Ensemble and master plan
Active ground floor
office building mixed-use building hotel public building housing complex
It is the ground floor that opens to the street with shops, services, lobbies and many doors instead of blank walls or parking.
What it solves
It gives the sidewalk eyes and movement, so it feels safer and livelier at different hours. It brings services closer to pedestrians and gives the building a direct relationship with its neighborhood.
Today
Give the ground floor more height than the floors above, small units with frequent doors and clear glass. Place parking, plant rooms and blank walls away from the main frontage.
Common mistake
Putting the parking or a wall on the ground floor and leaving the sidewalk with no one watching it.
Tomorrow
With more home deliveries, the ground floor can house workshops, care for children and older people, delivery points and common rooms. What matters is that it keeps having doors to the street and people inside.
Fact In front of active facades seven times more stops and activity have been observed than in front of passive ones. At least 10 doors every 100 meters with a 4-meter-high ground floor are recommended.
Where it comes from
- 1Ancient Rome Ostia, Italy, 2nd and 3rd centuries
Apartment buildings (insulae) had shops (tabernae) open to the street on the ground floor. - 2Straits shophouse Singapore, 19th century
The 1822 plan called for a continuous covered walkway in front of houses with shops below and homes above. - 3Neighborhood urbanism New York, United States, 1961
Jane Jacobs explained that buildings facing the street put eyes on it and keep it safe.
Masters
- Jan Gehl Study of ground-floor facades, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2006
With his team he measured how much people stop in front of open facades and in front of closed ones. He turned the ground floor into a concrete urban design guideline.
Appears in the routes
See also
Also in Ensemble and master plan
Diagrams and texts by LDB Arquitectura. They are shared under the CC BY 4.0 license, which allows them to be used and adapted with credit to the source.