Space and the machine

Space is the machine
Bill Hillier

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
Bill Hillier

A configurational theory of architecture

‘ house is a machine for living in…’
A
Le Corbusier (1923) ‘ ut I thought that all that functional stuff
B
had been refuted. Buildings aren’t machines.’ Student
‘ ou haven’t understood. The building isn’t the
Y
machine. Space is the machine.’ Nick Dalton,
Computer Programmer at University College
London (1994)

Hardback and paperback editions first published in the
United Kingdom in 1996 and 1999, respectively, by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge.
This electronic edition published in 2007 by:
Space Syntax
4 Huguenot Place, Heneage Street
London E1 5LN
United Kingdom www.spacesyntax.com Copyright © Bill Hillier 2004, 2007
ISBN 978-0-9556224-0-3
Layout and design by Christian Altmann
Set in Haas Unica

Contents

Preface to the e-edition
Acknowlegdements
Introduction

v xii 1

Part one
Chapter one
Chapter two
Chapter three

Theoretical