more behaviour & experience : [log in to unmask]
Dear all,
First may I reply to Stephen's footnote - I have been reading David Seamon's article "The life of the place" in Nordisk Arkitekturforskning [Nordic Journal of Architectural Research] 7, 1 (1994): pp35-48 and articles in several issues of the Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology Newsletter edited by David Seamon (at Architecture Dept. Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas 66506-2901) which he kindly sent to me.
'The life of the place' begins by outlining the ideas in 'The Social logic of space' and goes on to ask how these relate to our experiences of place. If I may quote from the abstract;
" Hillier demonstrates that the physical and human worlds are intimately related through the spatial morphology of buildings and settlement layouts. In this sense, his work illustrates an aspect of a central phenomenological theme - human-immersion-in-the-world. A phenomenological extension would ask, among other questions, what different styles of lifeworld - a person or group's everyday world of taken-for-grantedness - relate to what patterns of paths, circulation, movement, interaction, and encounter."
later in the text he writes;
"Associated with Hillier's contrasting pathway patterns must be contrasting environmental experiences and senses of place. How are networks of integration and segregation alike and different in terms of spatial behaviours and experiences? What sorts of events, encounters, moods, and so forth, are associated with what patterns of integration and segregation?"
And this brings me back to the question I was circling around in my last posting. What can Space Syntax tell us about what places 'seem like'? I would call this the 'character' of a room, building or space - although as always this term is hostage to definition.
I made the mistake of using the word 'subjective' and Allen is right to point out that designers can only work with experiences to the extent that they are inter-subjective. My intended referent was that effect which the environment has on our mental processes (whether conceptual or aesthetic - to draw a contentious distinction) rather than on behaviour. Not only is 'non-discursive' different from 'subjective', but many experiences are distinctly discursive - or much discussed at any rate, but in an irritatingly vague way.
However, the useful term 'non-discursive' may help us avoid the question of what it is that we cannot discuss (so far). It is quite understandable that analysis should be done by correlating measurements of spaces to measurements of behaviour - this is eminently 'do-able' research. But somewhere in the middle there must be a mechanism that relates the behaviour of an individual person to a particular place. As far as I can see, this mechanism must be perceptual - the only information on which we can base our actions is that we receive through our perceptual systems.
Hillier & Hanson introduce the interesting (Chomskian) idea of 'rule retrieval' (or 'ideas for thinking with' in 'Space is the Machine') but again, these are behavioral rules. The social logic of any place is taken to be a 'black box' problem, with the implication that the cognitive mechanism is deeply unconscious. Yet we know that people feel differently about the same places, and behave differently. There may be a statistical probability for a certain street to be busy, but there still may be a particular group of people who positively avoid that same sort of place.
Is this because, without being aware of the rules, we feel that certain routes 'feel right'? There is a question here as to whether such preferences come into consciousness - do we decide without knowing why? Does our unconcious understanding come to us as feelings? (ie. “I like the look of this route”) Do we have unattended feelings (or 'intuitions' ie.”I think I’ll to this way”) and is it these we obey? or are we constrained to conform to social norms presented to us regardless of our feelings? (ie. “I don’t know why I turned left”)
I believe that (subliminal) value judgments play an important part in whether we find a building congenial for our daily activities (which, for want of a better word, I would call the aesthetics of inhabitation). Seamon describes "..individuals' bodily routines coming together in space, which is transformed into place ballet." (p37)
And this brings me back to the question of what we are measuring with Space Syntax. Certainly we measure aspects of space (or perhaps features of form - Anders Ekholm covers this philosophical question in his paper 'Concepts of space...' (seen at http://www.caad.lth.se/research/ ). But what are these features related to? Are these features that control the way we CAN behave - physical controls? or features that control what we know eg. that help us build a (subliminal) mental map or to derive subliminal social rules? Or are we measuring features which cue certain perceptions (and thus might be false cues)?
To go back to the hypothetical example of a sculpture with cavities, this clearly does not control a 'movement economy', and yet it's composition of convex spaces has a particular (perceived) character - an 'aesthetic'. Do measures of integration, relative depth etc describe at least some aspect of this 'non-discursive' experience? And if they do, is this because we can't help 'reading' rules of behaviour even when it is inapplicable to do so (just as we see faces in patterns which we know could not BE faces), or does SS describe something more fundamental to our perceptual experience, which is manifest BOTH in behaviour AND in aesthetic appreciation?
Which leads me to ask; is it only social rules that are found in the configuration of space? This has, of course, been the abiding interest of many researchers, but again I wonder how much it regulates the small scale, and how significant it is in generating the character of our experiences of individual spaces.
Thinking of apartment blocks I have worked on, the main aim has been to allow residents to avoid each other, and especially strangers. The 'movement economy' is controlled by a sophisticated system of electronic locks and cameras. A city thoroughfare may be 'policed' by the 'virtual community', but an apartment block can never be a street.
As for the experience of place, the social logic - and by this I think we mean proxemics - is surely subject to more subtle cues than convex space analysis will allow. Alexander gives the example of a pavement cafe, whose territory is defined by a small step up. I think we would all recognize this as a social control on movement (a teritory), but would this be picked up by SS?
However, spatial configuration is an 'index' of other significant facts about a place, apart from social facts. Sightlines, for instance, play an important part in perceptions of encolosure with reference to bodily movement - without respect for any social distinctions. An article by Ian Lambert in the latest Env.& Archtl.Phenomenology Newsletter describes the perception of the concavities of Ronchamp and Wright's Unity Temple. These are related to the discriptive system of Thomas Thiess-Evensen, and are similar to the works of Rudolf Arnheim; systematic in the description of experience, but not rigerously related to measures of space & form. Can this sort of understanding, sometimes called ‘visual movement’ be clarrified by SS methods?
. . . but then perceptual facts about space may bring in issues that are outside the SS methods. For instance, when is a convex space not a convex space? Ralph Weber, in 'On the aesthetics of Architecture' (Avebury 1995) gives evidence that public squares 10 time wider than the height of their boundaries are not perceived as enclosed, and details of what sort of sub-divisions of space generate distinct perceptions of sub-spaces, and which do not. Other systems include concave spaces, which seem to have perceptual validity alongside convex spaces. Just how open does a convex space have to be before it is no longer perceived as convex?
. . . . . I have just got Mark Major’s email about the Space Syntax - Second International Symposium. The “Abstracts Accepted as Posters” show a number of titles that sound as if they might deal with phenomenological issues, eg. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Notes on the Typology of Socio-Functional Fields (16)
Luiz Amorim, University of Pernanbuco B
Blueprints of Modern Life: Comparing Architects' Homes and Houses (18)
Luiz Amorim, University of Pernanbuco B
The Five Typologies of Gracas and Boa Viagem (61)
Renata Wainsley, University of Pernanbuco B
Residents' Perception of Control (29)
Young Kim, University College London, England
Towards a Logic of Architectural Composition. The Notion of Parti (43)
Irena Sakellaridou, University College London, England
The Use of Space Syntax in a Morphologic Information System (MIS) in
Architectural Education (58)
Philip Stringer, University of Greenwich, England
The Construction of Visual Outcome in Buildings: Repetition Versus
Differentiation in Housing Projects (71)
Myrto-Gabriella Exacoustou, University College London, England
Byzantine Archaeology: Ecclesial Architecture and Space Syntax (118)
Dave Clark, University College London, England
Qualitative Cluster Descriptions Based on the Space Syntax Variables (122)
Guido Stegen, Belgium
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I wonder if any abstracts will be available to this list?
. . . . I am rambling on for too long - these ideas are half-finished, but I will send them now because no-one reads a long email.
Best wishes
Tom.
-------------------
Thomas Everest Dine RIBA
Chassay+Last Architects
Berkley Works
Berkley Grove
Primrose Hill
London NW1 8XY
England
[log in to unmask]
-------------------
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|
