just to reply to some of Tom's points..

In particular with regard the 'phenomenology' relationship. My view on this
is that SS can throw light on what I understand to be the things that the
'phenos' are interested in, its just that I find them rather vague and so
I'm never quite sure that what I've understood is what they intend (I guess
that might be part of their programme). Still, just for clarity's sake.
Syntax methods can be applied to anything you like regardless of size,
culture or anything else. You can analyse a rock or a cave, an ants nest or
a forest if you wish. What sense you might make of the analysis is another
matter. Of course you can analyse the role a kerb line around a cafe plays
in the hypothesised 'territorial' behaviour of its owners or customers, and
its is easy to see what sort of sense you could make of this analysis. It
is not so easy to see how you would avoid the accusation that the observed
effects were open to quite different 'causal' explanations (eg.
regulations, behaviour constrained by passing traffic or the way the sun
shines, rather than territorial instincts, etc), but that is no more a
problem for syntax than for any other methodology.

In general, I think it is important that syntax's claims are relatively
modest. All it does is represent and quantify some aspects of spatial
morphology. The methods are pretty flexible: you can represent as spatial
boundaries and relations whatever you choose (subject only to consistency
and the ability to describe rigorously what you have done), and so the
methodology is always being extended and adapted to the question in hand.
This is why it can be applied to anything that has a shape. The value of a
particular representation or measure depends on its explanatory power
(where the claims are somewhat less modest, but with empirical evidence to
back them up :-).

The really powerful aspects of the approach to my mind are 1. that its
basic representations, convexity, axiality etc. carry social potential (eg.
if a can see b and b can see c then c can see a); and 2, that it has ways
of measuring global pattern properties - ie. measuring the relationship
between two spaces taking into account all others in the system. I think
that its empirical 'success' depends mainly on these aspects, but I may be
wrong. If this is the case, then as one changes the objectives of the
analysis towards matters more 'experiential', one might expect to need to
tailor the representations and measures appropriately. In my view the
critical aspects in 'experience' are basically the social ones and so I
think that syntax gives good accounts of these factors already - better
than anything the 'phenos' do (though they can always be improved on and
made more sensitive). That is really what all those who you've spotted on
the symposium list and others are up to.

Alan

________________________________________________
Alan Penn
Director, VR Centre for the Built Environment
The Bartlett School of Architecture and Planning
1-19 Torrington Place  (Room 335)
University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT
tel. (+44) (0)171 387 7050 ext 5919   fax. (+44) (0)171 916 1887
mobile. (+44) (0)411 696875
email. [log in to unmask]
www.   http://www.vr.ucl.ac.uk/
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