Space Syntax Lab Seminars: Autumn 2022 - Spring 2023

About

The Space Syntax Lab Seminar series brings together researchers and students to share their work at the intersection of architecture, urban space and society. Organised by The Bartlett’s internationally renowned Space Syntax Laboratory, the series features a mixture of international invited speakers, UCL researchers and PhD students providing diverse viewpoints on how we understand, analyse and design both buildings and cities.

Schedule

06 October 2022 | 16:00 | Rosica Pachilova and Kerstin Sailer

Reconfigurable Diagnostics Hub

Abstract

Current practice of eye examinations at Moorfields Eye Hospital were investigated with the aim to optimise the flow of patients in time and space. This will respond to the huge backlog in outpatient services for Moorfields patients caused by the restrictions in clinical activity during the Covid pandemic. In addition to their current Cayton Street site, a new hub in Hoxton was opened in January 2021 to catch-up with the Covid-induced patient backlog. Clinicians reported that neither site runs optimally, as examinations take longer than expected, yet it is not known where time is lost. Based on observations and space syntax modelling, Rosica and Kerstin investigated the spatial and temporal configurations for time-efficiency and adaptability. Using the findings from this study to suggest spatial arrangements for an optimized flow in another Moorfields clinic opened in September 2021 in Brent Cross Shopping Centre.

Biography

Kerstin Sailer is a Professor in the Sociology of Architecture at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. She investigates the impact of spatial design on people and social behaviours inside a range of buildings such as offices, laboratories, hospitals and schools. An architect by training, her research interests combine complex buildings, workplace environments and space usage with social networks, organisational theory and organisational behaviour. She has published widely, and her research has been funded by both industry and various research councils. Kerstin is the Principal Investigator of the Reconfigurable Diagnostics Hub project.

Dr Rosica Pachilova is a Research Associate for the Reconfigurable Diagnostic Hubs project and will present research findings of the project on behalf of Kerstin. Rosica finished her PhD at UCL in 2020, where she investigated how hospital ward layouts influenced work processes and communication patterns amongst healthcare workers and how this affected the quality of care provided to patients. Together with Kerstin Sailer, she won the RIBA President Award for Research in 2019 in the annual theme ‘Building in Quality’. Rosica currently works for a Workplace Consultancy where she is involved in healthcare, office and education building projects. She helps understand user behaviours by gathering qualitative and quantitative data, looks into global best practices and future trends, and translates this into design.

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20 October 2022 | 16:00 | Yao Shen

Functional visibility graph analysis: quantifying visuofunctional space with social media check-in data

Abstract

Public space is characterised by visible spaces and featured by observable activities, forming the atmosphere that humans can perceive, interpret, and experience. This seminar conceptualises urban space as a set of viewsheds connecting functions visually which can be represented as functional visibility graphs – the graphs with mutual-visibility edges between space and function nodes. It begins with an introduction of three basic measures: visual function size, entropy, and mean angular depth step, then proposes advanced measures: namely visual function connectivity, function visibility, and visible function closeness, showing spatial narratives along paths, visual centrality in place, and functional regions for continuous areas, respectively. This framework is enabled by social media check-in data that records people’s engagements across function nodes tagged by them. An application in a real example in Tianjin City is shown. The novelty of using social media check-ins as a delegation of actual function usage is demonstrated for modelling urban movement with improved precision. By tracing the shifting performance of the functional visibility graphs for the same spatial layout, this study outlines how such analysis can be conducted for uncovering short-term transformation of the visual landscape, contributing to the fine-scale, high-resolution implementations of land use policies from a real human-focused perspective, with the socially sensed data.

Biography

Dr Yao Shen is an Associate Professor in Urban Analytics, College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University, Director of the Centre for Urban Science and Planning, Joint Laboratory of Ecological Urban Design, Ministry of Education of China, Honorary Fellow, at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London, and Associate Editor for the journal Transactions in Urban Data, Science, and Technology. He obtained his PhD from Space Syntax Lab and then worked as a Research Associate at CASA, UCL, before he joined Tongji. His research interests cover spatial analytics, urban modelling, complex network, data science, urban geometry, visualisation, and urban planning. He was elected for Shanghai Rising-Star Program (2021) and Pujiang Program (2018). Until now, he supervised 3 Chinese national projects and published more than 30 articles in international journals. He has been serving as a reviewer for more than 30 international journals and as a guest editor for 6 international journals.

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03 November 2022 | 16:00 | Soungmin Yu

Simulating organisational spatial and social behaviour 

Abstract

Understanding the occupancy pattern and interaction potential afforded by design alternatives is particularly valuable in workplace design, where unplanned face-to-face interactions are valued as sources of innovation and collaboration. Many studies have been conducted to simulate occupants’ spatial behaviour, but most abstract out interactions between occupants. This research presents an agent-based model (ABM) for simulating occupancy patterns and interactions within the domain of workplace design with the aim to test different office layouts for space planning using the amount of potential face-to-face interactions as the evaluation metric. The research presents the spatial and social parameters considered based on the existing literature on organisational spatial and social behaviour, how these parameters can be incorporated in agent-based modelling framework, and the process of evaluating design alternatives when dealing with non-deterministic human behaviour. To enable the higher degree of customisation needed to simulate interactions, an online survey questionnaire was designed along with the ABM to calibrate the model with the survey data to simulate the occupancy behaviour of an existing organisation. The methodology developed in the research was applied to a series of experiments, each testing a set of hypothetical layouts with varying design parameters. It was also tested in a case study office to model the behaviour of an existing office. The result of the simulation was compared to other occupancy data gathered from a limited area as an initial assessment to look for a resemblance to real-life occupancy. The findings showed that the proposed methodology can capture the heterogeneous behavioural patterns of occupants to create an agent population that reflects an organisation’s specific behaviour. They also showed that the methodology can be used to test different interior layouts and seating arrangements to quantitatively compare their influence on potential face-to-face interactions. 

Biography

Soungmin Yu is a practising architect (UK chartered architect RIBA/ARB), researcher and educator based in London. She has 14 years of experience working for international practices in London, Amsterdam, and New York. She has experience working on projects with diverse scales, programmes and complex forms throughout all design stages with built projects. She is currently a lead architect at Zaha Hadid Architects, where she has worked as a design architect as well as a specialist to partake in research to create a computational design methodology to evaluate the social performance of design alternatives. Her previous places of work include Foster + Partners, SOM and UNStudio. She obtained her 5-year professional degree in architecture from Cornell University, her Master of Science degree from the Architectural Association School of Architecture, and PhD (Dr. Phil) from Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien. Her doctorate research brings together human spatial and social behaviour, agent-based modelling and workplace design. She has taught workshops and design studios in the UK, the US and the Netherlands, most recently as a senior teaching fellow at The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. Her research has been published in academic journals and proceedings. Her general interest lies in human-centric and user-oriented design approaches enabled by computational design methodologies informed by empirical data.

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17 November 2022 | 16:00 | Gözde Uyar & Åsmund Izaki

Flow: Agent Simulation Framework with Spatial Choice for Multilevel Buildings

Abstract

Simulations of users’ movement paths and activities assist architects in designing buildings that operate effectively and provide comfortable user experiences and natural wayfinding. Effective objective analysis and supporting visualisations allow stakeholders to efficiently assess and align priorities for intervention in the design of existing or new buildings. This seminar presents Flow, a framework that enables experts to construct agent simulations in multilevel buildings reflecting both strongly and loosely programmed behaviour. Agent modelling tools used in Space Syntax analysis have been based on either exploratory movement without explicit destinations, or predetermined movement flows between origins and destinations. The objective of the agent simulation framework presented here is to support the creation of simulations that show differences in activation, user experience and operational performances between design options, but where destination selection is influenced by attributes such as angular or metric distance and visibility. It includes Space Syntax metrics and evaluates three-dimensional configurations for spatial choice behaviour. 

The first case study shows how the framework can be used to simulate customer activities and movement paths inside and around a shopping mall. The second case study demonstrates the application of Flow simulation framework, to airside activities in an airport terminal extension project in North America. The agent simulation approach along with spatial analysis provided critical insights, thus informing the design process. The extended framework Flow enabled the simulation of complex itineraries of different user groups in a strong programme building. Outputs helped inform designers to enhance passenger experience by improving legibility and wayfinding early in the design process. Also, ideal locations for concessions were identified to increase benefit from footfall as well as to minimise travel time between gates and facilities. Though dealing with a specific case here, this process of evidence based-design demonstrates potential for applicability in the design of complex buildings in general.

Biographies

Gözde Uyar has a background in architecture and 10 years of experience working in design research and consultancy in the built environment. Working as an architect in Istanbul she developed interest in the use of evidence-based design technologies and pursued her career in London. She holds a degree of Master of Science in Space Syntax: Architecture and Cities from The Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL) where she developed in-depth knowledge and skills to analyse architectural and urban systems, and determine their roles in creating human-centric environments. 

As a senior consultant at Space Syntax Limited (2014-2018), she worked across sectors varying from building interiors to urban strategies and at various high-profile schemes both in the UK and worldwide. Her role at Superspace, Woods Bagot and at Urban Systems, ERA-co (2018-2022), involved using advanced spatial analytics to inform design processes to create sustainable spatial strategies. Building upon her previous experience using space syntax agent-based models, together with Asmund Izaki, she developed an extended simulation framework called Flow to bring an extended response to emerging design challenges in complex buildings and cities. During her career, she mentored and taught students visual representation of research, evidence-based design and agent-based modelling at various universities including UCL, RCA, Cambridge and The University of Sheffield. Currently, she is studying at RCA to explore creative techniques to integrate her spatial analytics background into architectural design projects. 

Åsmund Izaki has more than 15 years of experience in the field of architectural computation for understanding the behaviour and experience of people related to spatial conditions such as configuration, visibility and connectivity.  Coming from a traditional architectural background with an MArch from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, he extended his training with studies in computer science and art & technology, thus combining a broad set of thinking to bring value to the client and end users. Through the combination of R&D in practice and the dissemination of ideas through writing, he has been key in bringing architectural experiential thinking into the era of information technology, algorithms and data science. Most notably he was co-editor of the special issue on “Empathic Space” in Architectural Design (AD) together with Christian Derix, putting forth these ideas to a wider audience. 

Åsmund Izaki currently focuses on the research and development of new algorithms and analysis methods at Woods Bagot’s Design Technology group, where he together with the rest of the team develops innovative, agile tools that allow the architectural design teams to interrogate their design decisions in terms of affordances to the users and clients. In addition to this he leads the development of the bespoke agent simulation software Flow which allows a deep understanding and testing of user occupancy, movement, activity and decisions at an aggregate level before a design is built. 

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12 January 2023 | 16:00 | Yichang Sun

Constructing a Third Domain in Urban Diversity: The Socio-spatial Transformation of Inner-City Settlement of Nanjing c.1900-2020s.

Abstract

This research presents a study of Taiping South Road area, a neighbourhood with diverse land uses and social/economic activities in the inner-city of Nanjing, China, with one significant commercial street – Taiping South Road – crossing through. It examines the relationship between spatial transformation over time and shifting patterns of private-to-public in social/economic and everyday life during the 1900s-2020s. This research frames common space as a third domain between home and the public realm. It is closely aligned with the cultural tradition of the Chinese urban context, which considers such spaces as having a specific character in their own right. 

The study attempts to bridge the theoretical and methodological gaps between the "structural configuration" and "everyday life" concepts from the realm of urban studies. Two key questions are addressed in this research. Firstly, how common spaces can be analysed from an integrated social, spatial and temporal approach that combines qualitative description and quantitative measurement across the spatial scales. And secondly, how Nanjing's urban diversity emerged and transformed as the result of an interplay between broader spatial morphological structures and everyday practices over time. An anticipated outcome of the research is to examine whether diversified common spaces across spatial-temporal scales can boost urban adaptability and contribute to social, economic, and environmental sustainability. 

Building on the theories and methodologies of "encounter" in space syntax and urban morphology, an integrated research framework of street configuration, plot morphology, and housing spatial form (micromorphology) is proposed for this study. Based on extensive historical-archival research of Nanjing across time and the analysis of various types of common spaces in three main spatial levels – city, neighbourhood, and housing – "as one thing", the changing city structure and everyday life can be traced back, alongside a rethinking of the significance of "common space" in the urban context. 

Biography

Yichang Sun is a PhD student in the Space Syntax Laboratory at the UCL Bartlett School of Architecture. She has a continuous interest in urban form and society studies, particularly in relation to spatial cultures and everyday life. Before her PhD journey, Yichang studied architecture and urban design at North China University of Technology (2013-18), Politecnico di Milano (2015-16) and Southeast University (2018-21). With five-year experience in urban studies and design practice on urban morphology, micro-regeneration, community engagement and co-production, she has collaborated with diverse actors through "precise and modest" interventions grounded on Xiaoxihu Block, Nanjing. Currently, she also works as a postgraduate teaching assistant at the UCL Bartlett School of Architecture and Development Planning Unit for urban studies. Previous teaching assistant experience in the Transitional Morphologies Research Unit, a joint lab between Southeast University and Politecnico di Torino.

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19 January 2023 | 16:00 | Daniel Koch & Ann Legeby

Equal living environments: Universal design and (un)equal access from a syntactic perspective, Uppsala, Sweden.

Abstract 

Syntactic analyses focus on analysing space from a general perspective, where connections of ‘visibility and access’ are analysed through different geometrical abstractions. In universal design research, the point of origin is that what is ‘visible’ or ‘accessible’ is different for different people depending on for example age or disability. This paper addresses challenges in the way models are made, used and theorised in space syntax research as capturing or describing relations between people and environment, specifically from the perspective that if people are different, so are their respective ‘connections of access and visibility’, and potentially their subsequent patterns of centrality and accessibility. Such difference, as recognised in universal design research, may appear on both the local (molecular) and the global (molar) scale; i.e., the effects of accessibility difference can be on a local scale of whether a relative detour is needed or not, but also on global structures of centrality in a city or municipality as a whole. However, there is need for structured understanding of the ‘molar’ level, and the interrelation between scales. Following Gibson’s theory that affordances exist neither in the environment nor in species, but in the specific relation between them, this paper engages with how such differences can be empirically, methodologically and theoretically understood based on empirical research in the city of Uppsala, Sweden. This work utilises municipal data and input from disability rights organisations to explore the problem and presents important considerations for both research and practice as comes to inclusiveness in spatial analysis and accessibility. 

Biography

Daniel Koch is a Docent in Architecture and researcher at KTH School of Architecture, where he is also co-director of the cross-disciplinary Master’s Programme in Sustainable Urban Planning and Design. He has also worked as reseracher and/or teacher at for example the department of Architecture and Civil Engineering at Chalmers University of Technology and at the Stockholm Center for Fashion Studies. At the core of Daniel’s research work lies examination of relations between architectural space, social structures, and subjects of becoming on a wide range of scales, which has repeatedly engaged with challenges of difference and specificity in spatial analysis. Central to the investigations have been questions of modeling as an investigative and critical method for analysis, building towards a tentatively named research profile of “Critical Morphology”. Recent research, amongst other things, investigates socio-economic effects of urban developments over time in the Senseable Stockholm Lab, and engages with social, economic and cultural challenges of digitalization in rural areas in the context of global climate change and equality in a project in the small settlement Duved. Over the coming period, work will also return to closer studies of architecture. 

Ann Legeby, PhD and professor in Applied Urban Design at KTH, School of Architecture. The research concerns society-space relations and central for the research is to increase the understanding about the role of architecture in relation to social segregation and unequal living conditions including the conditions for everyday life. Urban analysis is central and methodologies and theories are developed how to analyse, model, and visualize urban form, defined by architecture and urban design, and how it relates to urban processes. Several of the research projects are conducted in close collaboration with public actors. Beside research, Ann is teaching urban design and planning at KTH and other universities. 

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16 February 2023 | 16:00 | Michal Gath-Morad

Linking cognition and architecture to design human-centred built environments.

Abstract

The rising complexity of built environments in the face of global urbanisation necessitates a deeper understanding of how architectural design decisions affect occupants’ cognition and behaviour.  At the same time, for behavioural findings to become actionable, it is necessary to integrate it into the fast-paced architectural design process to inform the design of human-centred environments while the design is still flexible. Michal's talk will demonstrate, through past and current research, how knowledge and methods from cognitive science can be used to achieve these goals.

The first part of the talk will showcase how the use of behavioural experiments in virtual reality and in real world settings can be used to quantify the impact of architectural features on a variety of cognitive functions such as wayfinding in multi-level buildings, and face-to-face interactions between caregivers in emergency medicine wards. The second part will exemplify how cognitive-agent modelling makes it possible to encapsulate the behavioural findings from the laboratory into a computational model that is integrated into the architectural representation of buildings, supporting the comparison of design alternatives for a range of cognitive or behavioural metrics. The third part of the lecture will demonstrate how methods from the field of Human-Computer Interaction can help us understand how architects design with or without knowledge from cognitive science to critically challenge the notion that such knowledge is at all relevant for architecture.  

The talk will conclude with a discussion of the limitations of the studies presented, with lessons learned from Michal's own experience of linking cognition and architecture, outlining key challenges as well as opportunities to inform the design of human-centred built environments with scientific evidence from cognitive science.

Biography

Michal Gath-Morad is a registered architect and cognitive scientist by training, leading her postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge (Behaviour and Building Performance group, Martin centre for Urban and Architectural studies, Department of Architecture) and at University College London (Space Syntax Laboratory, Bartlett school of Architecture). She holds a BArch and an MSc in architecture (Summa Cum Laude) from the Technion, and a PhD in cognitive science from ETH Zürich. Broadly speaking, her interdisciplinary research employs methods from cognitive science to tackle architectural design challenges for the generation of inclusive and legible built environments in the face of urban complexity. The three major themes of her past and current research are understanding how architecture affects cognition, translating behavioural findings to applied design insights and analysing how evidence affects architects, the design process and design outcomes. To link her research with architectural design praxis and pedagogy, Michal holds a visiting researcher position in the urban design team at Foster + Partners in London and is a lecturer at  ETH Zurich since 2019, where she leads a graduate course on evidence-based design in architecture.

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02 March 2023 | 16:00 | Siqi Chen

Exploring methodological approaches in a challenging environment: refugee children’s access to play in/around their refugee accommodations

Abstract

Being able to explore and play in quality open spaces is crucial for children, especially children with refugee backgrounds, since they provide children with the opportunity to practice and hone social, cognitive, emotional and physical skills. This presentation introduces systemic investigations of refugee children’s playspaces accessible possibilities in micro- (inside their accommodations) and meso-environments (around their accommodations), summarising from case and site studies in Berlin, Germany.  

The research has faced a few technical and social difficulties since it aimed to document comparable academic evidence of refugee children in transit periods from refugee facilities with temporary structures. It attempted to minimise accessibility and environmental measure gaps by linking refugee children’s environmental perceptions, spatial characteristics of refugee accommodation environments and the opportunities for their playing behaviours. However, limitations do exist. By broadly gathering qualitative and quantitative data, this research helps understand how refugee children perceived ‘the presentence of playspaces’ and ‘playspaces accessibility’ from architectural perspectives.  

The presentation will begin with the methodological qualitative and quantitative data collection through socio-spatial frameworks of refugee accommodations in Berlin; next, quantify and conceptualise the impact of refugee children’s perceptions on architectural investigations. And then to the technical attempts to systemically integrate perceived findings into the architectural representation of refugee facilities and their surrounding environments. The limitations of this research will be discussed at the end, after-action reviews from Siqi’s attempts at connecting specific group behaviour to architectural characteristics, summarising major challenges along with opportunities to inform perceived spatial evaluation and specific user behaviour-oriented design.

Biography

Dr Siqi Chen completed her PhD at Urban Design and Planning Unit (previously Urban Health Games), TU Darmstadt, 2021, where she investigated environmental attributes associated with transit-period refugee children’s physical activity in refugee accommodations and their surroundings from Berlin with both qualitative and quantitative approaches. Her doctoral dissertation was nominated for the 2023 Kurth-Ruths-prize in Germany, and she was also the keynote speaker of the 10th Child in the City World Conference. She has a continuous research interest in perceived spatial evaluation, interactive design and user behaviour-oriented design, primarily focusing on children, elders and minority groups. Broadly speaking, her interdisciplinary research employs understanding from cognitive science to tackle architectural design challenges of inclusive and legible built environments in the face of urban complexity for specific social groups. Aiming to collect and produce rare empirical evidence that could be introduced to the academic fields and make aware of the visibility of minority groups. Siqi is currently lecturing at the Shanghai Institute of Technology (SIT) in China. Her current research focuses on the playing behaviours and built environmental environments of multi-races and complex cultural backgrounds children from rural Tibet areas of China and children-centred environmental evaluation in children-friendly hospital design.

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04 May 2023 | 16:00 | Fánel Contreras

Schools Designs and Modernism: A Comparative Study of Latin American Schools of Architecture

Abstract

The first Latin American schools of architecture were purposely designed and built during the 1950s under the discussion and influence of Modern Movement ideas. This seminar presents an analysis of four schools of architecture in Latin American countries (Peru, Mexico, Venezuela and Brazil) and compares them with the Bauhaus School of Design (BSD) and the Chandigarh College of Architecture (CCA) as existing referents of Modernism. The main objective of this study is to identify the points of confluence between the perspectives of the Modern Movement and of each designer in their respective context, and how their ways of thinking influenced the design of Latin American schools built during this time in terms of spatial configuration, perception and discourse, looking to go beyond the formal properties traditionally discussed.

Biography

Fánel Contreras is a Peruvian architect and design researcher. She graduated from Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería (Lima) in 2011 and holds an MSc degree in Space Syntax, from The Bartlett School of Architecture (London). She has worked as an architect in health, educational, and mixed-use projects. She has won second place in the research category at the Peruvian Architecture Biennale in 2022, and two honourable mentions the first one in 2014 and with AYNI, a collaborative project in 2016. Fánel is currently teaching at the Facultad de Arquitectura y Artes, Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería in Lima, and a member of ‘Ht3x: Habitando territorios experimentales‘, a research group focused on applied research.

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11 May 2023 | 16:00 | Gustavo Maldonado Gil & Christina Lenart

Social Housing as an Integrated Component of a City? A Comparison of Projects in London and Vienna

Abstract

This research investigates how spatial attributes correspond to the public debate on a social housing project’s success or failure. London and Vienna are two cities with long, but very different histories of social housing. Social housing estates from both cities - serve as case studies with different public narratives on their failures and success. The history of social housing in London has shown how spatial segregation and “bad architecture” have been accused of being responsible for a social housing project’s failure in public discourse. Vienna’s social housing estates hardly had to deal with severe social problems, however, public debate on the success of social housing is mostly focusing on aspects of affordability rather than spatial or architectural qualities. In order to test the role of spatial integration and segregation on the performance of housing projects, a set of methods of urban and spatial analysis were chosen, developed and combined within this research, to describe and compare the spatial situation of projects to the city on various scales. This research tries to tackle the question of whether spatial integration and segregation in the urban fabric conform to the public narrative of a housing project and with the notion of whether being an integrated city component or not. This work opens further questions on what aspects should be considered for the good integration of social housing projects as a performing component within the urban fabric.

Biography

Gustavo Maldonado Gil is a data scientist, architect and digital business entrepreneur. He currently works as Global Product Manager for the company Rappi, carrying out spatial analysis and strategies for logistic operations in more than 300 Latin American cities. Also, in 2020, he founded the company i-DA which combines the use of big data and analysis with the planning of architectural and urban projects. He has published work on Placemaking in the Digital Media era and Constructing Sociospatial Maps from Instagram images at the 13th Space Syntax Symposium. He also participated in the European Parliament Buildings Conference carried out by the University College London with research work that combines studies of architecture, politics and technology, which will be part of the book "Parliament Buildings". His current interests are exploring the latest technology trends and data algorithms to improve life, business and people's experiences.

Christina Lenart studied architecture at the Academy of fine Arts Vienna and at KTH Stockholm. She holds an MSc in Advanced Architectural Studies from UCL. Christina worked for several years in architectural practices in Vienna and for the German magazine ARCH+ Journal for Architecture and Urbanism in Berlin. For the last few years she has been teaching and researching at the Technical University Vienna. In her work she focuses on the social, architectural and urban dimensions of housing. Currently, she is working as a freelance researcher, architectural designer and for a social organisation, where she is Housing Lead at the Department for Research and Innovation. She was guest editor for an issue of ARCH+ 244 Das Ende des Wohnbaus (als Typologie) 2021, which dealt with current developments of Viennese Housing and with the phenomena of new kinds of building typologies that are not housing, but a multi-purpose component of the city.

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18 May 2023 | 16:00 | Martin Fleischmann & Dani Arribas-Bel

The Emergent Structure of Urban Form and Function: A Data-Driven Overview of the British Landscape

Abstract

The internal structure of urban environments that compose individual cities is key to understanding the rules underpinning their genesis, development, and further evolution. Their growth and change follow piecemeal, local, bottom-up processes that, to be fully understood, require analytical methods following the same logic without imposing a priori classes or groups. In this paper, we use the concept of spatial signatures, a bottom-up data-driven classification of predominantly urban environments based on their form and function, as the basis for a deep dive into the composition of cities. Its application on the whole of Great Britain provides a unique combination of national scale and detail with spatial units derived from individual buildings and street segments. We use this classification to analyse the inherent regularity and emergence of spatial patterns in urban systems, unveiling unique insights into cities' built structures. The results provide a profound understanding of the spatial distribution of signature types within and outside cities, from their geographical distribution to co-occurrence and relationship between classes, we expose the unique, organic hierarchy of British cities. The findings illustrate the ability of spatial signatures to capture and delineate the organisation of space based on a rich description of its urban form and urban function, one that combines granular detail and national scale and opens new pathways for understanding how our cities are shaped and how to manage their future development.

Biography

Dr Martin Fleischmann is a member of the Urban and Regional Laboratory at the Charles University in Prague, and a fellow in the Geographic Data Science Lab at the University of Liverpool. He has a PhD in Architecture from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, where he focused on urban morphology and quantitative aspects characterisation of urban form. His research interest lies in urban morphology and geographic data science focusing on quantitative analysis and classification of urban form, remote sensing and AI, bringing the architectural aspects of the description of cities to geography and data science. While not doing the research, he writes open-source software, promotes open science and helps others with their data as a freelancer.

Dani Arribas-Bel is a Professor in Geographic Data Science at the University of Liverpool, and Deputy Programme Director for Urban Analytics at the Alan Turing Institute, where he is also an ESRC Fellow. He holds honorary positions at the University of Chicago's Center for Spatial Data Science, and the Center for Open Geographical Science of San Diego State University. Dani's research combines modern computation with new forms of data to shed light on the spatial structure of cities. His research is published in journals such as PLOS ONE, Demography, Geographical Analysis, or Environment and Planning (A/B/C), and he is also a member of the development team of PySAL, the Python library for spatial analysis. Dani currently serves as co-editor of the journal "Environment and Planning B - Urban Analytics & City Science”, where he co-founded the Urban Data/Code section, and the "Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A - Statistics in Society”

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01 June 2023 | 16:00 | Burcu H. Ozuduru

Intra-Urban Centrality Levels Through Street Networks: Evidence from Ankara’s Urban Growth

Abstract

Urban Planning Theory is looking for new models to explain new centre formations. Planners rely on comprehensive plans with strategic forecasts; however, due to the nonlinearity of interactions between people and places via the multi-modalities of mobility and communication innovations, planners must look at the allocations of a multitude of events in the urban system. The street network provides information for various opportunities and costs and overall, when a city’s centrality levels are examined at the intra-urban level, various levels of centralities and affiliated land use types can be detected. Identifying city centres and the urban structure of the 21st-century city has become more complex but using the tools offered by various analysis techniques proves to be helpful. In this study, the change in centrality levels of the capital city of Turkey, Ankara will be assessed using sDNA+.

Biography

Burcu H. Ozuduru is a Full Professor and Associate Dean at Gazi University's Faculty of Architecture in Ankara, Turkey. She obtained her PhD in City and Regional Planning from The Ohio State University's Knowlton School of Architecture in Columbus, OH, USA, in 2006. Prior to this, she completed her BCRP and MSc in Urban Design from the Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara, Turkey, in 2001. Her recent publication, "Associating street-network centrality with spontaneous and planned subcentres," was published in Urban Studies in July 2021. She was also recently awarded a grant by the Scientific Research Council of Turkey for her project, "The Relationship of Built Environments with Health Indicators and Quality of Life: A Community Participatory Model Proposal for Healthy Cities."

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08 June 2023 | 16:00 | Ilgi Toprak

Redlining Persistence in US Cities: Segregation Through the Lens of Urban Configuration

Abstract

Spatial disparities in the US are closely related to systemic inequality, as historically underprivileged communities were restricted to specific areas by government policy. This policy has significantly impacted segregation, but current income inequality and increased land value have intensified spatial disparities, resulting in segregation to persist.

Dr Toprak's previous study at SSS13 found that different US cities have unique configurations resulting in diverse integration and segregation forms, systemic exclusion, intentional self-segregation, or enclaving strategies of different racial and ethnic groups. Although the results were meaningful, the sample size needed to be increased to generalise findings. Her ongoing study allows the statistical investigation of more cities with different factors contributing to the persistence of redlining. In this research, she attempts to answer which factors contribute to redlining persistence by systematically examining segregation patterns across 15 US cities and investigating configurational, demographic, economic, and social factors that might contribute to segregation in these cities. Her research proposes a data-informed exploration and a regression model in three steps: (1) exploring spatial correlations of historical residential segregation patterns and urban configuration with street network analyses (NAIN and NACH) using data visualisations, (2) followed by a multivariate regression model that assesses the factors contributing to the persistence of residential segregation due to redlining in US cities, and finally (3) using feature selection to choose which factors help the model increase its statistical significance.

Biography

Dr Ilgi Toprak investigates social inequality, spatial segregation, and gentrification patterns in changing urban settings regarding racial and ethnic diversity. Her research addresses critical issues such as systemic racism, displacement, and other forms of exclusion in cities in the US and Turkey using various methods like urban data analytics, statistics, and space syntax. She holds a PhD in architecture about Urban Heterotopias from Istanbul Technical University, with a research period at TU Delft. She has 10 years of research and teaching experience at universities in Turkey and the Netherlands. Currently, she lives in Washington D.C. and is pursuing a certificate of Applied Urban Science and Informatics at NYU CUSP.

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More information

• Space Syntax: Architecture & Cities MSc/MRes at The Bartlett School of Architecture
• Find out more about the Space Syntax Laboratory
• Watch previous seminars on The Bartlett Vimeo Channel

Image: Co-Visibility analysis of an exemplary floor plan, conducted using Isovist 2.4.