In my previous post, I have mentioned that sustainability comprises of a lot of aspects, one of them is cultural. But I believe this field is very vague because most of the time as Architects we think of Form and Functions in corresponding to the site and hence this will indirectly influence the user’s preference, or, the way they interact. It’s hard to come out with the idea of the perfect form that embeds technology and aesthetic value, but it is even harder to preserve the way people communicate, through the different level of space we have created. Whether it’s a one foot tall level difference or a flight of stair or a void space, this gives people impression on communication.
A Qualitative Judgement that could be deemed subjective and reflective of an individual’s experience either as an actor or spectator within space. Sennett 1976
The design of space, however, can further define and substantiated by using Configurational Analysis to quantify aspects of the social and spatial pattern. The basic strategy in configurational studies is to study the plans of a particular typology and the identification of invariants that are then considered in relation to the function of the space.
Along with this blog post are some examples from some precedence studies of a book. The analysis takes the form of justified access graphs that align the spaces up the page in order to demonstrate how far away spaces are in relation to the starting point of analysis.
This allows us to analyze the permeability of the building and be a spatial measure of how integrated or segregated a particular space is within a building. A better permeability suggests a lower mean value of integration value. Tree like formation has the minimum number of connections to join the spaces into a continuous configuration and usually embody the most segregated form.
The shallower the Graph, the more integrated, and the more permeable the spatial configuration, the lower the access mean. On the other hand, The deeper the graph, the more segregated , the higher the access mean. The access mean indirectly suggested the overall building social spaces friendliness. On the other hand, building that suggest more privacy will bring a higher value of access means then.
Actually, in a larger context, Spatial Analysis is no stranger to other terms too. It’s widely used in many other areas such as biology, town planning geographical studies. As described in Wiki:
Spatial analysis or spatial statistics includes any of the formal techniques which study entities using their topological, geometric, or geographic properties. The phrase properly refers to a variety of techniques, many still in their early development, using different analytic approaches and applied in fields as diverse as astronomy, with its studies of the placement of galaxies in the cosmos, to chip fabrication engineering, with its use of ‘place and route’ algorithms to build complex wiring structures. The phrase is often used in a more restricted sense to describe techniques applied to structures at the human scale, most notably in the analysis of geographic data. The phrase is even sometimes used to refer to a specific technique in a single area of research, for example, to describe geostatistics.
