ABSTRACT
Spacescape is today an established actor on the Swedish architectural and planning consultancy market offering a broad set of services closely related to but distinct from what architectural offices generally offer. Its origins are found in research in urban morphology at KTH School of Architecture in Stockholm, where Lars Marcus started the business after demands for practical application of the methodologies used in his PhD thesis in 2000, primarily from local municipalities around Stockholm. Originally this mainly constituted analytical techniques based in space syntax research, but the toolbox has grown extensively since then, most decisively after a PhD thesis by Alexander Ståhle in 2008, at what then had developed into the research group Spatial Analysis and Design (SAD) at KTH. The critical contribution here was the Place Syntax Tool (PST), which expanded the cognitively defined network analysis of space syntax by adding the possibility to load attraction data. The result was an unusual combination of accessibility analysis of street networks, as found for instance in transport science, and representations of the cognitive level of urban form. With these basic tools and, most importantly, the rather advanced theoretical foundations developed in architecture-based research concerning the relation between space and society, from which the analytical techniques spring, a concise set of urban design services was developed. This constituted the basis for an expanded partnership of the firm in 2006 between Marcus, Ståhle and Tobias Nordström, who remain the owners of Spacescape. Under the leadership of Alexander Ståhle, the company has since experienced rapid growth when it comes to services offered – integrated from a broad array of research directions and knowledge fields – and amount of employees. The Spacescape team today regularly employs eight to ten skilled planners and architects. The company's clients are found in the public sector, such as municipalities and government authorities, but also include building companies and real-estate developers from the private sector.
