Dear Alan - How nice to hear from you ! You are absolutely right of course
- and I had completely forgotten about the Transactions paper. Worse, I had
a temporary amnesia over the four volumes of Waddington's 'Theoretical
Biology' series, which were of course hugely influential. What I perhaps
should have said was that as space syntax developed it tended to relate
less - and certainly less than it should - to the later developments in
these fields, and become more concerned perhaps with internal development.
I'm quite sure its time to turn it round !
By the way, I think I'm right in saying that you invented the term 'space
syntax', although I had used the idea of syntax before in talking abhout
space, for example in 'The architecture of architecture', I think you
actually coined the term ?
- Bill
>Bill
>
>It's been a very long time since we communicated, and I've never previously
>contributed to this list - I've been lurking for ages, and reading it with
>great interest and admiration, but I'm essentially a spectator nowadays on
>the sidelines of this area of work.
>
>But I'm seriously puzzled and disconcerted by the brief historical note that
>you offer in the email below.
>
>As I recall, when I worked with you and Adrian Leaman (in the supportive
>presence of Professor John Musgrove) 30 years ago at UCL to create a new MSc
>in Advanced Architectural Studies and to write and submit [in 1974] the
>first successful bid to the Science Research Council (as was) for the
>programme of research that we called Space Syntax, ideas about morphology
>and morphogenesis were absolutely central to our deliberations. And those
>ideas, put together over the preceding 3 years or so, most emphatically did
>already draw on theoretical and mathematical biology, self-organising
>systems and artificial intelligence.
>
>Your own early published papers eg in Transactions of the Bartlett Society,
>themselves make that lineage absolutely clear.
>One of my contributions was to bring to bear the literature on the
>mathematical modelling of growth and form, both in its application to
>biological systems and in its application to 'complex buildings' (as the
>module that I ran on the MSc from 1974 to the early 80s was entitled). Among
>the many strands of theoretical-mathematical biology and biophysics that we
>spent much time on, I recall Waddington's epigenetic landscapes and
>chreodes, Rene Thom's 7 catastrophes, Howard Pattee's analysis of
>hierarchical structures, Lindenmayer's 'L-systems' for the modelling of
>self-organising growth, Stanislav Ulam on self-assembly in cellular systems,
>HA Simon's 'Architecture of Complexity' and 'Sciences of the Artificial' -
>to mention but a few.
>
>As you know I had myself previously tried in the early 60s to use the newly
>emerging techniques of mathematical morphology and morphogenesis in my work
>as a DPhil student in the Medical Research Council Cell Metabolism Research
>Unit at Oxford University (where I was on the receiving end of severe
>discouragement from senior biomedical scientists); and I'd subsequently
>tried to use these ideas again when I worked for the Medical Architecture
>Research Unit 1971-74, eg in the planning of hospitals, health centres etc
>(where again such morphological approaches were received less favourably
>than 'general systems' ideas). But although I moved away from UCL and from
>space syntax, I've always supposed that SS [at its best] is a prime example
>of just the kind of non-linear, discrete generative modelling that some of
>the pioneers of biomathematics and AI/artificial life had envisioned.
>I would even go so far as to say that SS is a more authentic specimen of
>that kind of science than are some of the faddish outbreaks of
>post-chaos-theory 'complex systems' modelling - which have not (in my
>opinion) grasped the significance of the distinctively linguistic
>(discursive, syntactical) agenda that Thom, Lindenmayer, Pattee and others
>sketched for the new generative and relational biology. That's another
>story; but I would have thought that all those generations of students from
>UCL from 3 and 2 decades ago whose studies of built environment were
>seriously interrupted by the back-breaking reading lists that you and I gave
>them on the mathematical biology of morphogenesis might actually have cause
>to be very grateful that there was indeed already a fruitful convergence of
>concepts in those early years, one that still deserves to be pursued further
>in many new directions.
>
>You say "But there are of course parallels, and there is a great deal of
>interaction now".
>I can't think that you really mean to disown the unique (and exceptionally
>interesting) origins of space syntax.
>
>Alan
>
>Alan Beattie
>Professor of Public Health and Health Education, St Martin's College
>Lancaster
>MA Tutor and PhD Supervisor, Institute for Health Research, Lancaster
>University
>Member, Complexity Network, Institute for Advanced Study in the Social &
>Management Sciences, Lancaster
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Professor Bill Hillier [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>Sent: 30 January 2004 16:50
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: self organisation & morphogenesis and the structure of
>human sett lements
>
>
>Dear Anthony - Not really - it very much came out of problems in trying to
>understand architecture. But there are of course parallels, and there is a
>good deal of interaction now. People like Alasdair Turner in the research
>group here came from artificial intelligence, and Rui Carvalho is a
>mathematical physicist. So convergence, yes, very much so, but less so in
>origins. The origins are really set out in the Introduction to 'The Social
>Logic of Space'. And by the way, you might look at the second chapter there
>where we first tried look at generative processes which led to the kinds of
>spatial patterning you find in settlement - what I call in the Atlanta
>paper the 'basic generative process': it produces the topology but not the
>geometry of the city. It was the kinds of restrictions on otherwise random
>generative processes that seemed to be needed to describe the range of
>spatial variation found in real settlements that were the sources of the
>ideas that became space synyax as an analytic tool. - Bill
>
>
>>Dear Bill - Was the development of space syntax theory done in parallel to
>>the development of theories of self organisation and emergence in biology,
>>physics, mathematics and artificial intelligence? If it was, then an
>>interesting convergence of ideas could be taking place.
>>
>>Anthony
>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Professor Bill Hillier [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
>>> Sent: Friday, January 30, 2004 5:25 AM
>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>> Subject: Re: self organisation & morphogenesis and the structure of
>>> human sett lements
>>>
>>> Dear Anthony - There are quite a few papers in the Space Syntax Symposia
>>> Proceeedings which address thes issues, though not always under the title
>>> of 'self-organising systems'. But in a sense, a good deal of the space
>>> syntax stuff about cities is about self-organisation, though it doesn't
>>> call itself that. It's about how multi-agent distributed processes spread
>>> over decades or centuries create well-formed emergent patterns with both
>>> invariants and differences. So in a sense, it's a theory of the 'organic'
>>> city. You should browse the web-sites for the last two symposia
>>>
>>> As far as the things I have written myslf are concerned, a key recent
>text
>>> is my first paper to the Third Symposium called 'A theory of the city as
>>> object' http://undertow.arch.gatech.edu/homepages/3sss/ which tries to
>>> give
>>> some account of how the spatial patterns formed by the aggregation of
>>> buildings acquire certain kind of emergent structure. This builds on
>>> earlier papers which describe between them how emergent space structure
>in
>>> cities shapes the processes of movement, land use patterns and centre and
>>> sub-centre formation in cities. The sequence of papers is:
>>>
>>> Hillier B et al (1993) Natural movement: or configuration and attraction
>>> in
>>> urban pedestrian movement - Environment & Planning B: Planning & Design
>>> 20,
>>> 29-66
>>>
>>> Hillier B (1996) - Cities as movement economies in Urban Design
>>> International Vol 1 No 1 pp49-60 E & F.N.Spon. Also Chapter 4 of Space is
>>> the Machine.
>>>
>>> Hillier B (2000) Centrality as a process: accounting for attraction
>>> inequalities in deformed grids Urban Design International, 3/4, 107-127
>>>
>>> Hillier B (2002) A theory of the city as object: how the social
>>> construction of urban space is mediated by spatial laws Urban Design
>>> International 7, 153-159)
>>>
>>> Also relevant are
>>>
>>> Hillier B et al (2000) Self-generated neighbourhood consolidation in
>>> informal settlements (with Margarita Greene and Jake Desyllas) Urban
>>> Design
>>> International ISSN 1357 5317 vol 5 no 2 61-96
>>>
>>> Hillier B (1999) The hidden geometry of deformed grids: or, why space
>>> syntax works, when it looks as though it shouldn't Environment and
>>> Planning
>>> B: Planning & Design, 26, 169-191
>>>
>>> Self-orgnaisation issues are also dealt with in in different way in my
>two
>>> paper to the Fourth Symposium:
>>>
>>> Hillier B (2003a) The architectures of seeing and going Paper to the
>>> Fourth
>>> Space Synyax Symposium, London, June 2003.
>>>
>>> Hillier B (2003b) The knowledge that shapes the city Paper to the Fourth
>>> Space Syntax Symposium, London, June 2003
>>>
>>> both of which can be downloaded from www.spacesyntax.net or
>>> www.spacesyntax.org/
>>>
>>> - Bill
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> >I am studying how the theories of self organisation & morphogenesis
>could
>>> >help our understanding of the structure of human settlements. Obviously,
>>> >space syntax theories would be useful in this regard. Has any research
>>> been
>>> >done in this area.
>>> >
>>> >Anthony
>>> >
>>> >----wrtmail--%3423wrt%----
>>
>>----wrtmail--%3423wrt%----
>
>
>
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