Since The social logic of space was published in 1984, Bill Hillier and his colleagues at University College London have

been conducting research on how space features in the form and functioning of buildings and cities.

I was back at the time in the ’80’s one of their first students in the master of science  ‘Advanced Architectural Studies’, where we were  widely introduced in the development and application of the space syntax research.

Today we want to reconnect and collaborate for this elective with the research unit of Sophia Psarra, Professor of Architecture and Spatial Design, at The Bartlett School of Architecture, Faculty of the Built Environment

University College London (UCL).

A key outcome is the concept of ‘spatial configuration’ — meaning relations which take account of other relations in a complex. New techniques have been developed and applied to a wide range of architectural and urban problems. The aim of this elective is to assemble some of this work and show how it leads the way to a new type of theory of architecture: an ‘analytic’ theory in which understanding and design advance together. The success of configurational ideas in bringing to light the spatial logic of buildings and cities suggests that it might be possible to extend these ideas to other areas of the human sciences where problems of configuration and pattern are critical.