Includes index.

List of figures xi --
Acknowledgements xix --
1 Architecture and spatial culture: an outline --
What makes a conversation between architect and client possible? 1 --
Spatial culture between building types and built forms 3 --
The stuff of spatial culture 5 --
Architectural agency in spatial culture 7 --
Spatial culture as a human imperative 8 --
Organization of this book 9 --
2 A definition of spatial culture --
The arrangement of things in space in everyday life 12 --
Space as a cultural medium 13 --
Space as historically contingent 16 --
Studies in the culture of space use and the design of space 19 --
Spatial culture: a working definition 28 --
The underpinnings of spatial culture 29 --
The function of spatial culture 34 --
3 On the pedagogical functions of the city: a morphology of adolescence in Athens, 1967-1973 41 --
The city as pedagogic device 41 --
Remembering an urban morphology of adolescence 43 --
Geography 56 --
Society 63 --
Social networks 66 --
Search space 67 --
Spatial codes and pedagogies 69 --
Antecedents 72 --
Agency in and agency over the city 75 --
4 Space designed. Patterns of architectural education, 1973-1983 79 --
What kinds of imagination can design entail? 79 --
School of architecture 81 --
Bill Hillier and the development of a socio-spatial imagination 84 --
The National Theatre 91 --
The Natural History Museum 100 --
Marquess Road 112 --
Back to architectural design: the distinction between design concerns and programmes of building use 121 --
What is at the core of architectural knowledge? 126 --
Composition between formal order and functionality 127 --
Bringing the animated intelligibility of buildings into theoretical and analytical focus 130 --
Spatial culture, architecture, and the socio-spatial imagination 134 --
5 Modalities of spatial culture and the role of design 142 --
Situational codes 142 --
Distributive and correlative situational codes 143 --
Syntactic frameworks 154 --
Spaces of cooperation 154 --
Ways of seeing and their layouts 161 --
Design formulation and the socio-spatial imagination 172 --
Design and the evolution of spatial culture 178 --
6 Descriptions of space 184 --
Descriptions 184 --
The languages of descriptions 187 --
Descriptions of the social structuration of space 191 --
Descriptions of human affordances from the point of view of the situated subject 204 --
Proto mathematical formalization 210 --
Description, architectural research, and the provisional status of working design typologies 213 --
7 Rich descriptions and correlative codes 218 --
Rich descriptions 218 --
Are rich descriptions too much trouble? 222 --
Rich descriptions as aesthetic experience 226 --
The value of architecture through the prism of correlative codes 230 --
A reasoned glossary of technical terms and measures in Space Syntax 233 --
Names Index 239 --
Subject Index 245 --

"Built space supports our daily habits and our membership of communities, organizations, institutions, or social formations. Architecture and Spatial Culture argues that architecture matters because it makes the settings of our life intelligible, so that we can sustain or creatively transform them. As technological and social innovations allow us to overcome spatial constraints to communication, cooperation, and exchange, so the architecture of embodied experience reflects independent cultural choices and human values. The analysis of a wealth of examples, from urban environments to workplaces and museums, shows that built space functions pedagogically, inducing us to specific ways of seeing, understanding, and feeling, and supporting distinct patterns of cooperation and life in common. Architecture and Spatial Culture is about the principles that underpin the design and inhabitation of space. It also serves as an introduction to Space Syntax, a descriptive theory used to model the human functions of layouts. Thus, it addresses architects, students of architecture and all those working in disciples that engage the design of the built environment and its social effects"--