Data Mining - Concepts and Techniques.

The first Danish language version of this book, published in 1971, was very much a protest against the functionalistic principles for planning cities and residential areas that prevailed during that period. The book carried an appeal to show concern for the people who were to move about between buildings, and it urged an understanding of the subtle, almost indefinable - but definite - qualities, which have always related to the interaction of people in public spaces, and it pointed to the life between buildings as a dimension of architecture that needs to be carefully treated. Now 40 years later, many architectural trends and ideologies have passed by over the years. These intervening years have also shown that the liveliness and liveability of cities and residential areas continues to be a important issue. The intensity in which fine public spaces are used at this point in time, as well as the greatly increased general interest in the quality of cities and their public spaces emphasises this point. The character of life between buildings changes with changes in any given social context, but the essential principles and quality criteria to be employed when working with life between buildings has proven to be remarkably constant. Though this work over the years has been updated and revised several times, this version bears little resemblance with the very early versions, however there was no reason to change the basic message: Take good care of the life between your buildings.

Life between buildings: Using public space

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. 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 book 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.

Space is the Machine

An isovist, or viewshed, is the area in a spatial environment directly visible from a location within the space. Here we show how a set of isovists can be used to generate a graph of mutual visibility between locations. We demonstrate that this graph can also be constructed without reference to isovists and that we are in fact invoking the more general concept of a visibility graph. Using the visibility graph, we can extend both isovist and current graph-based analyses of architectural space to form a new methodology for the investigation of configurational relationships. The measurement of local and global characteristics of the graph, for each vertex or for the system as a whole, is of interest from an architectural perspective, allowing us to describe a configuration with reference to accessibility and visibility, to compare from location to location within a system, and to compare systems with different geometries. Finally we show that visibility graph properties may be closely related to manifestations of spatial perception, such as way-finding, movement, and space use.

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From Isovists to Visibility Graphs: A Methodology for the Analysis of Architectural Space

Smart wearable systems: Current status and future challenges

Existing theories relating patterns of pedestrian and vehicular movement to urban form characterise the problem in terms of flows to and from 'attractor' land uses. This paper contains evidence in support of a new 'configurational' paradigm in which a primary property of the form of the urban grid is to privilege certain spaces over others for through movement In this way it is suggested that the configuration of the urban grid itself is the main generator of patterns of movement. Retail land uses are then located to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the passing trade and may well act as multipliers on the basic pattern of 'natural movement' generated by the grid configuration. The configurational correlates of movement patterns are found to be measures of global properties of the grid with the 'space syntax' measure of 'integration' consistently found to be the most important. This has clear implications for urban design suggesting that if we wish to design for well used urban space, then it is not the local properties of a space that are important in the main but its configurational relations to the larger urban system.

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Natural Movement: Or, Configuration and Attraction in Urban Pedestrian Movement:

Acknowledgements 1. An introduction to the study of houses 2. Tradition and change in the English house 3. Ideas are in things, with Hillier and Graham 4. Two domestic 'space codes' compared, with Hillier 5. Shaping the taste of middle England 6. Configuration and society in the English country house 7. Visibility and permeability in the Rietveld Schroder house, with Rosenberg 8. The anatomy of privacy in architects' London houses 9. 'Deconstructing' architects' houses 10. Decoding dwellings: the way ahead.

Decoding homes and houses

Telecare is advocated as a means of effectively and economically delivering health and social care services in people's homes, using technology that can monitor activities and safety, provide virtual home visiting, activate reminder systems, increase home security and convey information. Significant planned investment by central government will be rewarded if telecare results in fewer older people requiring institutional care, and more remaining independent in their own homes longer than would otherwise be the case. This paper, which reports on focus group work with older people, carets and professional stakeholders, considers key issues rarely addressed in provider-led studies. Emerging social policy implications centre on the potential impact of telecare on service users' autonomy and privacy and, controversially, as a replacement for human support. We argue that the development of relevant policy and practice in respect of telecare has to pay close and careful attention to concerns held by all stakeholders, particularly in regard to individual choice, surveillance, risk-taking and quality of service.

Big brother or brave new world? Telecare and its implications for older people’s independence and social inclusion:

Scientific approaches to architecture usually avoid the issue of building form, preferring to focus on function.
But how can there be a theory of function without a systematic analysis of the key architectural variable of form?
A theory of description is required. In this paper it is argued that such a theory can be built through the analysis
of spatial form in buildings. Then once spatial form is describable in terms of a descriptive theory, a more powerfully scientific - and architectural - understanding of function is possible. The argument draws on several pieces of research carried out by the authors and their students, but focusses eventually on various types of medical building in order to illustrate certain general principles.

What do we mean by building function

This paper reports findings from an attitudinal survey towards telecare that emerged from 22 focus groups comprising 92 older people, 55 professional stakeholders and 39 carers. These were convened in three different regions of England as a precursor to telecare service development. The results from this study suggest that informants’ views were shaped by prior knowledge of conventional health and social care delivery in their locality, and the implication is that expectations and requirements with respect to telecare services in general are likely to be informed by wider perceptions about the extent to which community care should operate as a preventative strategy or as a mechanism for crisis management.

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Julienne Hanson

Papers

Natural Movement: Or, Configuration and Attraction in Urban Pedestrian Movement:

Decoding homes and houses

Big brother or brave new world? Telecare and its implications for older people’s independence and social inclusion:

What do we mean by building function

Attitudes to telecare among older people, professional care workers and informal carers: a preventative strategy or crisis management?