# What rules should we be breaking?

> https://youtu.be/011TOfugais?si=85OchFBtjZAVp0Ez Here is another great video from About Here talking about how breaking certain rules could make for better apartment buildings. The basis for the video is a design competition put on by Urbanarium, called Decoding Density, which asked participants to propose creative solutions for "six-story plus apartment forms in Metro Vancouver." More specifically, the competition asked: How might Vancouver intensify its single-family neighborhoods with smal...

URL: https://paragraph.com/@brandondonnelly/what-rules-should-we-be-breaking
Author: Brandon Donnelly
Published: July 31, 2024
Categories: about-here, architecture, decoding-density, development, planning, single-stair-buildings, small-scale-apartments, urbanarium, vancouver, wood-frame-apartments

https://youtu.be/011TOfugais?si=85OchFBtjZAVp0Ez
Here is another great video from About Here talking about how breaking certain rules could make for better apartment buildings.
The basis for the video is a design competition put on by Urbanarium, called Decoding Density, which asked participants to propose creative solutions for "six-story plus apartment forms in Metro Vancouver."
More specifically, the competition asked: How might Vancouver intensify its single-family neighborhoods with small-scale wood-frame apartments?
The About Here video covers some of the common themes from the submissions and, not surprisingly, the first is single-stair buildings. Requiring only a single point of egress can really unlock small sites.
Some of the other ideas are, perhaps, a bit more adventurous; but these are valuable exercises. Many rules are dumb. So it's important that we continually question them and search for better ways.