Questions about the Active Frontage poster

What’s on the Active Frontage poster?

Active against Dead, side by side. Active: Many doors along the length; Active: Windows you can see through; Active: Uses that change through the day; Active: Fine grain, narrow plots; Active: Some spill out onto the pavement; Dead: One door per hundred metres; Dead: Blank wall, louvre or car park; Dead: Plant rooms and substations at grade; Dead: Long single-use frontage; Dead: Servicing along the main street; Jan Gehl's rule of thumb: roughly 15 to 20 doors per 100 metres marks the liveliest f…. Put the plant, bins and servicing on the least public side at the start. Retrofitting an active frontage is very hard.

Who is the Active Frontage poster for?

Active Frontage belongs to the Architecture section rather than to a school year, because design is not something one grade owns. Anyone learning urban design can pin it up — a beginner, a student mid-course, or someone revising years later.

When should you use the Active Frontage poster?

Use it to test an elevation at street level, where the pedestrian experience is. A wall chart earns its place by being glanceable from where the work is happening, so Active Frontage belongs on the wall where that design work actually happens, within glancing distance, rather than filed away.

What other posters go with Active Frontage?

Garden City, Housing Typologies and Jane Jacobs sit alongside Active Frontage in the Architecture section. Printed together they make a wall rather than a single sheet, which is how a reference set actually gets used.Garden CityHousing TypologiesJane Jacobs

Is the Active Frontage poster free to download and print?

Yes. Active Frontage downloads as a free PDF with no account, no email and no watermark, like everything else in the Architecture section. Print as many copies as you like for a home, a classroom, a library or a tutoring group; reselling the file is the only thing the licence rules out.Read the licence

What size does the Active Frontage poster print at?

Active Frontage is a vector PDF laid out for US Letter, and prints on A4 with Fit to page — the same file, no separate download. Because every mark on it is drawn rather than photographed, it stays sharp enlarged to A3, A2 or A1 at a copy shop. Colour carries emphasis only, so a greyscale print of Active Frontage loses nothing.Printing guide