Space Syntax Laboratory
About
The Space Syntax Laboratory is a research group at the Bartlett, University College London, hosting fundamental academic research alongside masters, doctoral and post-doctoral study in space syntax. It grew out of the Unit for Architectural Studies founded by Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson in the 1970s, was formally established as a laboratory in 1995, and now sits within the Bartlett School of Architecture. It is closely allied with Space Syntax Limited, the consultancy founded in 1989 to apply the method in practice, and historically with the Virtual Reality Centre for the Built Environment at the Bartlett.[1]
Research Programme
Space syntax analyses the built environment as a configuration: a set of spaces described by their relations of permeability and visibility to one another, rather than by their dimensions or appearance. The laboratory's core research areas include:
- Spatial network analysis of cities. Representing street networks as segment maps and computing measures of integration and choice, which correlate strongly with observed pedestrian and vehicular movement.
- The theory of natural movement. The finding, developed by Hillier and colleagues, that the configuration of the grid itself is the primary determinant of movement patterns, with land use following rather than causing flows.
- Buildings and organisations. How the layout of workplaces, hospitals, museums and housing shapes encounter, awareness and organisational culture.
- Space and society. Research on the spatial correlates of crime, segregation, and social exclusion, including the long-running work on the relationship between street layout and burglary risk.
- Software and method. The laboratory has produced and maintained analytical tools including Depthmap and its successor depthmapX, now widely used outside UCL.
Applications
Space syntax analysis has been used in the redesign of Trafalgar Square, in planning work for the Millennium Bridge approaches, in masterplanning across Europe, Asia and the Middle East, and in hospital and museum layout studies. The biennial International Space Syntax Symposium, first held in London in 1997, is the field's principal venue.
Criticism
The method has been challenged for treating topology as sufficient and for underweighting density, land use, transport economics and cultural meaning; and for a technical apparatus that is not easy for non-specialists to audit. Its supporters point to a substantial replicated empirical record on movement prediction.
Relevance to Cyborg Anthropology
Space syntax provides a rigorous, transferable formalism for the intuition that arrangement produces behaviour. Because its object is configuration rather than material, it applies to interfaces, menu structures, information architectures and social platforms as readily as to streets — any system in which the number of steps between one place and another, and the visibility of one place from another, determines who meets whom.
Related Work
Related Reading
External Links
References
- ↑ Space Syntax Laboratory, UCL Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment.
