Shape-Sensitive Configurational Descriptions of Building Plans

Abstract

While the traditional graph-theoretic techniques of space syntax are able to provide a rich description of the spatial configuration of buildings, they are not sufficiently shape sensitive.Therefore, techniques are proposed to describe building plans as configurations of spaces taking into consideration the elements of shape explicitly. First, the traditional space syntax techniques are applied to a more shapesensitive partition of a plan in order to find out if these techniques would reveal any interesting shape property of the plan. Following this, a technique to characterize the spatial units of a plan is suggested taking into consideration how surfaces become visible from these units. Finally, a plan is described as the configuration of triangles defined by the vertices of the shape of the plan, and triangulation is used as a technique for a shape-sensitive description of spatial configuration.