The Theory And Practice Of Design Control

In 1990s, the American scholar R. V. George suggested that urban design is a 'Second-Order Design' from the perspective of working method and process closer to modern urban designers. The significance of this concept is that it broadens the scope of the objects of urban design, from the interaction between human and environment, to that among people. Integrating these two aspects, the research of design control reveals the intrinsic mutual relations between the two interactions starting at objective study.The paper is focused on theory and practice of design control. The origin and development process of the design control is introduced firstly with a comparison of the latest practice in the United States and Britain. Then the urban design process and the construction environment of design object are thoroughly analyzed based on the summary of experience and lessons learned from the two developed countries. It demonstrates that the built environment of high quality is a consolidation of utilitarian value, ethic value and aesthetic value, and it also shows that the evolvement of urban design process from 'Unknowing design' to 'Knowing design' means the generation of 'dissident' strength from design process, which in turn controls the urban design process. The main factor determines the process of 'integration—systematic—political' is the participants and their multi values, and it is a process to reach consensus on the value of the built environment by all participants.Secondly, it is developed into three parts based on the deep understanding of the design control object and the running through of the basic theory of design with the domestic and aboard practice. The first part is the ontological analysis replying to 'what is design control', the main point of which is to investigate the role design control plays on the urban development, to indicate the possibility and necessity of constructing the design control mechanism based on the analysis of the character of the communicational behavior on design control, and to draw into the system and life-world structure of Habermas the concept of policy system in order to build a research framework to demonstrate the design control mechanism in advance. The second part is the value research of 'what is so called favorable urban design', summing up the general principal and value criterion of urban design, and making up systematic and synthetic evaluation system of urban design from the material research of urban design. The final part is about 'what is the good design control process'. In this part, the semeiology, information theory and cybernetic are used to discuss the formulation mechanism of environmental value, the distinct information transition pathway of utility, ethic and aesthetic value in design control and to summarize the character of integrated stages and composite process in exploration control.Analyzing the patterns of design control mechanism, listing the policy system and administrative process of design control utilizing the scientific policy principle, integrating case study of different countries, it is suggested that the dominate development trend of design control of west countries is: adopting the general rule of the conjoint use of regional ordinance and design guideline in general districts, and taking case control of the combination of development ordinance and general chart in special area. The evaluation process and public participation of design control are reviewed as well.Finally, on the summarization of theory and practice of design control, the problems in the urban construction and the development and design control of China is dissected to bring forward the suggested of building up the policy-based, construction-oriented and exploration-centralized planning system with Chinese characteristic from the aspects of system patterns, policy mechanism, administrative process and system innovation of design control.