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T h e m e i s s u e : F O R G I N G A D VA N C E S I N S U S TA I N A B L E A R C H I T E C T U R E A N D U R B A N I S M

D e s i g n f o r C h a n g e

G r e e n U r b a n i s m

G u l f C i t i e s

S p a c e / N a t u r e S y n t a x

T h e U r b a n L a b o r a t o r y

T r a d i t i o n a l M a s t e r p l a n n i n g

S u s t a i n a b l e U r b a n D e v e l o p m e n t

U r b a n T e x t u r e

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open house internationalVol 41 No.4 2016 ISSN 0168-2601

a C I B e n c o u r a g e d j o u r n a l

T h o m s o n I S I A r t s & H u m a n i t i e s

E B S C O p u b l i s h i n g

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w w w . o p e n h o u s e - i n t . c o m E l s e v i e r S c o p u s

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INTRODUCTION

In his 1984 book “Biophilia” E.O. Wilson proposedthat human beings have evolved to expect, andindeed physically need, a connection to other livingspecies and the natural environment. He theorisedthat the increasing, and relatively recent, removal ofhuman civilisation from Nature through urbanisationis detrimental to the human mind and its development.He called his theory the Biophilia Hypothesis, and pre-sented a relationship with the natural environment asan innate need within humanity. (Grinde and Patil,2009)

Humanity’s appreciation of Nature has cer-tainly been historically recognised and widely andconsistently portrayed through media such as art andliterature long before the Biophilia Hypothesis wasproposed. Romanticism saw writers such as HenryDavid Thoreau, Lord Byron, and Ralph WaldoEmerson recognise the importance of Nature as citiesgrew due to the Industrial Revolution. Recently, thisconnection between humans and Nature has becomea significant field of study as researchers seek to fur-ther explore and explain this undeniable bond. Anumber of studies in environmental psychology haveshown spending time in Nature can have physiologi-cal and psychological benefits including relievingstress and alleviating diagnosed psychological disor-

ders (Berman et al., 2008, Berman et al., 2012, WardThompson, 2011, Wilson, 1984, Keniger et al.,2013, Logan and Selhub, 2012, Cervinka et al.,2012, MacKerron and Mourato, 2013, Gehl et al.,2006).

Despite long standing recognition and recentscientific evidence that the relationship betweenhumans and Nature is beneficial and vital, thereremains a lack of consideration for how this relation-ship interacts with architecture. Movements such asOrganic Architecture recognise the need to integratelandscape with design, and Biomimicry takes designand technological inspiration from natural systems,but thus far architecture has tendency to approach theboundary between built and natural from an angle ofaesthetics, with little research carried out on the influ-ence Nature can have on a building’s occupants.One study focussed in health care architecture discov-ered that a view of a natural environment reducedsurgery recovery times (Raanaas et al., 2012); otherstudies have focussed on the benefits of introducingnatural elements such as office plants to internalspaces (Brown and Bell, 2007); beyond this, thepotential to utilize the innate human connection toNature within architectural design is all but over-looked. With the world’s global urban populationalready exceeding 50% and with this due to increaseto 70% by 2050 (W.H.O., 2012), there is both a need

Karen Munro, David Grierson

AbstractThe world’s urban population is rapidly growing, now exceeding its rural population, and is expected to reach 70% ofthe world’s total by 2050. Research in environmental psychology increasingly supports the Biophilia Hypothesis whichholds that our connection with Nature is innate. Thus, how do we maintain a human connection to Nature in an increas-ingly urbanising world? This paper is based on current research work and explores the boundary between built andnatural environments, specifically how visual connectivity to Nature affects how people use social spaces, compared tospatial connectivity. Case study work is being undertaken at Arcosanti urban laboratory in the Arizona desert. Arcosanticonstruction began in 1970 to test Paolo Soleri’s Arcology Theory which proposes, in opposition to sprawling cities, anew form of urban setting which is compact with tightly restricted horizontal growth, leaving the surrounding naturalenvironment as undeveloped “wilderness”. Through development of a Space/Nature Syntax methodology applied with-in a uniquely compact urban form, this research attempts to understand how designing to maintain the instinctive bondwith Nature can affect social interaction and inform future design choices within built environments. This paperdescribes the development of, and basis for, the Space/Nature Syntax methodology, presents initial findings achievedthrough its recent application at Arcosanti, and outlines future work. Initial analysis indicates that visual connectivity toNature is a significant influence on certain types of social interactions when compared to spatial connectivity, althoughmore research is needed to verify the level of significance.

Keywords: Social Spaces, Biophilia, Environmental Psychology, Space Syntax, Urbanisation, Wilderness.

TOWARDS THE DEVELOPMENT OF A SPACE/NATURESYNTAX AT ARCOSANTI.

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exist, and a potential for architects and planners toexplore built environments which nourish humanity’sseemingly biological need for proximity to Nature.

Arcology and ArcosantiArcology, a concept fusing architecture and ecology,was first proposed by architect Paolo Soleri in 1969,as the antithesis to the state of development of mostmodern US cities. Soleri saw the reliance on vehicu-lar transport as generating massive urban sprawl anddecentralisation away from the city centre to neverending suburbs. Soleri stated that these suburbs notonly obliterated the ecology of the land they spreadover, but that they also obliterated human connectionsand the ability for personal and collective growth. Heproposed an alternative to this kind of living: an arcol-ogy would be a compact city, bringing people and ser-vices back to a centralised location, while the citywould be tightly restricted in terms of horizontal growththus leaving the surrounding natural environmentuntouched and in a state of wilderness. (Soleri, 1969,Soleri et al., 2011) In addition to providing a modelfor energy and resource efficiency, Soleri emphasisedthe potential for arcologies to provide a uniqueboundary between built and natural; “The structure ofthe habitat is intentionally putting nature at our finger-tips” (Soleri, 1993); a point expanded upon byGrierson; “the drawing together of diverse city func-tions into mixed use, self-contained arcologies wouldencourage cultural intensification and social integra-tion within their boundaries, while freeing up the sur-rounding hinterland to remain natural.” (Grierson,2003) In 1970, Soleri and a group of his studentsformed the Cosanti Foundation and began construc-tion of Arcosanti, a new city presented as an “urbanlaboratory” and prototype arcology located in thehigh Sonoran desert of Arizona, USA. Arcosanti aimsto explore high density, mixed use design built on apedestrian scale, while leaving hundreds of acres ofsurrounding land as natural environment, allowing itsresidents to be both “city and country dwellers” (Soleri,1993). At Arcosanti, the boundary between built andnatural is immediate; a person can be in untouched

Nature moments after leaving the density of the city.Soleri repeatedly stated that he could not, and wouldnot, predict the social dynamic of an arcology: “Whatthe project wants to avoid is planning the lives of itsresidents. They are offered a specific grid of environ-mental resources (the instrument) within which to actand play out their lives (the music).” (Soleri, 1993)Soleri believed that the social identity of an arcologywould and should develop naturally, and the contin-ued inhabitation of Arcosanti gives an opportunity forthe social outcomes to be investigated. This workfocusses on the effect this unique proximity to the nat-ural environment has on activity within the built envi-ronment at Arcosanti.

Building on the proven cognitive impacts ofNature, this research work is interested in the resultantbehavioural impact, specifically how the view of a nat-ural environment from within a built social spaceaffects social interaction within that space. SpaceSyntax has been used in architecture and urban designto analyse built forms and make empirically baseddesign decisions on how spatial connectivity can influ-ence social interactions. In this work, a Nature Syntaxis being developed to explore if and how visual con-nectivity to Nature has this same influence. Doesstrong spatial connectivity affect social interactionsmore than visibility of Nature? Do users plan move-ment routes to include views of Nature, or do theyfocus on the fastest, most accessible routes regardlessof view? Are users more likely to plan activities in themost easily accessed space, or does the view ofNature prove more influential in this decision? Theseare the types of questions this work is interested inexploring. Using Arcosanti as a development andtesting ground, the work develops a Nature Syntaxmethodology to statistically quantify the naturalness ofa view from within a built space – named in this studyas the Visibility of Nature (VN) value. Space Syntaxand Nature Syntax analysis for 15 social spaces atArcosanti was completed, before onsite observationswere carried out to document the usage patterns ofeach space. Correlations were then calculated, whichsuggest where relationships exist between spatial con-nectivity, Nature connectivity through visibility, andsocial interaction. It is proposed that theSpace/Nature Syntax can be used to inform futuredesign, firstly at Arcosanti then in other built environ-ments, by using the correlations, relationships andpatterns observed to predict how future design inter-ventions could alter the existing spatial and naturalconnections and change interaction within an existingspace. This paper details the development and initialapplication of this Space/Nature Syntax methodology,and outlines future steps in the work and future poten-tial applications of the method for design.

DEVELOPMENT OF SPACE/NATURE SYNTAX

It is important to clarify what qualifies as a socialspace for the purpose of this study. The majority ofbuildings are Arcosanti are mixed use, containingspaces which are completely private (bedrooms, pri-vate living rooms), other spaces which are only open

Figure 1.Aerial image of Arcosanti. (Source: Ernie Silva,May 15 2009).

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within certain time parameters (public visitor centre)and others which are open and accessible for the useof Arcosanti residents at all times. Therefore, for thepurpose of this study, a space is classed as a socialspace and analysed in the research if it is an interioror exterior space available for use by Arcosanti resi-dents at any time of the day or night. There were 15such spaces identified which were then analysedaccording to the methodology to be described in thispaper.

Space SyntaxSpace Syntax was introduced by Bill Hillier andJulienne Hanson and has been developed throughnumerous publications since 1976 (Hillier et al.,1976, Hillier and Hanson, 1984, Hillier, 1999, Hillier,2007). Space Syntax is a method for the analysis ofspatial configurations (Jeong and Ban, 2011) whichgives statistical value to spaces within buildings andcities, allowing them to be analysed, adapted andplanned. Space Syntax is commonly used to deter-mine areas within individual buildings or the widerurban environment which have the potential for highsocial interaction (Campos and Fong, 2003) and hastherefore been used in this study to analyse the socialspaces at Arcosanti in order to determine which, atleast according to spatial analysis, should be the mostand least lively. There is a great deal of terminologyassociated with Space Syntax; those which are relativeto this work are defined as thus:

Figure 2. Arcosanti from the South. (Source: Author, September 13 2013).

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and Ban, 2011, Bafna, 2003)

Nature SyntaxThis section will describe the development of theNature Syntax method, which is being establishedthrough this research work. Nature Syntax analysisproduces a value named the Visibility of Nature (VN)value, which is between 0 and 1, where 0 is no visualconnection to Nature and 1 is complete, 360° visualconnection to Nature. The VN value represents theratio of the visibility of the natural environment out ofthe total external visibility from that space. Calculating the PermeabilityThe first stage was to calculate how visually permeableeach social space was. Permeability in the context ofthis paper refers to the area of building envelope of aspace which is either open (e.g. an archway) or trans-parent (e.g. a window or skylight) – any openingthrough which the environment external to the space isvisible. In order to calculate permeability, the area ofbuilding envelope which is permeable was calculatedas a percentage of the total area. Internal drawingswere produced of North, East, South, West, andAbove for each social space, and sizes of openingsand ceiling heights were verified on site at Arcosanti(Figure 3). The area of permeability in each of the 5directions was then totalled and divided by the totalsurface area to achieve the percentage of total per-meable surface area. This value was then divided by100 to produce a figure between 0 and 1, where 0 isa social space which is completely visually enclosed toits external environment, while 1 is a social spacewhich is completely visually open to its external envi-ronment.

Calculating the Naturalness of ViewThe next consideration was how to classify if a viewwas built, natural or somewhere in between. The solu-tion was derived from the U.S. Geological Survey LandCover Institute National Land Cover Database (NLCD)2006, which documents land cover type according towell defined criteria, covering wide variants in both

built and natural land cover (US Department of theInterior and US Geological Survey, 2015, Anderson etal., 1976). The NLCD 2006 consists of 20 categoriesof land cover, including 4 levels of built environmentfrom “Developed, Open” to “Developed, HighIntensity”. The levels are defined by the percentage ofmaterial on an area of land which is constructedmaterial. For the development of the Nature Syntax,the non-built categories of the NLCD were amalga-mated into one “Natural” category, while the 4 builtcategories remained as defined in the NLCD. A planof the Arcosanti site was overlaid with a 10m2 gridwhich was then in-filled with the colour representingthe relative land coverage; producing Figure 4a.Values between 0 and 1 were assigned to the 5 landcover classifications (Figure 4b). As “Natural” landcoverage was the focus of the study, this classificationwas given a value of 1, with “Developed, HighIntensity” receiving a value of 0, and the intermediateclassifications given values in intervals of 0.25.

In order to determine the Naturalness of Viewfrom each space, field of vision studies were carriedout in both plan and section for each of the 15 socialspaces. The foveal and peripheral fields of vision(based on (Gehl et al., 2006)) from a centre point inthe space were drawn for each direction (North, East,South, West and Above) and overlaid onto the LandCover plan in Figure 4, producing an image such asthe example in Figure 5a. The type of land coverwhich was predominantly covered by the field of visionwas taken to be the type of land cover most visible forthat direction, and the associated value between 0and 1 was documented. This process was thenrepeated in section for each space and direction totake into account the three-dimensionality of both thestructures and Arcosanti site, and confirm the resultsfound on plan (Figure 5b). Finally, the values docu-mented were confirmed visually at the Arcosanti site bythe researcher. The final value for Naturalness of Viewfor each space is the sum of the value for the fivedirections, divided by 5.

Figure 3. South façade of Arcosanti’s Café (a); permeabilitydiagrams for South façade (b) and Ceiling (c) where blackindicates a solid area and white indicates a permeable area.The permeable and total areas were calculated using inbuiltAutoCAD tools to maximise accuracy. (Source: Author).

Figure 4. Arcosanti Land Cover Site Plan (a) and Land CoverKey (b) (Source: Author, derived from USGS LCI NLCD 2006(US Department of the Interior and US Geological Survey,2015, Anderson et al., 1976))

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The final Visibility of Nature Values (VN) represents theratio of total view from the space which is of the nat-ural environment and is calculated as:

Observation StudiesWith the Space Syntax and Nature Syntax analysescomplete, the next step was to carry out observationalstudies on site at Arcosanti. The method was devel-oped through background research into the observa-tional methods commonly used in environmental psy-chology (Thwaites, 2007, Golinik and Ward Thompson, 2010, Costa, 2011, Gehl,2011, Gehl, 1987, Gehl, 2010, Liu and Sibley, 2004,Moirongo, 2002, Simpson, 2011, Zhang andLawson, 2009). Over a 3 month period, from 17February to 12 May 2015, each of the 15 socialspaces at Arcosanti was repeatedly observed for 30minutes at a time within 5 time frames: 0600-0900,0900-1200, 1200-1500, 1500-1800, 1800-2100.A total of 107 observations were carried out, with thefollowing behaviours being noted: Type of Space Use“Active” – space being directly used for an activity;space is the end destination.“Inactive” – space being used inactively; as a throughroute to elsewhere.Level of Planning“Planned” – a predetermined activity taking place atan agreed time e.g. an arranged event; a work task; ameeting; a guided tour group.“Unplanned” – a spontaneous activity undertaken e.g.a social interaction; informal/impromptu meeting;non-essential use as through route.Visual Interaction with Natural Environment A user observed displaying behaviour which facilitatesa visual interaction with environment e.g. looking outwindow; positioning body towards natural environ-ment; pointing; drawing; photographing.The behaviours were noted, by hand, separately foreach observation on a printed plan of the social spacebeing analysed before data for each space was digi-tally compiled into one image, colour coded for timeframes; examples of these resultant images will beseen in the next section of this paper.

Correlation Analysis Finally, the results of the Space Syntax, Nature Syntaxand observations studies were entered into the statisti-cal analysis software Minitab, and Pearson correla-tions were calculated, which allowed an initial under-standing of where the data is suggesting relationshipsbetween the variants.

RESULTS OF SPACE/NATURE SYNTAX METHODOL-OGY IN USE AT ARCOSANTI

The method was applied to the Arcosanti site, for thepurpose of both initial testing of the current methodol-ogy and further development. Space Syntax analysiswas completed off site using floor and site plans pro-vided by the Cosanti Foundation, before being editedand verified on site by the researcher. The SpaceSyntax results for the Arcosanti site are displayed in fullin Figure 6; the Vaults returned the lowest RRA thussuggesting it as the most central and connected spaceon site, while the Office returned the highest RRA.

Next, the VN value for each of the 15 socialspaces was calculated by the process described in theprevious section; the results can be seen in Figure 7.The space which returned the highest VN value andthus has the highest visual connection to Nature wasthe East Crescent Roof, while both the CommunityRoom and Library/Rec Room had a VN value of 0.

Figure 5. Field of Vision diagrams for Arcosanti Café’s Southfaçade in plan (a) and section (b) (Source: Author)

Figure 6. Results of Space Syntax Analysis at Arcosanti,ordered from most spatially connected to least. (Source:Author).

Figure 7. Results of Nature Syntax Analysis at Arcosanti,ordered from most visually connected to Nature to least.(Source: Author).

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was then compiled in order to investigate if this initialstudy at Arcosanti was suggesting existing relation-ships between RRA, VN, and social interaction. First,the usage patterns for the highest and lowest VN val-ues were examined: the East Crescent Roof has thehighest VN value, at 0.64 while the Community Roomand Library/Rec Room both have VN values of 0. Theobserved activity for the East Crescent Roof,Community Room and Library/Rec Room can be seenin Figure 8. Unsurprisingly, the East Crescent Roofhad the highest proportion of people displaying aVisual Interaction with the Natural Environment, with84% of all such interaction observed across all obser-vations on all sites occurring on the East CrescentRoof. The Community Room and Library/Rec Roomboth had 0% of Visual Interaction with NaturalEnvironment, again unsurprisingly as they have novisual relationship to Nature. There were marked dif-ferences in how the spaces were used; the EastCrescent Roof was observed to have 18.7% of TotalPeople over all observations, significantly higher thanthe Community Room (8.1%) and the Library/RecRoom (0.8%). The most interesting outcome from theobservational data is that the East Crescent Roof expe-rienced a completely different type of social interactionfrom both the Community Room and the Library/RecRoom. The East Crescent Roof saw 23.7% of totalActive use, and 0% of Inactive, compared to theCommunity Room which only saw 4.8% of Active Use,but 20.1% of Inactive use. The differences in socialinteraction were less significant for the Library/Rec

Room, but were still greater for Inactive (1.6%) thanActive (0.6%). Additionally, the East Crescent Roofwas the location for a higher percentage of allPlanned social interaction at 22.8% when comparedto Unplanned Use at 2.8%, again contrasting with theCommunity Room which had only 4.8% of PlannedUse, but 20.6% of Unplanned Use, and theLibrary/Rec Room which saw 0% of Planned Use but3.9% of Unplanned Use.

The highest and lowest RRA values were thencompared; these were for the Vaults (lowest RRA at0.7523) and the Office (highest RRA at 1.5707). Theobservation study results for these spaces can be seenin Figure 9. According to the principles of SpaceSyntax, the Vaults should be a more lively and usedspace as they are more centrally located and accessi-ble. However the observation studies found that thedifference in activity in these spaces was not hugelysignificant when compared with the percentage differ-ences for the highest and lowest values of the VNvalue; the Vaults had a 7.9% share of Total People,while the Office’s share was 5%. These slight differ-ences are consistent throughout all categories of activ-ity observed in the observation studies. The Vaults hasonly marginally more a percentage of total Active Usethan the Office (7.2% compared with 4.7%); totalInactive Use (10.9% to 6%); Planned Use (7.8% to5.7%); and Unplanned Use (8.3% to 2.2%).

A brief analysis of the results of the SpaceSyntax, Nature Syntax and observations suggests anumber of initial findings. The most significant ofthese is that there seems to be a relationship betweenvisibility of a natural environment and how space isused. The East Crescent Roof, with the highest VNvalue appears to be a location for Active, Planned use

Figure 8.Social space usage pattern diagrams for theEast Crescent Roof (a), Community Room (b) andLibrary/Rec Room (c), based on observations carriedout at Arcosanti site in early 2015. (Source: Author).

Figure 9. Constance Region based on the intensity of net-work connectivity.

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while those with lowest VN values are used more forInactive, Unplanned use. Another suggested findingis that, at the Arcosanti site at least, the spatial con-nectivity of a space does not influence its level of useas much as one might expect; the spaces which are atopposite end of the Space Syntax analysis results donot have as significant a distinction in use as thosewhich are at the opposite ends of the Nature Syntaxresults, suggesting that the visibility of Nature from asocial space does indeed play a role in how the spaceis used. While this paper only briefly discusses 5 of 15spaces, these initial findings seem to be somewhatimplied within the correlation data produced for allobservations in the study. Figure 10 shows how thereare significant correlations between RRA value, andInactive Use and Unplanned Use. However, the cor-relations suggest relationships between VN value, andActive Use and Planned Use are less significant thanthe initial analysis of individual spaces implied.Finally, the correlation data seems to support the find-ing that the RRA value may not be as singularly influ-ential in determining how a space is used as it wouldbe expected, as the correlation between the two fac-tors is not strong, as was also suggested in results ofthe observations.

The purpose of this paper was to present thedevelopment of the Space/Nature Syntax methodolo-gy within its academic context, and investigate its use-fulness as a tool for determining how designing tomaintain a human-Nature relationship can informsocial interaction. The methodology takes intoaccount both spatial connectivity and natural connec-tivity, through visibility of Nature, and its initial appli-cation at Arcosanti has produced both promisingresults and raised interesting issues for further investi-gation.

There are a number of future steps for thisresearch work identified. Additional observationalstudies would strengthen and confirm the initial find-ings suggested in this paper, particularly with regardsto the strength of the implied relationships betweenRRA and VN values, and types of social interaction;these additional observations have been carried out at

the Arcosanti site during 2016 and initial analysis con-firms the findings presented within this paper. Themethod will also be repeated for an existing theoreti-cal next stage of development at the Arcosanti site; thecompletion of the East Crescent, which will see anadditional floor being constructed as well as a theatrefilling the currently vacant “Keystone” unit (Figure 11).The purpose of this is to explore, according to the cor-relation data for the existing site design, how futuredevelopment at Arcosanti alters spatial connectivityand natural connectivity of the existing social spaces,and how these alterations could theoretically affecthow social interaction in existing spaces. Finally, whilethe Space/Nature Syntax methodology has thus farbeen developed and tested solely on site at Arcosanti,it is intended to be a methodology which can beapplied to any built environment. The possibility ofapplying the methodology to another site will beexplored, which will assist in both the development ofthe methodology and ensuring its validity and rele-vance as a design and analysis tool.

There is a wealth of evidence to suggest thatWilson’s Biophilia Hypothesis is indeed correct and thehuman-Nature relationship is innate, essential, andbeneficial to us. There is an irrefutable connectionbetween humans and the natural environment, onewhich has been shown to inspire, teach and help healthe human mind. However the migration from a ruralcivilisation to urban civilisation witnessed in recenthuman history continues at an ever increasing rate,and within 35 years the significant majority of theworld’s population will be urban dwellers. If the linkbetween humans and Nature is accepted as essential,then the field of architecture, as the craftsman of thenew human environment, has a significant role to playin creating built environments which nurture andmaintain this relationship – arguably, they have aresponsibility to do this. The development of theSpace/Nature Syntax methodology aims to provide atool which will help architects and designers to makeinformed design choices, and create built environ-ments which both provide the benefits of city living thatcontinue to attract so many people, while allowing theevolutionary connection with Nature to survive.

Figure 11. Constance Region based on the intensity of net-work connectivity.

Figure 10. Constance Region based on the intensity of net-work connectivity.

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Author(s):

Karen MunroDepartment of Architecture, University of StrathclydeEmail:karen.munro@strath.ac.uk

Dr David GriersonDepartment of ArchitectureUniversity of StrathclydeEmail: d.grierson@strath.ac.uk