposal comes from Joe Rooney (personal communication).
5. Cecil J. Bloch, A Formal Catalogue of Small Rectangular Plans: Generation, Enumeration and Classification (PhD thesis, University of Cambridge School of Architecture, 1979). Bloch enumerated packings of rectangles on ‘minimal gratings’-that is to say where all grid lines coincide with the edges of rectangles. The number of distinct packings on 3 x 3 minimal gratings given by Bloch is 33. To these we must add-for the present enumeration-packings that correspond to 2 x 2 and 2 x 3 minimal gratings, suitably dimensioned to fill the 3 x 3 grid. Bloch did not count packings in which the number of rectangles equals the number of cells in the grating. These (on 1 x 1, 1 x 2, 1 x 3, 2 x 3 and 3 x 3 gratings) are also included here, appropriately dimensioned to the 3 x 3 grid in each case.
6. William J. Mitchell, J. Philip Steadman and Robin S. Liggett, ‘Synthesis and optimisation of small rectangular floor plans’, Environment and Planning B, vol. 3 (1976), 37; Christopher F. Earl, ‘A note on the generation of rectangular dissections’, in Environment and Planning B, vol. 4 (1977), 241-246; Ramesh Krishnamurti and Peter H. O'N. Roe, ‘Algorithmic aspects of plan generation and enumeration’, Environment and Planning B, vol. 5 (1978), 157-177; Cecil J. Bloch and Ramesh Krishnamurti, ‘The counting of rectangular dissections’, Environment and Planning B, vol. 5 (1978), 207-214; Ulrich Flemming, ‘Wall representations of rectangular dissections and their use in automated space allocation’, Environment and Planning B, vol. 5 (1978), 215-232; Cecil J. Bloch, ‘An algorithm for the exhaustive enumeration of rectangular dissections’, Transactions of the Martin Centre for Architectural and Urban Studies, vol. 3 (1978), 5-34. See also the general discussion in J. Philip Steadman, Architectural Morphology (London: Pion, 1979).
7. Dorothy K. Burnham, Cut My Cote (Toronto, Canada: Textile Department, Royal Ontario Museum, 1973).
8. Kent V. Flannery, ‘The origins of the village as a settlement type in Mesoamerica and the Near East: a comparative study’, in Man, Settlement and Urbanism, ed. by P. J. Ucko, R. Tringham and G. W. Dimbleby (London: Duckworth, 1972), pp. 23-53.
9. ‘The origins of the village as a settlement type in Mesoamerica and the Near East: a comparative study’., pp. 29-30.
10. Bernard Rudofsky, Architecture Without Architects (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1964. Reprinted, London: Academy Editions, 1973).
11. Pierre Desaulle, Les Bories de Vaucluse: Région de Bonnieux (Paris: A. et J. Picard, 1965).
12. I am grateful to Bill Hillier for drawing my attention to bories, and for taking me to see the very building of Figure 22. It should be said however that a minority of freestanding single-room bories have rectangular plans; so this interpretation could be open to challenge.
13. Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World, ed. by Paul Oliver (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 3 vols., 1997), p. 1568.