Space Syntax as a new Master Planning Tool

by Biljana Spirkoska

The architectural knowledge is knowledge of formal and spatial architectural possibility and of how to use this knowledge to create an actual form. Accordingly, the two domains of architectural knowledge are the physical and the spatial forms of buildings. These domains of knowledge are about complexes of relations between things- physical elements on the one hand and individual spaces on the other. As such they are subject to the general way of thinking about complex relations: namely that, as with the grammar of a language, we think of words, but with the unconscious rules that form them into sentences. This is the problem of architecture: its primary domains of knowledge are non-discursive: we deal with them competently, but intuitively.

This is where architectural theory enters. It has always been the aim of classical architectural theories to render the non-discursive discursive-so we can talk about it in an explicit way. However, Hillier argues two problems with the ways in which architectural theories had approached the analysis of the non-discursive in architecture: firstly, most aimed at the analytics of physical form, few aimed at the analytics of space, and secondly this has usually been done in a partially normative, rather than fully analytic way. In effect architectural theories tent to be normative rather than analytic and close down the solution space in the direction of particular aesthetics, rather than open it up as theory should.

What he suggests it is needed is a "general theory of description of space, able to describe the differences between one spatial pattern and another in a way that is both analytic, in that it could describe all kinds of case, and theoretical in that it would aim at an effective description in terms of as few terms and concepts as possible."

In an answer he develops the space syntax project as: "a search for a spatial language to describe the relational properties of spatial patterns in buildings and cities, so a language of the spatial non-discursive, with sufficient precision to design with it and testable through comparing and correlating spatial and functional patterns."

The fundamental proposition of space syntax, one that underlines all others in some sense, is that the emergence of spatial patterns from the placing and shaping of objects is subject to simple laws. These are not in any sense laws which tell human beings what to do, but take the form: if we do this with objects than that emerges in an ambient pattern of space. These simple but pervasive spatial laws could only be brought to light by learning to analyze space configurationally that is by considering relations between all spatial elements, however defined and all others.

As a set of techniques, space syntax is about: applying configurational analyses to different representations of space: rooms, convex spaces, lines, street segments and similar, and through this- identifying structure in the spatial patterns and looking for observable functional correlates of these spatial patterns. In this way cultural patterns can be identified, underlying deep structures in architectural space can be brought to light, clear structure-function relations can be showed, theoretical ideas can be experimented, designs to see how they would work in context can be simulated and spatial laws about the relation between the placing and shaping of objects and the shapes of space that emerge from this can be identify. Once created, those analyses are powerful design tool, since they can be used for exploration of the effect of changes by just drawing and re-analyzing.

Space syntax is increasingly being used as a master planning tool, not only at the scale of the urban area, but also at the scale of the city and its region.

The strength of the space syntax urban models in comparison to the traditional planning models is seen in its ability to synthesize with great precision all kind of urban data-movement, land use, densities and similar- on the basis of a functionally intelligent spatial analysis of the street network and use it in a new kind of evidence-based design, to work across urban scales with the same level of precision at the micro scale as at the macro scale, to deploy science in design in a way which does not tell the designer what to do, but helps the designer to understand what he or she is doing, and to create theories which do not close down the solution space, but open it up to new thinking about design and new problems.

This text has been based on the lecture ''Space Syntax as a Thinking Machine for Architecture'' held by Bill Hillier on the 11th International Bauhaus Kolloquium in Weimar.