Sonit Bafna

Space Syntax: A Brief Introduction to Its Logic and Analytical Techniques

The purpose of this article is to provide a background to the analytical techniques and related terminology used commonly in space syntax studies. The basic premises of space syntax are presented, its methodological procedures described, and certain key terms defined. Finally, issues relating space syntax studies to questions of spatial cognition are discussed.

Designing Space to Support Knowledge Work

Based on spatial analysis, network analysis, self-assessment questionnaires, field discussions and accounting documents, the authors discuss how workplace design and spatial layout support productivity in a communication design organization. The authors suggest that the impact of design goes beyond supporting more intense patterns of interaction and smoother flows of information. Workplace design and layout provide an intelligible framework within which collective knowledge is continuously explored, represented, interpreted, and transformed in relation to ongoing projects. Thus, the structure of space supports an organizational culture with cognitive functions.

On the Description of Shape and Spatial Configuration inside Buildings: Convex Partitions and Their Local Properties

As we move through buildings, we experience not only continuous changes of perspective but also discrete transitions from one space to another. To describe movement as a pattern of such transitions we need methods for partitioning space into relevant elementary units. Here we explore several convex partitions including one based on the thresholds at which edges, corners, and surfaces appear into the field of vision of a moving subject, or disappear outside it. Our purpose is to contribute to the development of quantitative descriptions of building shape and spatial configuration.

On the Generation of Linear Representations of Spatial Configuration

It has been shown that, with space syntax, spatial configuration can be described as a set of lines covering all the areas of a layout and all the ways of moving around the one-dimensional and two-dimensional boundaries that it comprises. In this paper we propose alternative formal definitions of linear representations of spatial configuration and the ways in which they can be generated. The significance of these representations is discussed briefly.

The Connectivity of Streets: Reach and Directional Distance

We introduce two measures of connectivity that are applicable to standard GIS-based representations of street networks. The reach of a point measures the total street length covered by all paths extending out from that point that are no longer than a given threshold value. The directional distance of a street network from a point is measured according to the minimum number of direction changes required to reach any part of the network from that point, consistent with typical measures used in space syntax. However, our measure of directional distance requires no prior commitment as to the relational elements that make up the network. Any part of the network which is accessible from a point without a change of direction greater than a given threshold angle is treated as a single directional element for the purposes of computation. Street segments are characterized by the reach and directional distance of their midpoints. Networks are characterized by the average directional distance of the corresponding street segments. The measures render explicit the interplay between metric and topological properties of networks. Preliminary studies show that the measures discriminate well between different morphologies of street networks. When used to compare urban morphologies they are well correlated with standard measures used in the literature, with the added advantage that they can discriminate between street segments within the same urban area. Using field observations we also show that the measures can be used to model the effect of spatial configuration upon movement in ways which compare favorably to standard space syntax.

Describing Plan Configuration According to the Covisibility of Surfaces

In this paper we propose and illustrate analytic techniques for the analysis of plans. Two issues are addressed: first, the characterization of individual surfaces according to the local and global patterns of visual connectivity between surfaces; second, the pattern of the smallest set of positions from which all surfaces become completely visible.

How architectural drawings work — and what that implies for the role of representation in architecture

A distinction between imaginative and notational use of architectural drawings is introduced. The case of Miess Brick Country House is used to suggest that drawings in the imaginative mode are often architectural works in their own right, and that they can function as works by invoking a special mode of visual attention. Such an attention is essentially an act of visual representation or depiction, in that it involves sustained perceptual parsing of the drawing in terms of objects or figures that are not literally present but are still responsive to propositional thought. It is further shown, with the help of some recent work in philosophy, cognitive science and art criticism, how such a representational mode of viewing drawings leads to an imaginative engagement that is the hallmark of an aesthetic experience. It is finally suggested that such a potency of depictive representation has been exploited through history, not just in making presentational drawings, but in the visual design of buildings as well. The purpose of representation, thus, is not so much to use an artefact — say a building — to state a proposition, but rather to help to give it a perceptual structure that can sustain imaginative engagement.

Configurational meaning and conceptual shifts in design

Configuration is defined as the entailment of a set of co-present relationships embedded in a design, such that we can read a logic into the way in which the design is put together. We discuss conceptual shifts during design with particular emphasis on the designers understanding of what kind of configuration the particular design is. The design for the Unitarian Church offers an historical example of such shifts, authorised by Kahns own post-rationalisation of the design process. We subsequently construct a formal computational experiment where the generation, description and re-conceptualisation of designs is rendered entirely discursive. The experiment serves to clarify the nature of conceptual shifts in actual design, and the reasons why a reading of such shifts cannot be based on discursive evidence only but necessarily requires us to engage presentational forms of symbolisation as well. Our examples demonstrate how a conceptual shift within a particular design can lead to the discovery of a new potential design world. In the historical case, the conceptualisation of a new design world remains implicit and inadequately specified. But the theoretical experiment allows us to make explicit how geometrically similar configurations that arise from the application of one set of generative rules may possess systematic but entirely unanticipated perceptual properties, subsequently incorporated in new generative rules.

Structure of Attention and the Logic of Visual Composition

Two groups of subjects were presented with two façade designs, one with the front façade of the existing Atlanta Public Library, an exercise in modern abstract plastic composition by the Bauhaus-trained architect Marcel Breuer, and the other with alteration that toned down its plasticity and enhanced simple relations of its parts like symmetry and repetition. The subjects were asked to recall and copy the façades. The results showed that while significantly more students recalled elements of the altered façade, the performance was equivocal for the façades for the copying task. However, the copying task showed the subjects making greater errors in reproducing elements and relations on the periphery, and those that reflect a reading of depth in the façades. We present an account of the experiment, making the case that the results show the influence of visual design of the façade on the way that an interested and involved viewer attends to it in the course of parsing and comprehending it. The broader implication of this point is to see the visual design of buildings not as simple means to increase its aesthetic value, but as a sophisticated means to lead the viewer to specific forms of imaginative engagement.