Bill Hillier’s legacy, and the future of Space Syntax – notes from the Space Syntax book launch
Posted on 4th June, 2025
Space Syntax, a collection of the late Bill Hillier’s work that reflects the progression of his influential ideas across his career, published in April. In a post that originally appeared on Mapping Urban Form and Society, Professor Laura Vaughan reflects on Bill Hiller’s legacy, the future of Space Syntax, and a launch event that took place in May.
It’s hard to believe that it’s three years since I first wrote to leading space syntax scholars John Peponis (Georgia Tech) and Ruth Conroy Dalton (Northumbria) with the idea for an edited volume of Bill’s key papers. We had the mad notion that it would be quite a simple process. In some ways it was: we selected papers that weren’t available elsewhere for which Hillier was first author, choosing pieces that entailed significant theoretical and methodological insights, with a bias to the earlier articles and book chapters that established the foundations of the discipline of space syntax.
Edited by me, Laura Vaughan, John Peponis, and Ruth Conroy Dalton, the book offers access to essential papers on the origins and development of the discipline of space syntax, ranging from pieces on architecture as a professional and research discipline, through to later articles that present a theory of the spatial structure of the city and its social functions. By bringing together writing from across Bill Hillier’s career span of half a century, with specially commissioned introductions by a wide range of international experts in the field, we aimed to contextualise his key ideas.
The selection of contributors was relatively straightforward, as we did so on the basis that they had written something relevant about the piece in the past and/or were from adjacent fields that we felt that could add an interesting angle to Bill’s ideas. Inevitably, this consequently led to many space syntax theorists not being included.
The main themes in Bill’s work were summarised for the book’s introductory chapter, recontextualising their historical development in an extended piece written by the three editors led by John Peponis. Both he and Ruth checked, and revised where necessary, formulae and graphs that had been corrupted in earlier publications.
All the pieces were reformatted from the original, frequently poor quality photocopied papers. This involved, as well as rekeying the text of many of the earlier pieces, checking and revision of references, with additional editorial endnotes. The book also includes a list of published works by Bill Hillier. The illustrations were redrawn by a team led by Ruth Conroy Dalton, working with Emad Alyedreessy, while Nick (Sheep) Dalton, author of the original space syntax suite of software, wrote the code to generate new syntax graphs in several instances. An essential index to the book was prepared by Garyfalia (Falli) Palaiologou.
The launch held a panel discussion to reflect on Hillier’s legacy and explore future directions for the field of space syntax, with prompting questions from the event’s chair, Kimon Krenz. Linked to below are the brief papers prepared by John Peponis and Ruth Conroy Dalton, as well as those of several of the panellists.
Introduction to Bill Hillier, by John Peponis
Where Might Bill Hillier Have Gone Next? Reflections on the Future Directions of Space Syntax, by Ruth Conroy Dalton
Charting the Adjacent Possible: Future explorations for Space Syntax as a socio-spatial theory, by Vinicius M. Netto
What innovative cognitive frameworks or methods could revolutionise the way we understand human interaction with space? by Michal Gath-Morad, University of Cambridge
Can space syntax better accommodate the social, institutional, and behavioural nuances that define how people truly use and experience space? by Kerstin Sailer
About the author
Professor Laura Vaughan is Director of the Space Syntax Laboratory at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, where she is Professor of Urban Form and Society. Following an architectural design degree at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem, Israel, she studied for an MSc and PhD at the Lab. After several years working with Bill Hillier at Space Syntax Limited, she returned to UCL in 2001 as lecturer and Programme Director, MSc Advanced Architectural Studies (now MSc/MRes Space Syntax). She has been the Lab’s Director since 2014. In addition to co-editing Space Syntax, she also edited Suburban Urbanities (UCL Press, 2016) and is author of Mapping Society (UCL Press, 2018).
Read her blog to find out more about her work: Mapping Urban Form and Society.