Forbidden Spaces: When a Use Is Not Allowed Here
A comparative documentary study of prohibited uses, conditional permissions and the legal boundaries architects must establish before drawing a plan.
A room may satisfy structural, ventilation and escape requirements yet remain unavailable for its intended use. A commercial hall can accommodate an assembly without being authorised as a permanent place of worship. A shop can retain its frontage while becoming a warehouse in planning law. A dwelling can be physically habitable while a discriminatory system excludes particular people from occupying it.
“Forbidden spaces” are therefore not a single building type. They are situations in which an activity, location, operator or occupant falls outside a particular legal permission. The architectural question is not simply whether a space can be built, but whether this use can take place here, under these conditions, at this time.
Scope: six countries, not a ranking of restrictions
This study compares selected official documents from the United States, India, Singapore, France, Australia and South Africa. It is a qualitative documentary comparison, not an exhaustive global survey, field investigation or legal opinion. Cases were selected to distinguish different mechanisms of restriction rather than measure which country is more restrictive. Historical instruments and judgments are identified by date; they are not presented as complete statements of current law. Source review: 10 October 2026.
The framework also separates legality from legitimacy. Exclusion under apartheid is not ethically equivalent to a land-use rule protecting an active shopping street. Comparison makes the mechanisms visible; it does not endorse their purposes.
1. The prohibited activity: American drinking establishments
US national Prohibition, effective from 1920 until its repeal in 1933, restricted the manufacture, sale and transportation of intoxicating liquor for beverage purposes. The constitutional target was an activity, not the geometry of a bar counter. National Park Service histories document establishments operating as illegal speakeasies during this period. [1–2]
The design implication is that a room label cannot establish legality. Calling a space a lounge does not resolve restrictions on what is sold there. Conversely, a prohibition on alcohol sales should not be inaccurately described as a ban on every restaurant, gathering room or act of drinking. The regulated transaction must be identified before its spatial consequences can be understood.
2. The bounded exception: GIFT City, India
Gujarat’s order of 30 December 2023 established specified exemptions under the Gujarat Prohibition Act for GIFT City. Its framework combined an F.L.-III licence for an approved Wine and Dine facility with defined access or temporary permits. The application requested the facility’s location, seating capacity and operating hours. [3]
This dated instrument illustrates an exception defined through territory, premises and eligible users. It is not evidence that unrestricted alcohol service became lawful across Gujarat or India. Nor is the original order a substitute for checking subsequent amendments. Architecturally, the licensed boundary becomes part of the brief: which rooms belong to the authorised facility, and how does its operation relate to the remainder of the building?
3. The permitted gathering, but not the permanent conversion: Singapore
Singapore’s Urban Redevelopment Authority guidance, updated on 12 June 2026, distinguishes dedicated worship sites from commercial premises. Limited, non-exclusive religious use may be considered in specified approved venues, including halls and cinemas; exclusive religious use constitutes a material change inconsistent with the commercial planning intention. [4]
The architectural issue is not whether people physically fit. It is whether the space remains genuinely available for its authorised commercial role. A flexible interior is therefore also an operational proposition: booking, storage and the ability to restore other uses matter. This is a restriction on use within a zoning framework, not a national prohibition of a religion or of worship buildings.
4. The unchanged shopfront, but a different use: Paris
In its decision of 23 March 2023 concerning Frichti and Gorillas, France’s Conseil d’État treated the disputed dark stores as warehouses rather than direct-sales shops. Under the rules applied in that case, the city could oppose conversion of existing street-facing ground-floor premises into warehouses and require restoration of their former activity. [5]
The lesson concerns classification before refurbishment. Removing customer access and reorganising a shop around dispatch can change its planning identity without creating a conspicuous new building. This judgment does not establish a nationwide ban on all delivery premises. It demonstrates why an architect must read the actual operation, not accept the client’s commercial label as a legal use category.
5. A prohibited use can leave the prohibited list: Berrigan, Australia
Berrigan Local Environmental Plan 2013, Amendment No. 4, published on 26 August 2016, removed backpackers’ accommodation from the prohibited-use entry for the RU1 Primary Production zone. The instrument applies to that local zone, not to Australia as a whole. [6]
This is a reminder that an old feasibility assessment can expire. Deleting a use from a prohibited list does not by itself demonstrate that every proposal is approved or exempt from consent. It changes the question that the project team must investigate. The operative plan, land classification and approval pathway still need to be established for the particular site.
6. When the excluded subject is the resident: South Africa
A different and explicitly historical mechanism appears in apartheid spatial policy. In its May 2022 account of the return of the Brickles family’s Elfindale land, the City of Cape Town identifies racially based dispossession under the Group Areas Act. [7]
Here, the central issue was not an unsuitable room or incompatible activity, but discriminatory exclusion from land and tenure. Architectural analysis must therefore ask “for whom?” alongside “for what use?” The historical case also cautions against treating every official restriction as a neutral technical requirement. Formal legality can coexist with profound injustice.
A refusal is not necessarily a lawful prohibition
The United States provides an important counterpoint. The Department of Justice explains that RLUIPA protects religious assemblies against discriminatory land-use treatment, total exclusion from a jurisdiction and unreasonable limitation. A local refusal must therefore be assessed against higher-level protections; it cannot automatically be reported as proof that the use is legally forbidden. [8]
The practical distinction is between identifying an applicable restriction and accepting every administrative decision as final. An architect should flag the need for specialist review, not promise a planning appeal will succeed or silently redesign around a potentially unlawful exclusion.
A comparison architects can use
| Mechanism | Case and time frame | Question for the brief |
|---|---|---|
| Activity restriction | US Prohibition, 1920–1933 | What actual transaction or activity is regulated? |
| Territorial and personal exception | GIFT City order, December 2023 | Which premises and users fall within the permission? |
| Limited rather than exclusive use | Singapore guidance, June 2026 | Must the space retain another predominant function? |
| Change-of-use restriction | Paris dark-store judgment, March 2023 | Does the operating model change the legal category? |
| Amended zoning prohibition | Berrigan amendment, August 2016 | Is the prohibition still in the operative instrument? |
| Discriminatory exclusion | Apartheid-era dispossession, recalled in 2022 | Who was denied occupation or tenure, and on what basis? |
ArchUp analysis: the missing drawing is a permission map
Our interpretation is that the earliest design deliverable should sometimes be a map of permissions, not a floor plan. On it, the team distinguishes the site boundary, applicable zoning, proposed activities, licensed areas, authorised capacity and any time-limited permissions. Unresolved items should remain visible assumptions rather than disappear into a polished presentation.
This changes how a project is commissioned. A client’s request for a “cultural centre” might contain assembly, teaching, retail, hospitality and occasional accommodation. Each activity needs to be tested against the applicable definitions. One umbrella name should not conceal several different approval questions.
It also changes the meaning of flexibility. Movable partitions can enable different configurations, but they cannot themselves authorise another use. A room is not legally adaptable merely because it is physically adaptable. The change must remain within an existing permission or follow the relevant approval process.
This distinction complements our reading of the Swazi homestead and the limits of the household category: the outline of a building does not fully describe the relationships that govern its occupation. In this study, those relationships include law, jurisdiction and eligibility.
Before concept approval: a short evidence register
For each significant use, record its official definition; the relevant national, regional and local instruments; the mapped site designation; any operating licence; the scope and expiry of exceptions; and the person responsible for confirming unresolved requirements. Distinguish a statutory prohibition from an application still awaiting determination, an adverse decision and a client’s unverified assumption.
Then revisit the register when the operator, hours, occupancy or business model changes. A building may remain identical while the facts supporting its authorisation change. The purpose is not to replace local professional advice, but to prevent design effort being committed on an untested legal premise.
The strongest conclusion is not that the world contains a fixed catalogue of forbidden rooms. It is that permission attaches to relationships between activities, people, territory and time. Architects need to establish those relationships before treating a room as an available design option.
References
- US National Archives. The Constitution: Amendments 11–27, Amendments XVIII and XXI; The Volstead Act.
- US National Park Service. Mori Point, section on speakeasies and bootlegging during Prohibition.
- Government of Gujarat, Home Department. Order No. GHG/204/VDR/102020/977/E.1, 30 December 2023. Gujarat Government Gazette, Extraordinary No. 378, Part IV-B; conditions, definitions and Form A.
- Urban Redevelopment Authority, Singapore. Guidelines for use of commercial spaces for religious purposes. Updated 12 June 2026.
- Conseil d’État, France. The conversions of shops into dark stores must be authorised by the City of Paris. Decision summary, 23 March 2023.
- New South Wales. Berrigan Local Environmental Plan 2013 (Amendment No 4), 2016 No. 551. Published 26 August 2016; clause 4.
- City of Cape Town. Brickles family’s Elfindale land restored. 10 May 2022.
- US Department of Justice. Place to Worship Initiative — What is RLUIPA? Updated 19 March 2024.
Prepared by ArchUp Research Lab. Comparative architectural interpretation of selected official documents; not a permitting determination or a comprehensive statement of current law in any jurisdiction.
