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Our expertise lies in developing robust methods of analysis for studying the built environment as a physical entity.
Space Syntax Research and Publications
On this page: Selected publications / Research projects
Our work combines the creation of software for spatial network analysis with quantifiable data on observed function and social network analysis so that metric properties of space can be analysed in relation to social and economic measures. Space syntax methods can predict the effects of spatial interventions on aspects of social, organisational and economic performance in existing built environments and new urban areas.
Selected publications
Space and Society in Buildings
- Dr Sam Griffiths
- Griffiths, Sam (2021 in press). Writing the materiality of the past: cities and the architectural topography of historical imagination. London; New York: Routledge.
- Griffiths, Sam & Laura Vaughan (2020). 'Mapping spatial cultures: contributions of space syntax to research in the urban history of the nineteenth-century city.' Urban History 47.3: 488-511.
- Griffiths, Sam & Alexander Von Lünen (2016). Spatial cultures: Towards a new social morphology of cities past and present. doi:10.4324/9781315610269
- Professor Kayvan Karimi
- Shen, Y., & Karimi, K. (2018). Urban evolution as a spatio-functional interaction process: the case of central Shanghai. Journal of Urban Design. doi:10.1080/13574809.2017.1337496
- Ruiz-Apilánez, B., Karimi, K., García-Camacha, I., & Martín, R. (2017). 'Shared space streets: design, user perception and performance.' URBAN DESIGN International. doi:10.1057/s41289-016-0036-2
- Karimi, K. (2017). 'Space syntax: consolidation and transformation of an urban research field.' Journal of Urban Design, 23 (1), 1-4. doi:10.1080/13574809.2018.1403177
- Professor Sophia Psarra
- Psarra, S. (2019). The Production Sites of Architecture. Routledge.
- Psarra, S. (2018). The Venice Variations. UCL Press. doi:10.14324/111.9781787352391
- Psarra, S. (2009). Architecture and narrative-the formation of space and cultural meaning. Routledge.
- Professor Kerstin Sailer
- Pachilova, R., & Sailer, K. (2020). 'Providing care quality by design: a new measure to assess hospital ward layouts'. The Journal of Architecture, 25 (2), 186-202. doi:10.1080/13602365.2020.1733802
- Sailer, K. (2018). 'Corridors, classrooms, classification – The impact of school layout on pedagogy and social behaviours.' In H. M. Tse, H. Daniels, A. Stables, S. Cox (Eds.), Designing buildings for the future of schooling: Contemporary visions for education (pp. 87-111). Routledge.
- Sailer, K., & McCulloh, I. (2012). 'Social networks and spatial configuration-How office layouts drive social interaction.' Social Networks, 34 (1), 47-58. doi:10.1016/j.socnet.2011.05.005
- Professor Laura Vaughan
- Vaughan, L. (2018). Mapping Society: The Spatial Dimensions of Social Cartography. London: UCL Press.
- Vaughan, L., Ed. (2015). Suburban Urbanities: Suburbs and the Life of the High Street. London: UCL Press. doi:10.14324/111.9781910634134
- Vaughan, L., Ed. (2007) 'The spatial syntax of urban segregation’ Progress in Planning 67 (3), 199-294
Architectural Computation, Machine Intelligence and Virtual Reality - Extended Reality in Architecture
- Professor Ava Fatah gen Schieck
- Hamed S. Alavi, Elizabeth F. Churchill, Mikael Wiberg, Denis Lalanne, Peter Dalsgaard, Ava Fatah gen Schieck, and Yvonne Rogers. (2019). 'Introduction to Human-Building Interaction (HBI): Interfacing HCI with Architecture and Urban Design.' ACM TOCHI Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 26, 2, Article 6 (2019), 10 pages. doi:10.1145/3309714
- Afonso, A., & Fatah gen. Schieck, A. (2019). 'Play in the smart city context: exploring interactional, bodily, social and spatial aspects of situated media interfaces.' Behaviour & Information Technology. doi:10.1080/0144929X.2019.1693630
- Fatah gen Schieck, A. (2009). 'Towards an integrated architectural media space: the urban screen as a socialising platform.' In S. McQuire, M. Martin, & S. Niederer (Eds.), Urban Screens Reader, 243-260. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures.
- Professor Sean Hanna
- Hanna, S. (2020). 'Data in Design Practice.' In R. Sheil, S. Hanna, M. Ramsgaard Thomsen, M. Tamke (Eds.), Design Transactions: Rethinking Information Modelling for a New Material Age. UCL Press.
- Hanna, S. (2020). 'Random walks in urban graphs: A minimal model of movement.' Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, 0, 1-15. doi:10.1177/2399808320946766
- Zhuang, X., & Hanna, S. (2020). 'Space Frame Optimisation with Spectral Clustering.' International Journal of Machine Learning and Computing, 10 (4), 507-512. doi:10.18178/ijmlc.2020.10.4.965
- Professor Alan Penn
- Charalambous, E., Hanna, S., & Penn, A. (2021). 'Aha! I know where I am: the contribution of visuospatial cues to reorientation in urban environments.' Spatial Cognition and Computation. doi:10.1080/13875868.2020.1865359
- Engin, Z., van Dijk, J., Lan, T., Longley, P. A., Treleaven, P., Batty, M., & Penn, A. (2019). 'Data-driven urban management: Mapping the landscape.' Journal of Urban Management. doi:10.1016/j.jum.2019.12.001
- Penn, A. R., Pinter-Wollman, N., Theraulaz, G., & Fiore, S. M. (2018). 'Interdisciplinary approaches for uncovering the impacts of architecture on collective behaviour.' Philosophical Transactions B: Biological Sciences. doi:10.1098/rstb.2017.0232
- Dr Tasos Varoudis
- Varoudis T., Penn A., (2020) 'Spectral Clustering and Integration: The inner dynamics of computational geometry and spatial morphology', Formal Methods in Architecture, Advances in Science, Technology & Innovation, Sara Eloy, David Leite Viana, Franklim Morais, Jorge Vieira Vaz (Eds), Springer.
- Varoudis T., Swenson A., Kirkton S. and Waters J., (2018) Exploring nest structures of acorn dwelling ants with X-ray microtomography and surface-based three-dimensional visibility graph analysis. 373. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.
- Varoudis T., Penn A., (2015), ‘Visibility, Accessibility and Beyond: Next Generation Visibility Graph Analysis’, In K. Karimi, L. Vaughan, K. Sailer, G. Palaiologou, & T. Bolton (Eds.), The Proceedings of the 10th International Space Syntax Symposium. London, UK.
Research projects
Current research
- Contested Cities Revisited
- Delineating Historic Urban Landscapes
- Feed it Forward—Evidence-Based Design for Healthy and Habitable Workspaces
- Flexible Spaces and Changing Office Configurations
- Historic Urban Landscapes
- Mediated Spatial Narrative: AR in Whitechapel
- Paths of Resistant Pathogens
- Planning and Evaluation Methodologies for Mental Healthcare Buildings
- Refugee Cities: the Actual Spaces of Migration
- Screens in the Wild: Exploring the Potential of Networked Urban Screens for Communities and Culture
- Social Invisibility of Mental Health Facilities
- Spatialisation of the Immigration Flows
- Street Mobility and Network Accessibility
- TWIN2EXPAND
- UCL Depthmap: visual and spatial network analysis software
- Urban Dynamics Lab (The UK Regions Digital Research Facility)
- Visualizing inequality in community networks to enhance participatory planning
- Whose Right to the (Smart) City?
Previous research
- ENFOLDing: Explaining, Modelling and Forecasting Global Dynamics
- Public Led Co-production of Heritage
- VisAge: Augmented Reality for Cultural Heritage
- Spatial Dynamics of the London Furniture Industry
- Way-finding Signals for Somers Town Cycle to School Network
- Knowledge Transfer Partnership: Big Data in the Office
- Augmented Urban Reality
- Three Dimensional Real-Time Computer Based Space Syntax Analysis
- Adaptable Suburbs: a study of the relationship between networks of human activity and the changing form of urban and suburban centres through time
- Communication Patterns in Outpatient Clinics
- SocioBuildings
- City History and Multi-Scale Spatial Masterplanning
- The Body as Interface
- Green UCL: Performative Performance - Visualisation of heat loss data in buildings & big projection in real scale on the portico to create awareness of environmental issues.
- Architecture and Narrative: The Formation of Space and Cultural Meaning
- Detroit - The Fall of the Public Realm: The Street Network and its Social and Economic Dimensions from 1796 to the Present
- Mapping the East End 'Labyrinth'
- Rapid Simulation of Complex Form and Material
- Cityware: urban design and pervasive systems
- SCREAM: Media screens as a medium for communication
- Urban Buzz: Building Sustainable Communities
- E-ArchiDoct: Virtual Campus on post-master Studies in Architecture
- Arts & the Brain - Spectacles of the Mind
- Vivacity: Urban sustainability for the twenty-four hour city: development of design-making tools & resources
- Towards Successful Suburban Town Centres: A study of the relationship between morphology, sociability, economics and accessibility
- Space and exclusion: the relationship between physical segregation and economic marginalisation in the urban environment
- Designing for the 21st century: understanding and supporting group creativity in design
- Augmented Round Table for Architecture and Urban Planning
- EQUAL: Configuration and Design in Caring Environments
- The Housing and Support Needs of Younger People with Impaired Vision
- RACMIT: Minimising the impact of refurbishment on customer movement
- Housing Support and Care Needs of Older Visually Impaired People
- Ecomorphic design of environments
- EQUAL: Profiling the Housing Stock for Older People: From Domesticity to Caring
- RADICAL: Research agendas developed in creative arts labs
- Algorithmic definition of axial lines
Platform Grants
- Platform grant: space, technologies and the design of the built environment
- Platform grant: space, time and interaction: integrating spatial and temporal
- Platform grant: configuration, attraction and emergence: effects of space pattern on emergent behaviour
Other Projects
- Asialink
- EVAS pedestrian modelling software
- Pedestrian modelling with spatially-aware agents
- VIRCON: The Virtual Construction Site
- An immersive VR 'cave' for manipulation, visualisation & auralisation for applications in design, medicine & computer science
- Panoramic photo to 3D model
- Stilton: 3d model from 2d sketch