Foreword

Henning Christiansen Director General

Why we need road architecture

The Danish Road Directorate formulated its "Strategy for Beautiful Roads" in 1995 to set out objectives for work with the architectural and visual aspects of road planning.

The strategy describes a number of aims for old and new roads that could be used in education, planning, information, and quality control in order to create the most harmonious and best-designed roads possible. The Danish Road Directorate has issued a number of reports on architectural themes in road planning to augment the strategy.

Work has been done with architecture and visual qualities in road building for several decades. Architectural considerations have dictated the alignment and other design aspects of the Danish freeway network, and this network in fact largely sets the standard for Danish road architecture. In cities, the design of pedestrian streets, shopping districts, and traffic-calming measures in residential streets have also gained increasing importance

Since practically all road projects today receive critical attention from many sides, architectural and aesthetic considerations should be given equal weight in the initial preparatory and planning stages along with other aspects.

This handbook contains a number of general and thematic descriptions of good road architecture and moreover provides an introduction to the use of a checklist system in the planning, implementation, and maintenance stages.

The checklists do not hold all the answers and neither do they describe the easiest way to create beautiful roads. They provide a method for carrying out quality control by posing a number of relevant questions intended to minimize unintentional mistakes. High-quality architecture requires insight into the specific project, technical factors, the landscape, historical and biological contexts, and a well-developed talent for both overall and detailed design.

The ambition of this handbook is for road building to be based on a joint understanding of the interrelationship among aesthetic enjoyment, good architecture, good technical quality, good workmanship, traffic safety, and good economy.

Henning Christiansen