BILL HILLER

Bill Hillier is Professor of Architecture and Urban

Morphology in the University of London, Chairman of the
Bartlett School of Graduate Studies, Director of the Space
Syntax Laboratory in University College London and a
director of Space Syntax Limited.
He was the pioneer of space syntax in the nineteen
seventies, and authored

The Social Logic of Space with Julienne Hanson

(Cambridge University Press, 1984, 1990),
Space is the Machine (CUP 1996), and
Over two hundred publications on space and
other aspects of architectural and urban theory.

Current research interests are in space syntax as a theory of the city, the relation between cities
and urban societies, the syntax of generative buildings, the links between objective spatial laws
and spatial cognition, and the space syntax paradigm as a philosophical position.

HILLIERS THEORY OF SPACE SYNTAX

Since the mid-1970s, researchers at the Bartlett School of Architecture and Plan-ning,
Univer-sity College, London, have developed convincing con-ceptual and empirical evidence
that the phys-ical-spatial environment plays an integral part in sustaining active streets and an
urban sense of place. Largely conceptualized by the architectural researchers Bill Hillier and
Julienne Hanson, this research examines the relation-ship between physical space and social
life, or, more precisely, "the social content of spatial patterning and the spatial content of social
patterning"
Throughout his writings, Hillier asks if there is some "deep structure of the city itself" that
contributes to urban life. He finds this deep structure in the relationship between spatial
configuration and natural co-presencethat is, the way the spatial layout of pathways can
informally and automatically bring people together in urban space or keep them apart: By its
power to generate movement, spatial design creates a fundamental pattern of co-presence and
co-awareness, and therefore potential encounter amongst people that is the most rudimentary
form of our awareness of others. Hillier argues that, through a particular kind of spatial
configurationwhat he calls the deformed gridcities have historically exploited movement

constructively to create dense, but variable, encounter zones to become what made them
useful: mechanisms for contact.
One means that Hillier uses to demonstrate the relationship between spatial configuration and
pedestrian movement is a careful examination of the street and open-space fabric of many
different settlements throughout the world (Hillier and Hanson 1984; Hillier et al. 1982). Many
of these placesfor example, the French village of Gassin illustrated in figure 4regularly
incorporate the following topological characteristics that together create what Hillier calls the
beady-ring structure:

All building entrances face directly onto the village open spaces, thus there are no
intervening boundaries between building access and public space;
The village open spaces are continuous but irregular in their shapes; they narrow
and widen, like beads on a string;
The outdoor spaces join back on themselves to form a set of irregularly shaped
rings;
This ring structure, coupled with direct building entry, gives each village a high
degree of permeability and access in that there are at least two paths (and,
typically, many more) from one building to any other building.

The next question Hillier asks is whether this beady-ring structure can be described and
measured more precisely. At the start, one faces a difficult recording problem: in terms of
everyday function, a settle-ment's open space is one contin-uous fabric but, formalistically and
spatially, this fabric is composed of many different partsstreets, alleys, squares, plazas, walls,
buildings, and the like. How can this unwieldy network of spaces and things be defined and
measured without destroying the seamless nature of the settlement's open spaces?

To address this conceptual difficulty, Hillier suggests that any open space can be considered in
terms of its convex or axial qualities. A convex space refers to the two-dimen-sional nature of

open space and is best exemplified by plazas, squares, and parks. In that they can have
con-siderable breadth in relation to width, convex spaces relate to the beadi-ness of the beadyring structure. In terms of environmental experience, convex spaces typically become local
placese.g., the site of a weekly market, an open
space where children regularly play kickball, or a
place where older people gather on sunny
afternoons. By identifying the least number of
convex spaces ac-counting for all streets, plazas
and other outdoor space, one can con-struct a
convex map as shown for Gassin in figure 2.

In contrast to convex spaces are what Hillier calls

axial spaces, which depict the one-dimensional
qualities of space and therefore relate to human
movement through the settlement and to the
stringiness of the beady-ring structure. Axial
spaces are best illus-trated by long narrow streets
and can be repre-sented geometrically by the
maxi-mum straight line that can be drawn
through an open space before it strikes a building,
wall, or some other material object. (see the axial map of Gassin in figure 3).

Whereas convex spaces speak mostly to the local qualities of a space, axial spaces are
significant for understanding a settlements global patternthat is, the way the particular
spatial configuration of the pathway fabric lays out a potential movement field that draws
people together or keeps them apart. Natural movement is the term Hillier uses to describe the
potential power of the pathway layout to automatically stymie or facilitate movement and such
related environmental events as co-presence, co-awareness, informal interpersonal
encounters, and lively local places and street activity (Hillier 1996, p. 161).

THOMAS GORDON CULLEN

Thomas Gordon Cullen was an influential English architect and urban designer who was a key
motivator in the Townscape movement
He developed an eye for seeing the obvious, but invariably over looked, architectural qualities
in the British town and city. He saw that places of great beauty and of strong and picturesque
character had been created over the centuries by builders and architects working in
unselfconscious harmony with the landscape and he set about identifying and analysing these
qualities. The aim was to get to the essence of the British town and to teach lessons that could
be learnt and applied by contemporary architects and planners.
Cullen had begun his townscape studies in earnest in 1949 when he joined the staff of the AR.
The ideas were developed in close collaboration with Hastings, who had a finely developed
appreciation of the urban qualities of Italian hill-towns, which he wrote about enthusiastically
under the challenging pseudonym Ivor de Wofle.

Between 1944 and 1946 he worked in the planning office of the Development and Welfare
Department in Barbados,
Then joined the Architectural Review journal, first as a draughtsman and then as a writer on
planning policies. There he produced a large number of influential editorials and case studies on
the theory of planning and the design of towns. Many improvements in the urban and rural
environment in Britain during the 1950s and 1960s. He was also involved in the Festival of
Britain in 1951.
His techniques consisted largely of sketchy drawings that conveyed a particularly clear
understanding of his ideas, and these had a considerable influence on subsequent architectural
illustration styles. He also illustrated several books by other various authors, before writing his
own book - based on the idea of Townscape - in 1961. The Concise Townscape has
subsequently been republished around 15 times, proving to be one of the most popular books
on Urban Design in the 20th Century.
In 1956 Cullen became a freelance writer and consultant and, in the years immediately
following he advised the cities of Liverpool and Peterborough on their reconstruction and
redevelopment plans. In 1960 he was invited to India to advise on the planning aspects of the
Ford Foundation's work in New Delhi and Calcutta and so in 1962 he and his family lived in India
for 6 months while he worked on the projects. Later, his work included planning advice to the
city of Glasgow and during the 1980s the London Docklands Development Corporation.

For a while Cullen teamed up with a student, David Price, and they formed an architectural firm
together - Price & Cullen. They won a competition in London in the 1980s and together
designed and oversaw the building of the Swedish Quays housing development in Docklands.
They worked together until 1990 as Price's first child was born and because Cullen's health was
deteriorating. Price died in 2009 at the age of 53.
Literature
Townscape
Concise townscape
Street lighting
Gordon Cullen is one of the authors who had incorporated the idea of an observer in
movement as basic element for the perception of the, constructed space and in the
workmanship Urban Landscape considers the notion of serial vision for the first time as a
conceptual instrument for an urban reading.
Gordon Cullens Ideas

THE CONCEPT OF SERIAL VISION

THE CONCEPT OF PLACE
Sense of being in a particular place conjure different visual images and feelings w.r.t
place characteristics
THE CONCEPT OF CONTENT
Categories of environment its mood and which enliven the space by creating drama
THE FUNCTIONAL TRADITION
Intrinsic quality of things which creates the environment

SQUARES FOR ALL TASTE

HAZARDS

CROSS AS FOCAL POINT

THE FLOOR

CLOSURE

PRAIRIE PLANNING

LEGS AND WHEELS

STREET LIGHTING

TREES INCORPORATED

THE WALL

In 1972 he was elected Honorary Fellow of the RIBA. In 1975 he was awarded with an RDI for
illustration and Townscape. The following year he was awarded a medal from The American
Institute of Architects. In 1978 he was awarded a CBE for his contribution to architecture from
Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.

ROB KRIER
Rob Krier (born 1938) is a Luxembourgian sculptor, architect, urban
designer and theorist. He is former professor of architecture at Vienna
University of Technology, Austria.

Krier studied architecture at the Technical University of Munich

(1959 - 1964)
Worked with Oswald Mathias Ungers in Cologne and Berlin (1965
66)
Frei Otto in Berlin and Stuttgart (196770)
From, he was an assistant in the school of architecture at the University of Stuttgart
(1973 1975)
Guest professor at the cole polytechnique fdrale de Lausanne, in Switzerland (1975)
Professor of architecture at Vienna University of Technology (1976 - 1998)
Guest professor at Yale University, in the United States (1996)
Krier had his own architect's office in Vienna. (1976 - 1994)
Ran a joint office with Nicolas Lebunetel in Montpellier, France. (1992 2004)
In, he also founded a joint office with Christoph Kohl in Berlin. (1993)
KK Gesellschaft von Architekten mbH is backed by Rob Krier as senior advisor. (Since
June 2010)

MAJOR WORKS
Urban Space (1979),
Urban Projects 1968-1982 (1982),
On Architecture (1982),
Architectural Composition (1988),
The Making of a Town. Potsdam - Kirchsteigfeld (1997), with Christoph Kohl,
Town Spaces. Contemporary Interpretations in Traditional Urbanism (2003), Krier Kohl
Architects
Figures. A Pictorial Journal (2005)

Rob Krier is a painter and a sculptor and has produced a large

amount of buildings, urban and architectural designs, and an
infinite number of sketches, drawings and sculptures. His
architectural designs are passionately dedicated to the urban
realm and the beautiful and poetic dialectics of house, city,
monument and square. His sculptures on the other hand are all
consecrated to the human figure, in its beauty and vitality, joy
and strength, but also its fragility and suffering. The same
vigorous and charismatic, and often tormented figures appear
through all of Robs design work. They give measure,
proportion, scale and life to cities and buildings, squares and
streets and so on.

Rob Krier is one of those rare architects who design as painters

and paint as architects, almost instinctively and by necessity, in
order to better embrace the wholeness and immediacy of
creation. Instead of fragmenting and deconstructing a design

Crossroads, Almere Olympia Quarter,

Netherlands, 2006, by Rob Krier

endeavour into various scale phases and chronological process

stages it maintains unity.
His projects are nurtured by immediate phases of intense
sketching and painting, and capricci of all kinds and scales, from
urban masterplans to interior views, window, door, chimney
details, colours and textures, monument and ornament, and so on,
and all energize the vital flow of the design process. The dynamics
and liveliness of the capriccio are however not separated from the
building process and Robs work fully embraces the creative
dialectics between thinking, drawing, designing, building and
inhabiting.
The work of Rob Krier demonstrates that the capriccio is an
inspiring method, and an excellent tool and technique to explore,
articulate and elaborate upon the relevance of timeless patterns
and types of buildings, public buildings, houses, and of sustainable,
durable and cherished cities, landscapes and monuments.

Detail of a new building block in Bilbao,

2005-2011, by Rob Krier, Berlin. Rob
Krier sculptured 40 figures for these
houses, 9 casted in bronze, the rest in
stucco

Bibliography
http://www.arch.ksu.edu/seamon/buttimer_chap.htm
http://www.umich.edu/~igri/publications/OnTheGenerationOfLinear.pdf
http://www.arch.ksu.edu/seamon/11%209%20spr%204%202.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Krier
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Cullen
http://www.scribd.com/doc/7696615/Elements-of-Architecture-Rob-Krier
http://robkrier.de/urban-space-engl.php#page-001
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-gordon-cullen-1376941.html
http://www.spacesyntax.com/
http://robkrier.de/the-architectural-project_an-homage-to-rob-krier.php