ABSTRACT
Many architecture and urban design courses around the world now provide an elementary education in space syntax as part of their core curricula. This number is set to increase further now that the dedicated space syntax software package Depthmap (Turner 2011) has become open source.1 Yet while there is a general acceptance among urban designers that there is a legitimate role for empirical study in providing a knowledge-base, the relationship between research and design remains problematic. Space syntax specialists have become accustomed to handling practitioner questions along the lines of ‘what can space syntax do for me?’ In response,
one is usually required to address two principal concerns: firstly, that space syntax aspires to replace design creativity with crude quantification and secondly, that acknowledging space syntax is somehow to preclude engagement with other perspectives – not least because to the non-specialist its methodology can seem rather esoteric. The starting point of this chapter is to regard such concerns as entirely legitimate but to suggest that a fuller engagement with the theoretical principles of space syntax reveals the method to be more open-ended (and open-minded) with regard to its contribution to the design process than might be assumed from a passing acquaintance.
