Space Syntax

http://www.spacesyntax.com/
Founded in London and operating worldwide, Space Syntax takes a unique,

evidence-based approach to the analysis and strategic design of the built environment.

From the masterplanning of historic towns to the layout of hospitals and major retail centres,

we make the fundamental link between how space is designed and how it is used.

Spaces can be safe or dangerous; full of life or dead.

Spaces can attract people or put them off; include them or exclude them.

What matters is how the space is planned and designed,

and whether the plans and designs put people first.
蟲曰: 乍看之下還以為是風水的研究..XD

Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_syntax

The term space syntax encompasses a set of theories and techniques for the

analysis of spatial configurations. Originally it was conceived by Bill

Hillier, Julienne Hanson and colleagues at The Bartlett, University College

London in the late 1970s to early 1980s as a tool to help architects simulate

the likely social effects of their designs.

The general idea is that spaces can be broken down into components, analyzed

as networks of choices, then represented as maps and graphs that describe the

relative connectivity and integration of those spaces. It rests on three

basic conceptions of space:

an isovist (popularised by Michael Benedikt at University of Texas), or viewshed or visibility polygon, the field of view from any particular point.

axial space (idea popularized by Bill Hillier at UCL), a straight sight-line and possible path.

convex space (popularized by John Peponis and his collaborators at Georgia Tech), an occupiable void where, if imagined as a wireframe diagram, no line between two of its points goes outside its perimeter
From these components it is possible to quantify and describe how easily

navigable any space is, useful for the design of museums, airports,

hospitals, and other settings where wayfinding is a significant issue. Space

syntax has also been applied to predict the correlation between spatial

layouts and social effects such as crime, traffic flow, sales per unit area,etc.

It has since grown to become a tool used around the world in a variety of

research and areas and design applications in the fields of architecture,

urban design, planning, transport and interior design. In general, the

analysis uses one of many software programs that allow researchers to analyse

graphs of one (or more) of the primary spatial components.

Over the past decade, space syntax techniques have also been used for

research in fields as diverse as archaeology, information technology, urban

and human geography, and anthropology. Since 1997, the space syntax

community has held a series of biennial conferences, and many journal papers

have been published on the subject, chiefly in Environment and Planning B.

Space syntax's mathematical reliability has recently come under scrutiny

because of a number of paradoxes that arise under certain geometric

configurations. These paradoxes have been highlighted by Carlo Ratti at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in a passionate academic exchange with

Bill Hiller and Alan Penn. There have also been moves to return to combine

space syntax with more traditional transport engineering models, using

intersections as nodes and constructing visibility graphs to link them by

various researchers, including Bin Jiang, Valerio Cutini and Mike Batty.

Recently there has also been research development that combine space syntax

with geographic accessibility analysis in GIS, such as the place

syntax-models developed by the research group Spatial Analysis and Design at

the Royal Institute of Techology in Stockholm, Sweden.

other reference:
台大建築與城鄉研究所 http://www.bp.ntu.edu.tw/