[The massing of “Sliced Porosity Block”; image via Evolo]

Having previously mentioned Hugh Ferriss’s drawings of the forms of Manhattan zoning ordinances (and having then speculated on the possibility that architects might design by sculpting ordinances), I think it worth mentioning Steven Holl’s “Sliced Porosity Block”, which is sited on an urban block in the Chinese city of Chengdu.  In Holl’s recent monograph-cum-essay-collection Urbanisms, we learn that “its sun-sliced geometry results from required minimum sunlight exposures to the surrounding urban fabric, prescribed by code and calculated by the precise geometry of sun angles” — it, in other words, is an ordinance sculpture.