The visibility/permeability issue is as old as space syntax as far as I can remember, but the development of this research thread by various members of the space syntax community and the theoretical, social and methodological issues it raises has not been systematically explored.

Some references: 

The paper with Tad Grajewski: Architecture, Narrative and Promenade, in Benson and Forsyth's Museum of Scotland', arq 2000, later published in chapter 7 of Architecture and Narrative, 2009, Routledge). The Museum of Scotland is a very complex building spatially and visually with many voids including the main atrium and a number of shafts. We used convaxial analysis and linked spaces across atria and voids by connecting those convex spaces that were inter-visible along the third dimension. We used this analysis to discuss (amongst others) the cultural messages articulated by the exhibition design with particular reference to the void that integrates a number of floors around the theme of industry and technology in Scotland. Including vertical links of this kind in the analysis is a standard method that has been in use since early days. For example, I remember a MSc paper (AAS, UCL) by Dickon Irwin on the Victoria and Albert Museum (1988) where he did something similar. I am sure there have been studies earlier than this. 

See also Psarra et al (SS 6) for an analysis of Taniguchi's latest remodelling of the MoMA, and Kaynar et al (SS 7) for an analysis of the MoMA, Kahn's Yale Centre of British Art and Meyer - Piano's Atlanta High.  

The interplay between visibility and permeability is architects' favourite theme and is used as a way of integrating in section (void - for orientation and lighting purposes as well as for dramatic effect) and bridging over in plan what is separated in section (bridges, plateaus, etc.). It is also used to free space around a sculptural volume and give it three dimensional expression as in the case of Le Corbusier's assembly building in Chandigarh. It is also a way of dematerialising boundaries so that what works as a boundary in terms of access (void or a perforated wall) is dematerialised in terms of visibility relations (Soane's museum, chapter 5 in Architecture and Narrative). It is a way of establishing complexity at the level of the aesthetic and cognitive dimensions of buildings in terms of how boundaries register in our cognition as 'porous barriers', doing two things rather than just one. 

Historically speaking, although it remains a standard characteristic of buildings in many different cultures for long period, it emerges as a conscious strategy in architecture with the technical innovations of the 19th and 20th centuries. These innovations free spaces from masonry load bearing systems allowing architects the freedom to dissociate the plan from the section, the structural from the planning grids, various plans from each other, as well as excavate large areas out of building volumes and plans. 

If it is not too far stretched, it is possible to argue that it also appears -although in a different context and form - in the 18th century landscape design (the ha-ha and other devices) as a way to abolish boundaries in the garden, 'leap the wall' and find that 'all nature is garden' (Alexander Pope on Capability Brown, Humphrey Repton and William Kent). 

Socially speaking it might be possible to argue that by integrating and separating spaces from each other atria reduce the possibility of generating encounters but increase synchrony. They establish and celebrate group identity and togetherness, the expression of a public event, and so on. But depending on their position in the spatial system and the ways in which social solidarities are established in the building as a whole and in its various parts they can also be powerful generative spaces.    

Not much work is done in terms of the social implications of the spatial and social asymmetry introduced by the visibility/permeability tension. 

For a discussion of the social and political dimensions of museums and similar building types with atria that emerge at the same time with museums such as expositions, and department stores - seen through Foucault's theories of panopticism, power and social control -, see Bennet's The Birth of the Museum. As to visibility and permeability in the 18th century garden design there are strong social, political and economic issues there too (over and above the aesthetic gloss that most critics attribute to these landscapes). 

Sophia

 

   

Dr Sophia Psarra
Reader of Architecture and Spatial Design
The Bartlett School of Graduate Studies
Faculty of the Built Environment
University College London (UCL)
14 Upper Woburn Place
London WC1H 0NN  UK
T: +44 (0) 20 3108 9027




On 29 Feb 2012, at 11:08, Daniel Koch wrote:

Hi again,

 Actually, it is used equally extreme through certain forms of glass walls: very deliberately played with even in e.g. retail. I found remarkably deliberate and powerful use of it in the department stores I studied (chapter 11 (and 12) in Structuring Fashion; "A Stage for Others to See" (and "The Public Femininity and the Discerned Mind")) - perhaps most notably in the staging of cosmetics (and dressing rooms). The most exposed to the street were permeability-wise deep in quite a communicative way. This was cut out of the paper to sss7 and not really published elsewhere (in English), but it is the empirical ground on which I continued to "Architecture Re-Configured".

My point re: convex space was more connected to the experiment in the Santiago paper ("Architectural Disjunctions"), but it really comes down to what you want to analyse. I have done similar analysis in Depthmap, that did not get included in that paper (i.e. comparing visibility and permeability integration), using the same basic figures. However, while the results are conceptually similar they are less clear, and you specifically lose track of which space is connected to which in the comparative graph (which is part of the point of that line of discussion). I gather it will be published at some point (or rest forever gathering dust in my folder for "papers to write").

I simply do not necessarily agree that VGA is the better option here, partially due to the way the software works - but only partially. The fluctuating/unclear boundary problem of atria does not disappear with depthmap any more than with any other form of analysis. In certain ways it makes the problem worse. The finer resolution of the VGA (commonly applied) does handle many differences other analysis does not, but not that particular one, and the finer resolution and ways of making connections create new problems for the analysis. The important thing I think is to not confuse an analysis of visibility connections with a VGA graph. We can make axial and convex space graphs based on visibility (we just define what constitutes a connection or a space differently - e.g. we make it through a glass wall or not). This actually works very well in atria to describe the conflation/folding of space from a visibility point of view compared to an access point of view (the J-graphs are really telling). We also can, and do, make VGA graphs based on other criteria ("kneesovists", "flysovists" (!), etc.). Sometimes more detail obscures rather than shows (see Châtelet (2000), or perhaps Kenneth Knoespel "Models and Diagrams within the Cognitive Field" in "Model Based Reasoning within Scientific Discovery"; Kenneth has also published similar discussions regarding space syntax in the London or Atlanta Symposium).

If you do try convex spaces it is important to try to work with three dimensional convexity, rather than plan convexity. However, this is not a perfect solution either, and it is an issue that really requires research not only as phenomena but as "how do we measure/model/calculate it". I would be really interested in what results you reach.

Back to physical connectivity (permeability) and visual connectivity - again, Julienne's Decoding Homes and Houses seems central to me. This also counts for the degree it is used intuitively/practically/traditionally by architects (and any building practice) as a means of cultural communication. And I think, like Julienne, that architects use it quite deliberately, it is not only some but more or less all, even if it is not  made discursive in the way that space syntax analysis tries to do and thereby used through other means (hence the words like "balcony", "catwalk", etc). Sometimes it may also be misunderstood or deployed naively, but it is there.

You may want to look in Kali Tzorti's "Space: Interconnecting museology and architecture" in Journal of Space Syntax 2(1) as well, by the way. And for a more "intuitive" discussion, Beatriz Colomina's, "Interior" in Privacy and Publicity; it's as close as you can come to syntactic analysis from the point of origin she operates.

Best
/Daniel

 
__________________
Daniel Koch
PhD | Researcher | Teacher
Assistant Director of Research Studies
KTH School of Architecture
100 44 Stockholm, Sweden
www.arch.kth.se/sad


On 2012-02-29 00:26, N.S. Dalton wrote:
[log in to unmask]" type="cite"> 
On 28 Feb 2012, at 19:51, Guy Marriage wrote:


Studying atria has made me strongly aware of the visibility / accessibility paradox discussed in other papers - it is probably at its most extreme within an atrium space. Nowhere else is a space this open and visible - yet often, this space has the least amount of physical connections. Some aspects of space syntax work well here, others not so much - for instance, I can't really use axial line analysis at all in such a space. 

The example I use in the visibility/accessibly paper 
( http://oro.open.ac.uk/19163/ )  Dalton, Sheep and Dalton, Ruth (2009). Solutions for visibility, accessibility and signage problems via layered graphs.In: Proceedings to the 7th International Space Syntax Symposium, 9-11 June 2009, Stockholm. 

is a quasi-attrium ( court yard ), I think the current version of webmap@home does the calculations, if not then email me and I will send you the version with it in. Naturally its all axial but you get a lot of advantages with it ( drawing is really fast ). 

Mostly, it's this play off between the physical connectivity and the visual that I am exploring in my research.
I'm convinced that some architects understand this instinctively, without knowing why they do it; and others don't understand it at all. 

John Peponis wrote some nice work about FallingWater and this. 

Sheep




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