Page 33 - Broken Arrow, OK Residential District Design Guidelines

BUILDING ACTIVATION

Standards in the “Building Activation” category focus on the more detailed 3-dimensional
elements and architectural features on a building. They are intended to ensure that buildings
establish a strong visual and physical relationship with the public realm, thereby enhancing
walkability and visual interest. As such, standards in this category focus on minimizing blank,
lifeless walls and other monotonous features, particularly along a public street. They promote
visual connectivity between a building and a street by requiring regularly spaced entries along the
street, encouraging windows and storefronts that allow visual permeability into a building, and
ensuring that entry elements are visually and physically connected to the street.

First Story Element:
This standard seeks to establish smaller scale building features along the street that express
the division between lower and upper floors on front facades to reduce perceived mass on
multi-story buildings. Buildings should provide visual evidence or demarcation of the stories of
a building to relate to pedestrians and express a human scale. Figure 4.14 below illustrates one
example of a Shared First Story Element, in this case, a projecting porch, that is permitted for the
Two-Family Building Form.

Figure 4.14

Broken Arrow Downtown Residential Overlay District (DROD) Design Standards 29