Example Architectural Design Guidelines to Explore

In our fourth and final post about design guidelines, we’re going to go through a few examples of design guidelines. Hopefully, these guidelines spark your interest and give you ideas of how your own community’s guidelines should read.

Durham, New Hampshire

Durham sits just northwest of Portsmouth in southeastern New Hampshire. Although it has a population of 15,000, the community has supported the University of New Hampshire since 1893.

The town has a good amount of old-world charm that the design guidelines work to maintain. Pictures of example buildings from Durham and other New England towns cover the pages, giving plenty of examples of what’s allowable.

Town of Durham Architectural Design Standards

One tool that a few communities use is to provide examples of existing structures from nearby communities. Durham’s guidelines incorporate pictures of a number of structures from Dover, Portland, and Woodstock. Three communities not too far away from the community to visit and gain a greater appreciation of the design desired.

Newburgh, New York

Newburgh is a community of 29,000 residents roughly 60 miles north of New York City. Despite its proximity to the Big Apple, the community puts forth the effort to retain a rural character. In fact, the top guiding principle on page 14 is: “Development patterns should be sensitive to Newburgh’s rural character and natural environment”.

Conduct a word search in Acrobat of the guidelines and you will see “rural character” sprinkled throughout the document. This goes back to an earlier post, Creating Design Guidelines, where we talk about using design guidelines to pull from the community’s heritage. These guidelines help to preserve that heritage.

Town of Newburgh Design Guidelines

Syracuse, Utah

Though not a rural community, this suburb of Salt Lake City has a great set of guidelines that I couldn’t pass up. These are a great set of guidelines that all communities should take a look at when looking into creating your own guidelines for the first time.

Like other architectural design guidelines, Syracuse’s guidelines rely heavily on pictures of acceptable aspects throughout the document. But many of them are not just pictures, they are marked up with arrows and notations pointing out what specific aspects are acceptable. A variety of sketches and drawings are also sprinkled about the text to provide more focused examples.

Syracuse City Architectural Standards Example Guide

La Vista, Nebraska

Of course I had to throw in La Vista’s didn’t I? La Vista was one of the first communities in Nebraska with design guidelines and have adjusted them over the years to fit the community as it has evolved.

The latest update to the Gateway Corridor Design Guidelines was recently adopted by City Council which takes a bold step to customize requirements based on the uses allowed. Different guidelines for commercial, industrial, multi-family, and sporting facilities provide direction for the architectural feel the community desires.

La Vista Gateway Corridor District Design Guidelines

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Examples for Your Own Architectural Design Guidelines

There’s four examples of design guidelines that might provide good insight into how you want your own guidelines crafted.