Locating 'everyday' heritage: a space-syntactic archaeology of place

This publication is from the Bartlett School of Architecture.

Author

• Sam Griffiths | Associate Professor in Spatial Cultures, Space Syntax Laboratory, the Bartlett School of Architecture 

About

This chapter is published in Advanced Research and Design Tools for Architectural Heritage: Unforeseen Paths, edited by Stefania Stellacci, Danilo Giglitto and Chiara Piccoli (Routledge, 2024), an outcome of the Unforeseen Paths project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 820323).

The chapter – ‘Locating everyday heritage in 20th-century residential developments on the sites of demolished English country houses’ – deploys the concepts and methods of space syntax to examine the spatial morphology of suburban developments built on the sites of six country-house estates demolished in the 20th century.

Configurational analysis of the street networks of these developments suggests that historical patterns of space were not necessarily erased by urbanisation but could be preserved within larger-scale structures of urban space.

The research explores how spatial morphology can serve to anchor the heritage of local communities, even in the absence of heritage objects as traditionally conceived. It contributes to a growing body of research in syntax heritage urbanism that challenges conventional definitions of ‘destination heritage’ in favour of a more holistic assessment of historic urban landscapes as sources of community identity.

Further reading

• Read the chapter
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