Back to design fundamentals: The step and the eye

Abstract

Space Syntax has often been associated with techniques and computer methods. Its basic concept though lays beyond the techniques: it’s a way of understanding space. The fundamental idea is that space is been perceived, understood and appreciated through the combinatorial practice of moving and seeing. This paper will explore how this fundamental idea has organized a design teaching approach. Contrary to the top down method of designing (from the concept to the form and to the program) we will explore a bottom up method (from the movement and the visibility to the boundaries the form and the program). The approach has been used to a design studio at the Dept. of Architecture, University of Thessaly. Movement in the urban context has been used as the main starting point. The city is an ideal case study which includes issues of familiarity and strangeness, a variety of programs and activities, focal points, landmarks, natural features, voids and densities, long views and short glances. Students have started mapping a route within the urban environment, then proceeded to analyze a museum building and finally they designed a new museum. Students have been pressed to use their step and their eye to become familiar with the notion of designed space as an intelligible system which shapes our movement, visibility and perception. They have learned to understand and appreciate architecture through movement via a succession of spaces with local character or of major importance. They understood that architecture produces complex structures which are justified not as unique objects but during the process of inhabitation. Finally, they have been taught a design process which does not limit itself to morphological experimentation or superficial projects. © 2019 Beijing JiaoTong University. All rights reserved.