Ben / Alan

As an architect, I would say that the visualization
part sounds particularly interesting.  There seems to
be a lot of good work in Spacesyntax looking at
abstract spatial morphology and its relationship to 
human factors.  Isolating one or more specific factors
of human behaviour (presumably linked to cognition)
and linking it to specific properties of buildings
would bring spacesyntax more into the realm of
architectural thought.

From my limited attempts to understand this area I
think it will  be challenging!  The cognitive factors
related to configuration seem to be visibility,
accessibility and wayfinding, but how these relate to
human behaviour characteristics, such as the desire to
congregate or use a particular path, is an open
question (correct me if I am wrong Alan).  It is,
however, what makes it interesting to me.

It seems to me that the cognitive/behavioural link for
Spacesyntax is a social one, so the cognitive factors
are co-visibility and co-accessibility, the ability to
see or access OTHERS, not buildings or parts of
buildings. 

The relationship to morphology is even more difficult.
 Spacesyntax necessarily simplifies the world by
taking abstract measures.  I think these are measures
of cognitive factors - ie of co-visibility and
co-accessibility, heavily processed by statistical
analysis.  Alan has tried to explain to me before why
I am wrong about this. 

But perhaps more importantly,  while there is plenty
of software to extract spacesyntax measures from
plans, I don't know of any way of reconstructing a
plan from the measurements.  So you can predict a
problem, and state what you want in terms of abstract
morphological measures, but how to you visualize this
in terms of physical buildings & boundaries?  I think
I am right in saying that the only way is to guess a
physical solution and make a new abstraction.  In many
cases in the literature the solution is simple, like
cutting off or connecting up a single street, so this
is do-able.  I don't know how it could be done with
complex sets of changes which might affect the
social-behavioural functioning of a building complex.

But how do you visualize what is essentially abstract
information?  The SS graph does the job, but not in a
way sympathetic to designers.  All the links go from
the plan to the graph.  If you could find a way of
moving from the graph to the plan, that would be
really useful.   In this, I am thinking of the small
to medium scale (in architectural terms), fairly small
numbers of buildings and the places between them.   I
guess that when you analyze at a large city, the plan
gets to look more like a tangled graph anyway, and
social / cognitive factors become averaged-out into
statistical generalities.  So geographers may not need
help with visualization, but we architects do!

regards,   Tom

Thomas Everest-Dine
Architect

--- Alan Penn <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Ben,
> 
> You may not want to hear this, but I would say that
> the most interesting and
> relevant study lies in the overlap between all
> three. How is it that the
> logic of morphological possibility relates to
> cognition and to social
> interaction. From a computer science point of view
> this will open up the
> area of the 'embodied/embedded' paradigm as it is
> being discussed with
> regard AI and robotics. This is very current. How
> this relates to
> visualization I am not so sure. 
> 
> Alan Penn
> 
> Professor of Architectural and Urban Computing
> The Bartlett School of Graduate Studies
> University College London
> 
> 
> Subject: I need advice please
> 
> Hello to everyone,
>  
> I am beginning my PhD in computational science this
> August and I am in
> search of advice. My background is in
> architecture/design/visualization and
> I am in search of a major area of emphasis for my
> doctoral study. I have
> narrowed my interests/research into three areas:
> Morphology, Cognition and
> Interaction. I want to create a tool that creates a
> visual interpretation of
> one of these three areas and how they affect
> proposed designs and how the
> designs affect the said areas. I will only be doing
> the base research and
> proposal for my dissertation; implementation will
> come as funding occurs. I
> will be using SS as a base for my research,
> regardless of the area that I
> choose. I need advice on which area would be most
> helpful in actuality. In
> other words, which would you choose and why? 
> Sincerely,
>  
> Ben
 



		
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