Introduction

Road architecture

Architecture is an art form that is bound up with utilitarian, technical, and economic considerations and with the "sense of place" and physical conditions of a site. Architecture is thus often described as a balancing and coordination of aesthetic, functional, and technological considerations.

Road architecture is even more emphatically tied to a locality and concrete conditions. This makes specific demands of technical design, safety, visibility, and lighting. Since aesthetic considerations must be incorporated into these premises, the potentials for variation are limited.

Road architecture is moreover distinctive in that much of its aesthetics is dictated by the surroundings themselves. Creating road architecture consists in seeing and understanding these qualities and incorporating them into our aesthetic experience of the road.

This handbook is intended for all those involved in planning roads: clients, project managers and planners, architects, and landscape architects, but also others interested in the appearance of our roads, for example politicians and the public.

The handbook gives a general description of a number of subjects that are important for road architecture. It also illustrates how aesthetic considerations can be incorporated into various road projects.

The handbook supplements a set of checklists that follow a project through a series of general questions that all deal with architectural conditions. The checklists contain questions for all the stages of a road project, from planning to implementation, startup, and maintenance.