Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science

This paper shows that a wall representation, W_n, uniquely defines a geometrically meaningful relation between any two spaces contained in it. The set of such relations is called an orthogonal structure; it is realized by any T-plan G _n belonging to C(W _n ).

Feasibility studies of various architectural projects lead to an analysis of planar configurations possessing a maximal number of adjacent-relations. This work extends current understanding of the properties of such configurations and describes a method for their creation. In practice, only those figures which meet the preconditions and expectations (with respect to adjacency-relations) are useful. In conclusion, a way of constructing these configurations is shown and the maximal number of different forms is established.

It is argued that acknowledgement of complexity is followed by feelings of helplessness which generate three distinct policymaking styles. These three, labelled analytical abdication, analytical alchemy, and analytical addiction, are outlined in terms of their logical bases, strengths, and weaknesses.

A natural tendency for the emphasis of fashion to oscillate between all three, in order to speed progress towards greater understanding, is demonstrated, and its inhibition by policymakers' general intolerance towards work based on viewpoints radically different from their own is criticised. More tolerance towards useful features of each approach is thus suggested as the best tactic against the growing complexity problem.

There are many methods and techniques available to environmental designers to obtain and use information on spatial behavior, attitudes, preferences, opinions, and so on. Among them are rating-scale techniques. This paper discusses these from a particular theoretical orientation and covers the utility, concept, and an evaluation of rating scales. Three case studies are described to illustrate the application and usefulness of the graphic rating-scale technique to environmental designers.

One mathematical correspondence to the partitioning of the plane is a weighted plane graph (WPG). This paper first focuses on the systematic generation of WPGs, in a fashion similar to crystal growth. During this process, the WPGs are represented by adjacency matrices. We, thus, present a method for embedding the WPG in the plane, given its adjacency matrix. These graphs can, then, be mapped into floor plans. The common practice here is the use of the ‘geometric dual’ of a WPG. We propose, instead, the use of the ‘pseudogeometric dual’ of a WPG directly to translate (part of) a design brief into alternative spatial layouts. Also discussed is the ability to create courtyards and/or circulation spaces given a specific WPG, without increasing the size of the problem.

Architectural plans whose walls lie along two perpendicular directions are represented by rectangular shapes. The rectangular shapes are classified according to the types of endpoints and the intersection of their component maximal lines. Shape grammars are used to construct members of the classes. The latter part of the paper (sections 5–10) examines the incidence structures among the maximal lines and regions in trivalent rectangular shapes. These are represented by planar maps. First, the maximal line adjacency is considered, followed by two successive ornamentations: the region-maximal line incidence and the oriented region-maximal incidence. Finally, the region adjacency is considered, and its relation to the other incidence structures examined. In each case the incidence structures are characterized.

The definitions pertaining to the shape grammar formalism are developed in detail.

In this paper, we take a whirlwind tour through the shape grammar formalism, and the definitions and ideas on which it is based. The formal machinery for the algorithmic definition of languages of two- and three-dimensional spatial designs is thus established.

This paper is a commentary on some relationships between social science and design theory, issues which have been raised in recent books including Architecture and its Interpretation (Bonta, 1979) and Signs, Symbols, and Architecture (Broadbent et al, 1980). It is argued that the present relationships are largely unsatisfactory. First, theory—such as semiology—is borrowed from other disciplines such as linguistics in a manner which does not recognise design as a social product. Second, the theory ‘fetishises’ design: elevating it as a series of cult objects rather than as commodities. A more fruitful approach, would be to locate design theory within social science. More specifically, it is suggested that design should be reconceptualised as the interaction between ideology and the production processes. This leads to a social theory of (rather than for) design.