Buildings and their Genotypes

Author: Bill Hillier & Julienne Hanson Year: 2006 (Intimus reprint; original text 1984) Source type: chapter Raw file: raw/chapters/hillier-hanson-2006-buildings-and-their-genotypes.md

Summary

An excerpt from Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson's The Social Logic of Space (Cambridge University Press, 1984), reprinted in Intimus: Interior Design Theory Reader (Taylor & Preston eds., Wiley, 2006, pp. 148–153) as "Buildings and their Genotypes" — the section "Insides and Outsides: The Reversal Effect" introducing gamma-analysis, the syntactic analysis of interior spatial structure. Hillier and Hanson argue that the boundary introduces a fundamental discontinuity into the spatial order: the same act of boundary-drawing that constructs a settlement as a continuous spatial aggregate creates, on the insides of the boundaries, "a series of – potentially at least – separate events, not a continuous system" — a transpatial system whose members are affiliated "by virtue of analogy and difference," not continuity and proximity. Through the boundary's "reversal effect," the most localised scale of spatial organisation becomes the most global in its reference — "the boundary refers to the principles of a culture" — and the inside/outside duality generates a dualism of solidarities: transpatial solidarity (analogy and isolation, ritual, strong boundary control) versus spatial solidarity (contiguity and encounter, informality, weakened boundary). The building is then defined as a domain of knowledge (an ordering of categories) and a domain of control (an ordering of boundaries), interfacing inhabitants with visitors; building types are genotypes that bend this fundamental model by varying syntactic parameters; and the analytic method — gamma-analysis — reads spatial relations and controls through the permeability patterns of the subdivided cell.

(The raw file's header line "from Intumus: Interior Design Reader / Edited by Mark Taylor and Juleanna Preston" carries typographical errors for Intimus and Julieanna Preston; the canonical anthology is Taylor & Preston's Intimus. The chapter's closing note cites Oscar Newman's Defensible Space (1972), Christopher Alexander et al.'s A Pattern Language (1977) and HMSO Housing the Family (1974) as carriers of the "continuum" assumption the chapter attacks.)

Key Claims

• The "continuum" assumption is false. The common assumption that "human spatial organisation is the working out of common behavioural principles through a hierarchy of different levels" — the same forces shaping space from domestic interior to city (Newman, Alexander, HMSO are the cited carriers) — fails at the boundary: "There is no homogeneous continuum of spatial principles from the very large to the very small."
• The fact of the boundary. The boundary creates a disconnection between interior space and the global system: "The same drawing of boundaries that constructs a settlement as a continuous spatial aggregate with respect to the outsides of cells creates a set of discontinuous spaces on the insides of those cells" — interiors are "a series of – potentially at least – separate events, not a continuous system," experienced "one by one as individuals, not as a single entity sustained by physical connections."
• The transpatial system. Interiors form "a class of spatially independent but comparable entities which have global affiliations, not by virtue of continuity and proximity but by virtue of analogy and difference" — the relations between interiors "are experienced as conceptual rather than as spatial entities, and the mode of organising global experience out of local observations is transpatial rather than spatial."
• The reversal effect. "In the transition from large to small there is a fundamental discontinuity where the system in effect reverses its mode of articulation of global experience out of local events." Behind the boundary, reference points do not become smaller but expand transpatially: "the most localised scale of spatial organisation tends to become the most global in its reference. The boundary refers to the principles of a culture."
• The dualism of solidarities. Transpatial solidarity is "a solidarity of analogy and isolation: that is of analogous structures realised in controlled isolation by discrete individuals" — ritualised, conformist, requiring the boundary's segregating force to preserve an elaborate interior model. Spatial solidarity works "by contiguity and encounter": "Movement across the boundary, which would undermine a transpatial solidarity, is the fundamental condition of existence for a spatial solidarity" — so boundary-weakening goes with weaker interior structuring, "Informality rather than ritual."
• The dual nature of the boundary. "the dualism reflects only the dual nature of the boundary, which at one and the same time creates a category of space – the interior – and a form of control – the boundary itself."
• The building as knowledge and control. "A building is therefore at least a domain of knowledge, in the sense that it is a certain spatial ordering of categories, and a domain of control, in the sense that it is a certain ordering of boundaries."
• Inhabitant as transpatial entity. "An inhabitant is, if not a permanent occupant of the cell, at least an individual whose social existence is mapped into the category of space within that cell: more an inhabitant of the social knowledge defined by the cell than of the cell itself" — the inhabitant is "a categoric concept, and therefore a transpatial entity."
• Visitors as the controlled middle category. "Pupils in a school, patients in a hospital, guests in a house, and prisoners in a prison all fall within this category of being more than strangers, in that they have a legitimate reason to cross the boundary of a building, but less than inhabitants, in that they have no control over that building and their social individuality is not mapped into the structure of space."
• The building's double reversal. "A building also localises the global world of strangers, by the same means as it globalises the local world of inhabitants" — realising "a categoric order locally" and interfacing it "with the rest of the social world."
• Building types as genotypes. "each characteristic pattern that we would call a building type typically takes these fundamental relations and, by varying the syntactic parameters and the interface between them, bends the fundamental model in one direction or another, depending on the nature of the categories and relations to be constructed by the ordering of space."
• Premises, not buildings. To avoid definitions "that depend on it being, for example, under a single roof," a building is redefined as a domain of unitary control expressed through two properties: "a continuous outer boundary, such that all parts of the external world are subject to some form of control; and continuous internal permeability, such that every part of the building is accessible to every other part without going outside the boundary" — the term for this is "premises."
• Gamma-analysis defined. "Gamma-analysis is therefore the analysis of these spatial relations and controls realised though the permeability patterns of the subdivided cell" — with "relative asymmetry" articulating the relations of the space (the category) and "ringiness – i.e. distributedness" articulating the relations of the boundary (the control on the category).
• The editors' framing (Intimus headnote). Hillier and Hanson "surmise that interior spaces are potentially separate events providing segregated spatial experience, a 'transpatial system' characterised by analogy and difference"; their system "defines boundaries as distinct thresholds that sever the interior space from surrounding space"; and "to overcome the duality of inside and outside, they suggest a shift from segregated interiors emblematic of social solidarity to encountering interiors suggestive of spatial solidarity, and contingent upon movement and interaction of inhabitants across the boundary."

Connections

Concepts: transpatial-solidarity · building-genotype · reversal-effect · inhabitant-and-visitor · gamma-analysis · boundaries · inside-outside-dialectic · event-space · interiority · interior-architecture · typology · privacy · partition-of-space · structuralism · dual-symbolic-classification

Authors: hillier-bill-hanson-julienne · taylor-mark-preston-julieanna (Intimus editors and headnote) · ardener-shirley (the anthropological tradition of bounded, rule-governed space)

Debates: interior-design-vs-architecture (Position AA: the syntactic-social knowledge base) · power-and-space (Position S: permeability as control)

Related source notes: The Partition of Space (Ardener 2006) — the sibling spatial-anthropological analysis; Proximities (Taylor & Preston 2006) — the anthology that canonised the text; Thick Edge (Borden 1996/2006) — the socio-spatial boundary theory that shares Simmel's "boundary as sociological fact" family resemblance.

Direct Quotes

"A settlement, as we have seen, is at least an assemblage of primary cells, such that the exterior relations of those cells, by virtue of their spatial arrangement, generate and modulate a system of encounters." (p. 148)

"The same drawing of boundaries that constructs a settlement as a continuous spatial aggregate with respect to the outsides of cells creates a set of discontinuous spaces on the insides of those cells, which do not normally present themselves to experience as a continuous spatial system with a global form, but as a series of discrete events, expressly and explicitly disconnected from the global system." (p. 149)

"A transpatial system, we may remember, is a class of spatially independent but comparable entities which have global affiliations, not by virtue of continuity and proximity but by virtue of analogy and difference." (p. 149)

"This is the fundamental fact of the boundary. There is no homogeneous continuum of spatial principles from the very large to the very small. In the transition from large to small there is a fundamental discontinuity where the system in effect reverses its mode of articulation of global experience out of local events." (p. 149)

"In moving from outside to inside, we move from the arena of encounter probabilities to a domain of social knowledge, in the sense that what is realised in every interior is already a certain mode of organising experience, and a certain way of representing in space the idiosyncrasies of a cultural identity." (pp. 149–150)

"As a consequence of the nature of the boundary, the most localised scale of spatial organisation tends to become the most global in its reference. The boundary refers to the principles of a culture." (p. 150)

"A transpatial solidarity is a solidarity of analogy and isolation: that is of analogous structures realised in controlled isolation by discrete individuals." (p. 150)

"Movement across the boundary, which would undermine a transpatial solidarity, is the fundamental condition of existence for a spatial solidarity." (p. 150)

"A spatial solidarity will be undermined, not strengthened, by isolation. In a spatial solidarity, therefore, the weakening of the boundary is associated with a weaker structuring of the interior. Informality rather than ritual must prevail if the principles of the system are to be sustained." (p. 150)

"the dualism reflects only the dual nature of the boundary, which at one and the same time creates a category of space – the interior – and a form of control – the boundary itself." (pp. 150–151)

"Relative asymmetry in gamma-analysis will articulate the relations of the space, that is, of the category embodied by the space; and ringiness – i.e. distributedness – in gamma will articulate the relations of the boundary, that is the relations of control on the category." (p. 151)

"A building is therefore at least a domain of knowledge, in the sense that it is a certain spatial ordering of categories, and a domain of control, in the sense that it is a certain ordering of boundaries." (p. 151)

"An inhabitant is, if not a permanent occupant of the cell, at least an individual whose social existence is mapped into the category of space within that cell: more an inhabitant of the social knowledge defined by the cell than of the cell itself." (p. 151)

"Pupils in a school, patients in a hospital, guests in a house, and prisoners in a prison all fall within this category of being more than strangers, in that they have a legitimate reason to cross the boundary of a building, but less than inhabitants, in that they have no control over that building and their social individuality is not mapped into the structure of space within that building." (p. 151)

"In this sense a building also localises the global world of strangers, by the same means as it globalises the local world of inhabitants." (p. 151)

"each characteristic pattern that we would call a building type typically takes these fundamental relations and, by varying the syntactic parameters and the interface between them, bends the fundamental model in one direction or another, depending on the nature of the categories and relations to be constructed by the ordering of space." (pp. 151–152)

"To express this set of relations, and to avoid confusion with definitions of a building that depend on it being, for example, under a single roof, the term 'premises' will in future be used instead of 'building.' Premises are a domain of unitary control with the boundary and permeability properties given above, whose internal relations are developed by syntactic means into a certain kind of interface between inhabitant and visitors." (p. 152)

"Gamma-analysis is therefore the analysis of these spatial relations and controls realised though the permeability patterns of the subdivided cell." (p. 152)

Open Questions

• Gamma-analysis reads interiors through permeability (relative asymmetry, ringiness); the chapter ends where the method begins ("… p 147" marks the excerpt's break into the unexcerpted formal apparatus). What would an Intimus-scale account of the method's actual measures (justified graphs, depth, ringy vs. non-ringy plans) add to the wiki's interior cluster?
• The inhabitant/visitor/stranger interface is given as an abstract general model ("All buildings, of whatever kind, have this abstract structure in common") — how does it distribute across the wiki's actual interior types (the waiting room's suspended visitors, the museum's instructed visitors, Freud's transferential patient, the men's room's occupant-guard)?
• The chapter defines the interior as "a domain of social knowledge" whose local reproduction realizes "a mode of organising experience… the idiosyncrasies of a cultural identity" — how does this cultural-identity thesis relate to Ardener's claim that spatial orderings can obscure the asymmetries they impose?
• Transpatial solidarity reproduces identical interior structures "by individuals who remain spatially separated" — is the suburban estate, the franchise interior, or the hotel chain the modern genotype of transpatial solidarity, and can the wiki's everyday-interior sources be re-read through this distinction?
• If spatial solidarity requires weakened boundaries and informality, does the flexible interior (the Schröder House's partitions, the Beechers' movable screen) strengthen or weaken the boundary — and does Croft's finding that "Schröder craved greater privacy" mark a spatial solidarity failing into transpatial?