Cities as emergent models: the morphological logic of Manhattan and Barcelona

This paper is set to unveil several particulars about the logic embedded in the diachronic model of city growth and the rules which govern the emergence of urban spaces. The paper outlines an attempt to detect and define the generative rules of a growing urban structure by means of evaluation techniques. The initial approach in this regards will be to study the evolution of existing urban regions or cities which in our case are Manhattan and Barcelona and investigate the rules and causes of their emergence and growth. The paper will concentrate on the spatial aspect of the generative rules and investigate their behaviour and dimensionality. Several Space Syntax evaluation methods will be implemented to capture the change of spatial configurations within the growing urban structures. In addition, certain spatial elements will be isolated and tested aiming to illustrate their influence on the main spatial structures. Both urban regions were found to be emergent products of a bottom up organic growth mostly distinguished in the vicinities of the first settlements. Despite the imposition of a uniform grid on both cities in later stages of their development these cities managed to deform the regularity in the preplanned grid in an emergent manner to end up with an efficient model embodied in their current spatial arrangement. The paper reveals several consistencies in the spatial morphology of both urban regions and provides explanation of these regularities in an approach to extract the underlying rules which contributed to the growth optimization process

Discursive and Non-Discursive Design Processes

This research study investigates the hypothesis that Space Syntax plays a role in enhancing architectural design as a knowledge-based process by bringing the nondiscursive design process onto a discursive level, and by making explicit the logic of processing, evaluating, and reasoning about design. In order to establish an evidencebased argument for this hypothesis the study will scrutinize the performances and outcomes of architects solving a well-defined problem. The paper constructs the study on a literature background exploring the different theories which were concerned with the analysis and evaluation of design processes and outcomes. The analysis of design processes was investigated on micro and macro scales and the evaluation of solutions was considered in terms of spatial configurations and the social organization embodied in space. The research then goes on to apply some of these analytical studies to a set of design tasks made by architects who have a background in Space Syntax theory, and architects with other architectural backgrounds. The question then turns to the influence of Space Syntax theory on the strategies and cognitive actions of the design processes and the observational study will attempt to prove whether the knowledge of Space Syntax can have a positive effect on architects during their design process, taking into consideration that Space Syntax, as a morphic language, can render the non-discursive discursive of architecture. In the following step the design solutions are evaluated in terms of qualities regarding social organization, and in terms of quantities measuring the values of their spatial configurations. The analysis of the design processes and outcomes will show differences between the two groups of architects, in addition to some individual differences between the architects. Thus this research proves that the knowledge of space syntax may partially enhance the productivity of design process by making it more explicit

Virtual Communities and Patterns of Social Interactions in ‘Tech City’

The impact of social media and Web 2.0 on socioeconomic behaviour in the physical space of the built environment had recently become a matter of intense debate in social sciences and human geography. This paper examines the relationship between the configurations of urban space from the perspective of 'space syntax' theory by Hillier and Hanson (1984) and the configurations of social networks in Twitter, whilst focusing on the technology start-up cluster in 'Tech City' London. Where there has been arguments made for a strong correlation between twitter ties in businesses and physical distance, this research is focused on the borough scale aiming to outline a relationship between the configurations of streets and the virtual and socioeconomic attributes of start-up businesses. The paper reports a moderate relationship between indices of centrality in twitter network and its correspondent measure in street networks. In addition, the research yields global and temporal patterns of relationships with land uses and land values. The paper concludes by reflecting on how the configurations of twitter Tech-City community are present in the physical medium, where short and long links define the local and global part-whole relationship between Tech-City and other communities

Teaching principles of network and agent-based models to architecture students

Architectural design is necessarily a situated learning process that continues to be a subject of interest in architectural education. Whether designers should give preference to a functional design product or whether the focus should be centered on creative output are issues that need to be questioned. Given the typically vague descriptions of creativity it is even harder to determine whether design functionality and design creativity should be treated as separate entities. The implications of any preferences made on the methods of assessment are crucial. While teaching is necessarily aligned to design as an experiential learning process, it also requires careful understanding of how knowledge can inform rather than constrain creativity. In evaluating the creativity or even the functionality of a design there are challenges present in accounting for a comprehensive and yet practical framework for assessment. In teaching practices the challenge is to ensure that the assessment process is sufficiently specified without limiting creative explorations. It is argued that through exposing design propositions to internal and external criticism, assessing progress becomes less of a challenge. In this course of development 'creativity' is revealed not as value-neutral but as a product of a social process that is practiced through experiential learning

An investigation into the cognitive, metacognitive, and spatial markers of creativity and efficiency in architectural design

This paper presents a preliminary study into the spatial features that can be used to distinguish creativity andefficiency in design layouts, and the distinct pattern of cognitive and metacognitive activity that is associated with creative design. In a design experiment, a group of 12 architects were handed a design brief. Their drawing activity was recorded and they were required to externalize their thoughts during the design process. Both design solutions and verbal comments were analysed and modelled. A separate group of experienced architects used their expert knowledge to assign creativity and efficiency scores to the 12 design solutions. The design solutions were evaluated spatially. Protocol analysis studies including linkography and macroscopic analysis were used to discern distinctive patterns in the cognitive and metacognition activity of designs marked with the highest and least creativity scores. Entropy models of the linkographs and knowledge graphs were further introduced Finally, we assessed how creativity and efficiency correlates to experiment variables, cognitive activity, metacognitive activity, spatial and functional distribution of spaces in the design solutions, and the number and type of design constraints applied through the course of design. Through this investigation, we suggest that expert knowledge can be used to assess creativity and efficiency in designs. Our findings indicate that efficient layouts have distinct spatial features, and that cognitive and metacognitive activity in design that yields a highly creative outcome corresponds to higher frequencies of design moves and higher linkages between design moves

Optical signatures of intrinsic electron localization in amorphous SiO2

We measure and analyse the optical absorption spectra of three silica glass samples irradiated with 1 MeV electrons at 80 K, where self-trapped holes are stable, and use ab initio calculations to demonstrate that these spectra contain a signature of intrinsic electron traps created as counterparts to the holes. In particular, we argue that optical absorption bands peaking at 3.7, 4.7, and 6.4 eV belong to strongly localised electrons trapped at precursor sites in amorphous structure characterized by strained Si–O bonds and O–Si–O angles greater than 132°. These results are important for our understanding of the properties of silica glass and other silicates as well as the reliability of electronic and optical devices and for luminescence dating

Spatial Cognition in virtual environment: Spatial cognition in video games

If spatial configuration is the main generator of natural movement in real environments, what happens when the navigation in virtual environments is mainly governed by properties of characters and not by the mathematical spatial configuration of a plan? This study is focused on the field of spatial cognition, navigation and way finding in the context of Half life video game, where individuals -players- mainly navigate through by virtue of their decisions to approach certain goals (missions). The objective is to capture the correlation between space-time and observed movement in the virtual environment by analysing the video game space and conducting an experiment. The case under study is "Half Life 2 - Episode 2“; a strategy videogame, with mission to find the best routes out of the virtual environment settings. Observations of players’ navigation are carried out supported by spatial analysis and a new methodology named time-convex to model space-time relationships

Translating Analytical Descriptions of Cities into Planning and Simulation Models

With the increase in urban complexity, plausible analytical and design models became highly valued as the way to decode and reconstruct the organization that makes urban systems. What they lacked is a mechanism by which an analytical description of urban complexity could be translated into a design description. An attempt to define such a mechanism is presented in this paper, where knowledge is retrieved from the natural organization that cities settle into, and devised in a procedural model to support urban planning at the problem definition stage. The model comprises two automated modules, giving preference to street accessibility. The first module implements plausible spatial laws to generate street structures. The performance criteria of these structures are measured against accessibility scores and clustering patterns of street segments. In the second module, an Artificial Neural Networks model (ANNs) is trained on Barcelona’s data, outlining how street width, building height, block density and retail land use might be dependent on street accessibility. The ANNs is tested on Manhattan’s data. The application of the two computational modules is explored at the problem definition stage of a urban planning in order to verify how far deterministic knowledge-based models are in the transition from analysis to design. Our findings suggest that the computational framework proposed could be instrumental at generating simplified representation of an urban grid, whilst being effective at forecasting form-related and functional attributes within a minimum resolution of 200 m. It is finally concluded that as design progresses, knowledge-based models may serve as to minimize uncertainty about complex urban planning problems