Space Syntax Lab Seminars 2025-26

Concealing Reproductive Tasks: An Inequality Genotype in Middle-Income Housing in Mexico

Social behaviour is reflected in spatial configurations. Traditionally, reproductive work and caregiving tasks have been gendered, with women often bearing a disproportionate share and these responsibilities frequently going unnoticed. With the rise of middle-income housing in Mexico, an important question arises: how do these housing layouts support, or hinder, equitable sharing of reproductive and care tasks, particularly in kitchens and laundry areas? 

To investigate this, the paper focuses on five Mexican cities known for significant middle-income housing production (Guadalajara, Mexico City, Monterrey, Querétaro and Toluca) and selects 25 case studies, consisting of five model homes from each city. Applying space syntax and the justified plan graphs, the paper analyses these homes both mathematically and graphically to map spatial inequalities. The findings reveal that laundry areas are poorly integrated, similar to bathrooms, whereas public and private spaces meet in the kitchen, which may enable more equitable domestic interactions and a fairer distribution of household responsibilities. 

Speakers

Dr Lucía Elizondo Jiménez is a Professor at the Tecnológico de Monterrey, where she has taught since 2002. She holds a PhD in Humanistic Studies and a degree in Architecture from the Tecnológico de Monterrey, as well as a Master’s in Design Studies from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. She is a member of the Sustainable Territorial Development Research Group, and her research focuses on housing appropriation and self-production. Her work has been presented at academic forums in Mexico and abroad and published in international journals. She serves on the boards of Cómo Vamos NL and the Sustainable Development Commission of Consejo Nuevo León, and she received the National Housing Award for Research from Mexico’s Secretariat of Territorial and Urban Development (SEDATU).

Dr Ruben Garnica-Monroy is an Associate Professor at the School of Architecture, Art and Design of the Tecnológico de Monterrey. He holds a PhD in Urban and Environmental Studies from El Colegio de México and an MSc in the Built Environment: Advanced Architectural Studies from University College London (1997). He studies urban form and how it affects inhabitants in aspects such as mobility, land-use patterns and health. His approach is characterised by mixed methodologies, including modelling and analysis using space syntax. He has received funding from national and international institutions: the IBM Faculty Award from IBM's Global University Programs (2015); the Newton Mobility Fund from the British Academy (2015); CONACYT – Convocatoria 2015 Problemas Nacionales (2017–2020); the CITRIS Seed Fund Program (UC Berkeley) – Tecnológico de Monterrey (2019); the Border 2020 Program (US EPA), in coordination with the North American Development Bank (2020–2021); and the Ruta Azul Challenge by Tecnológico de Monterrey (2024). 

Dr Lucía Martín López is an Associate Professor in the Department of Architectural Graphic Expression at Rey Juan Carlos University. She holds a PhD in Architecture from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and specialises in development cooperation for human settlements in the Global South. She coordinates the PENT(H)A research group, which explores emerging processes and new techniques at the intersection of history and architecture. She previously taught at several Mexican universities for ten years and has published extensively on housing design in Latin America and Europe. Her research was recognised with the Research Article Award at the 14th Spanish Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism (2016–2017).

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Evaluating Graph Structure: The Need for a New Measure of Quantitative Spatial Description

Current space syntax theory lacks quantitative methods for comparing the graph structures underlying spatial configurations at both building and urban scales. In his final work, presented at the 12th Space Syntax Symposium (2019), Bill Hillier addressed this gap by classifying four theoretical structure types and arguing that comparisons of these types, along with their associated functional effects, could provide a meaningful way to evaluate how spatial layout influences social functioning. His aim was to establish a more testable basis for space syntax theory, enabling its broader application across design and planning contexts as a scientific approach. 

Building on this foundation, the present research develops a framework for quantitatively classifying and comparing graph structures at the building scale, while also examining how local spatial changes affect global structure. Specifically, the study revisits Hillier’s concepts of traversability and mean local choice, developing measures to evaluate these properties across the four structure types. These measures allow real-world cases to be quantitatively compared against theoretical structures, providing a basis for interpreting their potential functional effects as well as the semantic meanings embedded in configuration. Ultimately, the research redefines the four structure types as four fundamental syntactic rules for generating configuration, each carrying a distinctive meaning, which can be quantitatively differentiated through variations in structural property values. 

Speaker

Chenyang Li is an EPSRC-funded PhD candidate at the Space Syntax Laboratory, UCL. His research focuses on the spatial types and structures of complex public buildings, with particular emphasis on museums and art galleries. He is currently a postgraduate teaching assistant for the MSc/MRes Space Syntax: Architecture & Cities programme and the MPhil/PhD Architectural Space & Computation programme. Before joining The Bartlett, Chenyang worked as an architect at Hunan Architectural Design Institute and was a guest lecturer at Hunan University and Changsha University of Science and Technology for Space Syntax workshops.

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Stress and Streets: How Street Networks are Associated with Stress-related Brain Activity? 

Rapid urbanisation has intensified concerns about how city environments shape mental health, particularly stress vulnerability. While previous research has highlighted the roles of green space and built form, the influence of street networks remains under-explored. This lecture presents findings from our cross-disciplinary study Stress and Streets, which integrates Space Syntax analysis of street configurations with fMRI evidence of stress-related brain activity. We examined 42 Berlin residents who underwent a standardised social stress task inside an MRI scanner, validated through cortisol levels, heart rate, and subjective ratings. Street network characteristics—including global and local integration, connectivity, and normalised angular choice—were computed within a 1,500-metre radius of participants’ homes. 

Results show that higher neighbourhood-level integration, indicating more accessible and well-connected street layouts, was associated with lower activation in stress-responsive brain regions such as the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, insula, and thalamus, all part of the salience network involved in detecting threats. This suggests that living in more integrated street networks may buffer neural reactivity to acute stress. No associations were found at the point-address scale or for connectivity and angular choice. The study demonstrates how urban morphology can be quantified and linked to neural stress processing, providing a novel methodological bridge between urban design, neuroscience, and public health. Implications include rethinking street planning not only for mobility and sustainability but also as a pathway to support community resilience and mental well-being. 

Speaker

Dr Gu is a postdoctoral researcher at the Chair of Urban Design and Planning, Department of Architecture, TU Darmstadt. Her research focuses on healthy urban design, with particular interest in how macro-scale design factors and ground-level interventions shape community health and well-being. Her work has been published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology and Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science. Her current research investigates design strategies for urban public spaces as mental health–supportive resources, aiming to inform evidence-based guidelines for practice. 

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Second-Generation VGA: Area-Weighted Overlap for Better Movement Prediction

Traditional Visibility Graph Analysis (VGA) has long been a cornerstone of space syntax, yet its reliance on binary co-visibility limits its ability to fully capture how people see, understand and move through space. This talk introduces Second-Generation VGA — a major step forward that replaces simple binary visibility with area-weighted isovist overlap. Using custom-built software (Blink), we explore two new measures: symmetric overlap, which treats visibility between locations equally, and asymmetric overlap, which incorporates direction and transitional perception into the model. These refinements enable VGA to represent spatial experience more realistically, capturing subtle visual cues that influence movement. 

Our case study in Barnsbury, London, compares these weighted measures against conventional VGA and observed pedestrian movement, and the results are striking: both symmetric and asymmetric overlaps produce significantly stronger correlations with real-world activity, with asymmetric overlap providing the most accurate predictions to date. By integrating perceptual weighting into VGA, this approach bridges the gap between spatial configuration and human behaviour; it not only boosts predictive power but also opens new opportunities for modelling urban movement with greater realism and precision. This work was first presented at SSS14 and has since been extended in a journal article published in Archnet-IJAR: International Journal of Architectural Research, and the seminar will also introduce OmniVista 25, an online, ultra-fast, web-based VGA analysis tool developed at Syntax North. 

Speaker

Dr Nick Dalton is an Associate Professor of Computing at Northumbria University. His research has significantly advanced the field of space syntax. He contributed to the development of early analytical tools, including Axman, and played a key role in the methodological shift from axial analysis to angular and segment-based approaches. His work integrates computational methods with architectural theory, enabling more precise modelling of urban movement and spatial networks. Dalton works at the intersection of architecture and computing, developing algorithms and software that bridge disciplinary boundaries and extend the analytical capabilities of space syntax research. 

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