Hi,
First of all - Reem, thanks for your email. I think this will force people to
think twice before sending a message to the mailbase.
I have been particularly uncomfortable reading Rui's emails for long
time now. Since he does not mind 'attacking' people overtly, I don't
mind mentioning his name now, although I may also be violating the
rules by doing this. I think messages like his do not serve for
anything other than confusing people's minds - especially of the
students who try to learn space syntax. Criticisms are always welcome
in the academy, and in the mailbase, of course, but only when they are
done properly, and 'solely' for academic reasons. If there is a
disagreement on something, say the definition of axial lines, I would
expect an academic discussion with clear explanations and references.
Attacking people and disgrading their work surely does not belong to
any category of discussion we could call academic or scientific.
Coming to Rui's last question:
I was a student of space syntax for some time. And it was only after I
read the Social Logic of Space that I decided to do my PhD at the AAS
in the Bartlett. Although I had read a lot of social theory before
that book, the Social Logic of Space was the first book that gave me a
clear idea about the spatial logic of social organisations, and the
social meaning of spatial configurations, from the micro scale of the
house to the large human settlements like cities. The value of the
book is that it presents a throughly interlocked understanding of
space and society - the theory that is presented there can be taken as
a social theory as much as a spatial one, unlike many other theories in the
field. And only after that book,
and the courses I took at the AAS, that I could read and understand,
and also critically reflect on, many social and anthropological
theories, and even publish in these areas, although I am trained an architect.
Since then, I have advised many of my students who are interested in the social
theories of space to read the book, particularly the theoretical parts, and they
all came back to me saying how much they benefited from it.
What I mean to say is that one could never reduce the Social logic of
space to a book on 'spatial analysis', and space syntax to just a method among
others. It is a thoroughly interdisciplinary theory of space that is
presented in the book, and I guess its impact was much more important in the
80s, when the idea of space as something relational was just starting to be
theorised in many disciplines.
And please do not think that AAS students just take whatever they are taught as
easy recipes without questioning, without doing research (and I don't think
directing students to google or amazon would be a good idea Rui! - don't worry,
we know better sites where we can do academic research). Just to answer your
question referring to my own experience, and also to the experiences of other
AAS students whom I had the chance to know - we were hardworkers, and we were
very excited about our research, so much so that we did not only read
everything we found on spatial theory or analysis, and even philosophical texts
on space, but we also devoted much of our social time to discuss about space
syntax and many other theories of space. This may surprise you, but I can
honestly say that I had no problem at the AAS in questioning Space Syntax
either - on the contrary, I was encouraged to do that, along with other
students, and we were appreciated a lot by people teaching there AS LONG AS
WHAT WE SAID MADE SENSE academically and scientifically. I suggest you to read
Theo Michell's thesis to understand what I mean - just an example among others.
I must say that I have no idea about the papers you have published so far. The
above is just an answer to whatever you have written to the mailbase recently,
and a criticism of the approach you have adopted in doing that. But even if I
had read your papers and did not agree with you, I would write my criticism in
a way to make sure it would be instructive and beneficial to everybody else -
i.e. not a waste of time.
All the best,
Didem Kilickiran.
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Didem Kilickiran
Middle East Technical University
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