>>> [log in to unmask] 27/10/04 12:40 PM >>>
>How ever I'm still a strong supporter of the 'people don't fly'
school of SS. We might appreciate the volumes but when we move we
still move in the plane. This is how architects typically draw
buildings as a number of sections. I spent a lot of time programming
unlinks,bridges and super-links into the user interface of Axman and
Webmap just to allow people to function in 3D<
Permeability in two dimensions is crucial for intelligibility and wayfinding,
but we should distinguish issues of movement and way-finding from the ways in
which architects design their buildings. We should also distinguish the ways in
which they represent them from the ways in which they design them, as they think
and resolve them in three dimensions. In terms of the methods of representation
they do not just use sections, but also models, and more recently computer 3d
simulations.
Why researchers whithin the space syntax community keep returning to visibility,
surfaces and three dimensional properties, with reference to good buildings? I
think because good architects use visibility relations and the three dimensional
sculpturing of their spaces to reinforce syntactic properties that are not
directly visible, or to create interesting reversals like Wright in the
Guggenheim Museum combining a linear sequence in terms of permeability with the
three dimensional sychronisation of space in terms of visual relations.
>Generally I feel we should be careful about using nice or well known
buildings in research. Its a bit like being a linguist studying the
syntax of a language by only researching poetry.<
I agree, but if poetry is limited in terms of wayfinding, it teaches useful
lessons to architects.
Sophia Psarra
|