theory - ARCHITECTURAL SPACE / Bill Hillier

Bill Hillier
A theory of the city as object: or, how spatial laws mediate the social constructions of urban space. Proceedings, 3rd International Space Syntax Symposium, Atlanta. 2001


K E Y Q U O T E S

culturAL variaNTS & microeconomic invariaNTS - SPATIAL LAWS confine/restrain &/or generate/extend MOVEMENT

…spatial configurations, through their effect on movement, first shape, and then are shaped by, land patterns and densities. 02.1

…although there are strong cultural variations in different regions of the world, there are also powerful invariants. 02.1

…socio-cultural factors generate the differences by imposing a certain local geometry on the local construction of settlement space, while micro-economic factors, coming more and more into play as the settlement expands, generate the invariants. 02.1

…there are certain invariants in the social forces - or more precisely in the relations between social forces - which drive the process of settlement aggregation. 02.2

…there are autonomous spatial laws governing the effects on spatial configuration of the placing of objects such as buildings in space… 02.2

…social forces working through the spatial laws create both the differences and the invariants in settlement forms. 02.2

The link between [differences and invariants] is […] movement, but whereas the ‘space-to-function’ mechanism was driven by the effect of spatial configuration on movement, the space-creating mechanism is driven by the influence of movement on space, and so can be considered ‘function-To-space’ mechanism. 02.2

…it seems likely that human beings already intuitively 'know' these laws (though they cannot make them explicit), and can exploit them as agents to create social effects through spatial behaviours at a very young age. 02.3

…by placing an object in the centre of a space we create more obstruction to lines of sight and potential movement than if we place it at the edge. 02.3

…the principle of 'centrality' set out in the 'theory of partitioning' ~ If we place a partition midway on a line, it creates more - and more evenly distributed - gain […] in the universal distance […] than if we place it peripherally… 02.3

An object placed centrally in a space will increase universal distance and interrupt intervisibility more than one placed at the edge. 02.3

…culture is a variable and puts its imprint mainly on the local texturing of space, generating its characteristic differences, whereas micro-economics is a constant and puts its imprint mainly on the emerging global structure of the settlement in a more or less invariant way. The reason one works locally and the other globally is due to the ways in which each uses the same spatial laws to generate or restrain potential movement in the system. 02.3

…local processes are largely residential [and are] the primary distributed loci of socio-cultural identities, it being through domestic space and its environs (including local religious and cultural buildings) that culture is most strongly reproduced through the spatiality of everyday life. 02.10

…it is the micro-economic activity of markets, exchange and trading that is most strongly associated with the ‘integration core’… 02.10

…the integration core of public space also reflects the spatiality of everyday life, but in this case it tends both to the global, because micro-economic activity in its nature will seek to extend rather than confine itself and also to the culturally nonspecific, in that it in these activities, and therefore these spaces, that people mix and cultural differences are backgrounded. 02.10

This is the critical difference between the two aspects of the settlement creating process: the socio-cultural component is idiosyncratic and local while the micro-economic component is universal and global. 02.10

…why should socio-cultural life generate one kind of spatial pattern and micro-economic life another? The answer […] lies in the fact that the relation between micro-economic activity and space, like the relation between culture and space, is largely mediated by movement, but micro-economic […] in a universal and global way, culture in a local and specific way. 02.10
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my observation key terms in this in respect to movement are ‘extending’ and ‘confining’ – that culture confines activity and specifies it in particular ways, whilst micro-economic activity extends interaction and movement through the use of generically designed spaces – the question for me is: whilst ‘variable’, i.e. culturally specific, movement can be easily identified, what do ‘invariable’ movements look like in micro-economic environments? And doesn’t ‘invariable’ in this context simply indicate a new kind of culture, the ‘globalisation’ culture, which is different from something like a biological invariant? Given that people act differently in these different environments (i.e. residential and micro-economic), does this gradually produce a dissolving of this divide? Does the global eventually invade the local and produce an equilibrium that dissolves and amalgamates the two? I guess this is an impossibility because in such a situation all differences would disappear.