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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

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

Contents Space is the machine | Bill Hillier Space Syntax
Preface to the e-edition v
Acknowlegdements xii
Introduction 1
Part one Theoretical preliminaries
Chapter one What architecture adds to building 10
Chapter two The need for an analytic theory of architecture 39
Chapter three Non-discursive technique 65
Part two Non-discursive regularities
Chapter four Cities as movment economies 111
Chapter five Can architecture cause social malaise? 138
Chapter six Time as an aspect of space 171
Chapter seven Visible colleges 190
Part three The laws of the field
Chapter eight Is architecture an ars combinatoria? 216
Chapter nine The fundamental city 262
Part four Theoretical syntheses
Chapter ten Space is the machine 288
Chapter eleven The reasoning art 314
Index 344
Contents

Preface to the e-edition Space is the machine | Bill Hillier Space Syntax
Space is the Machine was first published in 1996 by Cambridge University Press.
The book built on the theory of society and space set out in The Social Logic of
Space (Cambridge University Press 1984), to outline a configurational theory of
architecture and urbanism. Unfortunately, although The Social Logic of Space is
still in print after 23 years, when the initial print-run of Space is the Machine was
exhausted, the number of colour plates forbad the use of the cheap reprinting
technology that would have made a succession of reprints economically viable.
So, although the book was selling well at the time, it fell out of print. As demand
for the book has continued, for several years copies of the book have either been
impossible to find or prohibitively expensive.
I am now immensely pleased that Space Syntax Limited, with support from
University College London (UCL), have decided to rectify this situation by creating
a new e-edition of the book and making it available for free on the web. I am
particularly grateful to Tim Stonor for the initial decision to fund the project, to Tim,
Chris Stutz and Shinichi Iida for organizing and managing the project and acting
as effective editors of the new edition, and to Laura Vaughan and Suzanne Tonkin
of UCL for their encouragement throughout the process. Thanks and appreciation
are also due to Christian Altmann for the new design of the publication; to Rodrigo
Mora for preparing electronic images from the original artworks; to Marco Gandini,
Joseph Laycock, Sacha Tan, and Saussan Khalil for proofreading; to Molly Hall for
creating a new index; and to Christian Beros for image manipulation and creation of
the web distribution pages for the e-edition.
Looking back on Space is the Machine, as on The Social Logic of Space,
I find myself pleasantly surprised that the foundations set out there for the ‘space
syntax’ approach to human spatial phenomena still seem robust. At the same time,
the developments in the subject since 1996 have been substantial, not least through
the inauguration of the bi-annual space syntax symposia in 1997 (originally the
brainchild of Mark David Major). These have created a resource of several hundred
papers on developing the theory, methodology and applications of the space syntax
approach and now constitute one of its most important resources. To me personally,
it is most gratifying that a set of ideas created by a small group of people working
together at UCL in the nineteen seventies has now flowered into a large and
coherent body of work belonging to a world-wide research community.
At the risk of being unfair to others, however, it does seem to me that certain
contributions to the theory and method of space syntax have been so significant
as to deserve review in this preface to what is now an eleven-year-old text. For
example, on the theoretical foundations of space syntax, the three papers published
by John Peponis and his colleagues of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta
in Environment and Planning B in 1997 and 1998 (Peponis et al 1997, Peponis et al
1998a, b) on the geometrical foundations seems of permanent significance, as do
the two papers of Mike Batty of CASA at UCL (Batty 2004a, b) on the graph theoretic
Preface to the e-edition
v

foundations. I would also hope that my own attempts to show that the effects on
ambient space of the placing and shaping of physical objects are systematic and
can be mathematically expressed will prove similarly robust. The importance of these
effects both for the understanding of urban form (Hillier 2002), and human spatial
cognition (Hillier 2007) will, I hope, lead to a more unified understanding of the link
between these two realms.
On the methodological side, there has been a remarkable flourishing of
new syntactic methods from many sources and locations. From UCL, the most
significant of these have been the ‘syntacticising’ of visibility graph analysis by
Alasdair Turner in his Depthmap software (Turner & Penn 1999, Turner et al 2001)
and the development of segment based axial analysis with angular, metric and
topological weightings, initially through the pioneering work of Shinichi Iida and
his Segmen software with subsequent implementation in Depthmap. It was these
more complex and disaggregated forms of line analysis that allowed us to show
not only that human movement was spatially guided by geometrical and topological
rather than metric factors but also to clarify why a powerful impact of space
structure on movement was to be mathematically expected (Hillier & Iida 2005).
Other key methodological developments include the pioneering work of Dalton on
angular analysis (Dalton 2001), now available in the WebMap and WebMapatHome
software; the work of Figueiredo and Amorim of the University of Pernambuco in
Brazil on ‘continuity lines’ in the Mindwalk software (Figueiredo & Amorim 2005),
which extend lines by discounting angular changes below a certain threshold; and
the Spatialist software development by Peponis and his colleagues in connection
with the three papers referred to above. Other significant software developments
focus on linking space to other urban factors such as land use patterns and
densities, notably the Place Syntax software from Marcus and his colleagues at the
Royal College of Technology in Stockholm, Sequence software developed by Stegen
at ARSIS in Brussels, and the Confeego software pioneered by Stutz, Gil, Friedrich
and Klaasmeyer for Space Syntax Limited.
In the more substantive areas of theory, my own research has explored
the inter-relations of space, movement at different scales and land use patterns,
and it can now arguably be seen to be pointing in the direction of a design-level
(meaning precise enough for the ideas to be usable in design) theory of cities
as self-organising systems. The theory is in two parts: on the one hand, a theory
of how the spatial form of cities is shaped by spatial laws linking the emergence
of characteristically urban space patterns to cognitive as well as to social and
economic factors; on the other, a theory of how the emergent patterns of space
shape movement, and through this shape land use patterns, leading through
feedback and multiplier effects, to the generic form of the city as a foreground
network of linked centres at all scales set into a background network of largely
residential space. Critical to the emergence of this theory was the paper “Centrality
vi

as a process” (Hillier 1999) which showed how local processes with an essentially
metric nature combined with the larger scale geometric and topological properties
of the spatial network to create the processes by which centres and sub-centres
emerge in the network through the logic of the network itself - though each is of
course also affected by its relation to others.
Taken together these developments in space syntax suggest that it offers
a powerful complement to traditional methods for modelling cities, not least transport
modelling methods. These have conceptual foundations quite different from
syntactic models and seek to explain different things, but they could be brought
into a symbiotic relation with syntactic models to the benefit of both. A key
research priority in the immediate future will be to explore their inter-relations.
In fact, following the pioneering work of Penn on the configurational analysis
of vehicular movement (Penn et all 1998) work by Chiaradia, Raford and others
in Space Syntax Limited has already suggested that configuational factors can
contribute insights into other kinds of movement networks, including cycles,
buses, and overground and underground rail networks.
One aspect of the deepening relation between space syntax and the wider
spatial research community has been the debate as to how far space syntax’s
basic tenets, such as the representation of cities as line networks and the setting
aside of Euclidean metric factors at the larger spatial scale in favour of topological
and/or geometric ones, are theoretically valid and methodologically viable. From the
syntactic point, certain points of criticism, such as that axial maps are ‘subjective’
and measures should be metricised, seem to have been answered. Turner et
al (2005) have showed that least line graphs (allowing random selection among
syntactically equivalent lines) are rigorously defined and indeed are objects of great
theoretical interest in themselves, as is shown by recent work suggesting they
have fractal properties (Carvalho & Penn 2004). Likewise the criticism that syntax
disregards metric information has been answered by showing clearly that in terms
of functionality this is a scale issue. As shown in (Hillier 1999) referred to above, at
a sufficiently localised scale space works in a metric way, perhaps reflecting the
scale up to which people can make reasonably accurate judgement about distance
in complex spaces, so an account of the metric properties of space is necessary
to a functionally sensitive and predictive analysis of space at this level. But at the
non-local level, it seems that the functionality of space reflects people’s use of
a geometrical picture of the network connectivity rather than a metric picture in
navigating the urban grid, and at this scale introducing metric weighting into the
measures is positively misleading (Hillier et al 2007).
The study of space within buildings using space syntax methods has
also much advanced since 1996, not least of course through the publication of
Julienne Hanson’s Decoding Homes and Houses (1999), the third of the syntax
books from Cambridge University Press. Also notable has been the work of Penn
vii

and his colleagues on spatial form and function in complex buildings, in particular
the influential work on spatial design and innovation in work environments.
Although not strictly within the syntax context, the highly original work of Steadman
(Steadman 1998, 2001) on the enumeration of built forms through a clarification of
geometric, constructional and environmental constraints both answers questions
about enumerability raised in Space is the Machine, and offers a platform for a new
approach to spatial enumerability which could and should be taken up within the
syntax community.
Against the background of these theoretical and methodological
developments, and cross-disciplinary exchanges, space syntax research is now
becoming much more interdisciplinary. Following a special issue of Environment
and Behaviour in 2003 edited by Ruth Conroy Dalton and Craig Zimring bringing
together papers on space syntax and cognition from the 2001 Atlanta Symposium,
the 2006 conference on Spatial Cognition at the University of Bremen organised
a well-attended all day workshop on space syntax. The link between space
syntax and cognitive studies is now becoming a well-established branch of
syntax research. At the same time the pioneering work of Laura Vaughan and her
colleagues is taking syntax in the direction of a greater engagement with social
studies, and a special issue of Progress in Planning will shortly appear on the use
of space syntax in the study of space as a dimension of social segregation and
exclusion (Vaughan (ed.) 2007).
Overall, space syntax is becoming a flourishing paradigm for spatial studies,
increasingly well integrated with other approaches and increasingly expanding its
scope and scale of investigation. But the real test of theory and method is application
in the real world of projects and development. Here the contribution of Space Syntax
Limited cannot be overestimated. Since its foundation as an active company offering
spatial design and spatial planning consultancy under the leadership of Tim Stonor, it
has tested the theory and technology on a wide range of projects, many of them high
profile. There are now a significant number of projects in which Space Syntax has
exerted a key spatial design influence, including of course in the redesign of Trafalgar
Square (with Norman Foster) and Nottingham’s Old Market Square (with Gustafson
Porter), arguably the two most famous squares in the UK, both now functioning in a
new and highly successful way following their respective re-designs. Other up and
running projects include the Brindley Place development in Birmingham, Exchange
Square and Fleet Place in London, and of course the Millennium Bridge, where
Space Syntax showed not only how well the bridge would be used but also how
strong and beneficial its long term effects would be on the areas on both sides of the
river. Equally interesting to space syntax are cases where aspects of space syntax
advice was not followed, since in each case problems have appeared that were
clearly foreseen by syntax at the design stage.
viii

Carefully and responsibly used, it is clear that syntax works as a design and planning
tool. One consequence of its success in relatively small-scale design and planning
problems is that syntax is now increasingly being used as the foundation for the
space-based master-planning of whole parts of cities or even of whole cities, and so
in effect as a new way of modelling cities. It is increasingly well understood that a
syntactic model of a city has two great advantages as a complement to an orthodox
model. First, a syntactic model allows the designer or planner to work across all
urban scales using the same model, so that one form of analysis will identify the
large scale movement networks and its land use effects, while another will similarly
identify micro-scale features and land use potentials of the local urban grid. Second,
exactly the same model that is used in research mode to investigate and understand
how the city is working now can be used in design and planning mode to simulate
the likely effects of different design and planning strategies and schemes, allowing
the rapid exploration of the long term consequences of different strategies.
Space Syntax Limited also constitutes an experiment in how the relations
between a university and a spin-out company can be organised. Although Space
Syntax Limited carries out its own research, it maintains a very close relation to
the university research department, feeding problems into it and testing new ideas
and new technologies. Collaboration is both at the strategic research level, but also
reaches down to the level of individual projects where necessary. The experience
of a working collaboration between the university and the company has convinced
us all that in this field even the most basic research cannot be separated from the
demands and questions raised by practice. Many theoretical developments have
been sparked by questions raised by projects, and at the same time projects have
provided a superb early testing ground for turning research ideas into workable
and proven technologies. The fact that it is Space Syntax Limited which is now
re-publishing one of the basic theoretical texts of space syntax is an emblem of the
closeness with which theory and practice, and the university and the commercial
world, have developed collaboratively over the past decade.
bh
June 6th 2007
ix

References
Batty, M. (2004) A New Theory of Space Syntax, Working Paper 75,
Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, UCL, London: available from WWW
athttp://www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/working_papers/paper75.pdf
Batty, M. (2004) Distance in Space Syntax, Working Paper 80, Centre for Advanced
Spatial Analysis, UCL, London: available from WWW at
http://www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/working_papers/paper80.pdf
Carvalho, R., Penn, A. (2004) “Scaling and universality in the micro-structure of
urban space.” Physica A 332 539-547.
Dalton, N. (2001) “Fractional configuration analysis and a solution to the Manhattan
Problem.” Proceedings of the 3rd International Space Syntax Symposium, Georgia
Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, 7-11 May 2001.
Figueiredo, L., Amorim, L. (2005) “Continuity lines in the axial system.” Proceedings
of the 5th International Space Syntax Symposium, Technische Universiteit Delft, the
Netherlands, 13-17 June 2005.
Hanson J (1999) Decoding Homes and Houses Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge.
Hillier, B. (1999) “Centrality as a process: accounting for attraction inequalities in
deformed grids.” Urban Design International 4 107-127.
Hillier, B. (2002) “A theory of the city as object.” Urban Design International 7 153-
179.
Hillier, B., Iida, S. (2005) “Network and psychological effects in urban movement.”
In Cohn, A. G., Mark, D. M. (eds) Spatial Information Theory: COSIT 2005, Lecture
Notes in Computer Science number 3693, 475-490, Springer-Verlag, Berlin.
Hillier, B. (2007) “Studying cities to learn about minds: how geometric intuitions
shape urban space and make it work.” Environment and Planning B: Planning and
Design (forthcoming).
Hillier, B., Turner, A., Yang, T., Park, H. T. (2007) “Metric and topo-geometric
properties of urban street networks: some convergences, divergences and new
results” Proceedings of the 6th International Space Syntax Symposium, ITU, Istanbul,
Turkey, 12-15 June 2007.
x

xi
Penn, A., Hillier, B., Banister, D., Xu, J. (1998) “Configurational modelling of urban
movement networks” Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 25 59-84.
Penn, A. and Desyllas, J. and Vaughan, L. (1999) “The space of innovation:
interaction and communication in the work environment” Environment and Planning
B: Planning and Design, 26 (2) 193-218
Peponis, J., Wineman, J., Rashid, M., Kim, S. H., Bafna, S. (1997) “On the description
of shape and spatial configuration inside buildings: convex partitions and their local
properties.” Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 24(5) 761-781.
Peponis, J., Wineman, J., Bafna, S., Rashid, M., Kim, S. H. (1998) “On the generation
of linear representations of spatial configuration.” Environment and Planning B:
Planning and Design 25(4) 559-576.
Peponis, J., Wineman, J., Rashid, M., Bafna, S., Kim, S. H. (1998) “Describing plan
configuration according to the covisibility of surfaces.” Environment and Planning B:
Steadman, J. P. (2001) “Every built form has a number.” Proceedings of the 3rd
International Space Syntax Symposium, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta,
GA, 7-11 May 2001.
Steadman, J. P. (1998) “Sketch for an archetypal building.” Environment and Planning
B: Planning and Design, 25th Anniversary Issue, 92-105.
Turner, A., Penn, A. (1999) “Making isovists syntactic: isovist integration analysis.”
Proceedings of the 2nd International Space Syntax Symposium, Universidade de
Brasília, Brasilia, Brazil, 29 March – 2 April 1999.
Turner, A., Doxa, M., O’Sullivan, D., Penn, A. (2001) “From isovists to visibility graphs:
a methodology for the analysis of architectural space.” Environment and Planning B:
Turner, A., Penn, A., Hillier, B. (2005) “An algorithmic definition of the axial map.”
Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 32(3) 425-444.
Vaughan, L. (ed.) (2007) Progress in Planning (The Spatial Syntax of Urban
Segregation) 67(4) (in press).

Acknowlegdements Space is the machine | Bill Hillier Space Syntax
Acknowledgements and thanks are due first to the many friends and
colleagues who have, over the years, made an enormous contribution to the
ideas and research set out in this book, most notably Dr. Julienne Hanson, Alan
Penn and Dr. John Peponis, each of whose contributions has been too large and
diverse to acknowledge in detail; to Nick ‘Sheep’ Dalton for the title of the book,
and also for the brilliant software on which much of the research is founded, the
outward and visible sign of which is in the Plates in the book; to Mark David Major
for masterminding the gradual and painful evolution of the text and illustrations;
to Myrto-Gabriella (Petunia) Exacoustou for reading, criticising and helping me
substantially improve the final draft; to Professor Pat O’Sullivan, Head of the
Bartlett, for a six months sabbatical in 1992, when I said I would finish but he
knew I wouldn’t; to the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
for continued research funding; to the many contributors to the research, and
especially Tim Stonor, Kayvan Karimi, Beatriz de Campos, Xu Jianming, Gordon
Brown, John Miller, Tad Grajewski, Lena Tsoskounoglou, Laura Vaughan, Martine
de Maesseneer, Guido Stegen and Chang Hua Yoo (who drew the first version
of the map of London); to the MSc and doctoral students of the Bartlett School
of Graduate Studies who continue to give so much intellectual buzz to the
department; to Professors Philip Steadman, Tom Markus and Mike Batty for
sustained intellectual support over the years; to Stuart Lipton and his team at
Stanhope Properties Plc for providing us with so many opportunities to apply our
research on real development and design projects, and to learn so much from
them, and also to Gordon Graham of the London Regeneration Consortium, the
South Bank Employers Group, Chesterfield Properties Plc, Ove Arup and Partners,
and Peter Palumbo; to the many public bodies who have invited us to contribute
to their work through applied research, including National Health Service Estates,
British Railways, British Airways, Powergen, the Department of Education and
Science, Technical Aid for Nottingham Communities, the London Boroughs of
Croydon and Camden, and the Tate Gallery; to the many architectural practices
who have invited us to work with them on their projects, but most especially
Sir Norman Foster and Partners, the Richard Rogers Partnership, Terry Farrell
and Company, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, Nicholas Grimshaw and Partners,
Bennetts Associates, SW Architects, and Avanti Architects; to Professor Sheila
Hillier and Martha Hillier for tolerating an obsessive lap-topper in the house for
longer than was reasonable; to Kate, Charlotte and Ben Hillier for continuing to
be the good friends and supporters of a preoccupied and inconsiderate father; to
the thief who took all copies of the draft of the first four chapters from my home
when stealing my computer, thus saving me from premature publication; to Rose
Shawe-Taylor, Karl Howe, Emma Smith, Susan Beer and Josie Dixon of Cambridge
University Press; and finally to UCL for continuing to be the most tolerant and
supportive of Universities.
Acknowlegdements
xii

Introduction Space is the machine | Bill Hillier Space Syntax
Introduction

In 1984, in The Social Logic of Space, written in collaboration with Julienne
Hanson and published by Cambridge University Press, I set out a new theory
of space as an aspect of social life. Since then the theory has developed into an
extensive research programme into the spatial nature and functioning of buildings
and cities, into computer software linking ‘space syntax’ analytic tools with
graphical representation and output for researchers and designers, and into an
expanding range of applications in architectural and urban design. During this time,
a large number of articles, reports and features have appeared, theses have been
written in many universities using the theory and methods of ‘space syntax’, and
research has been initiated in many parts of the world into areas as diverse as
the analysis of archaeological remains and the design of hospitals.
During this time, many theoretical advances have also been made,
often in symbiosis with the development of new techniques for the computer
representation and analysis of space. One key outcome of these advances is
that the concept of ‘configuration’ has moved to centre stage. Configuration
means, put simply, relations taking into account other relations. The techniques
of ‘configurational analysis’ - of which the various ‘space syntax’ techniques are
exemplars - that have been built from this idea have made it possible to bring
the elusive ‘pattern aspect’ of things in architecture and urban design into the
light of day, and to give quantitative expression to the age-old idea that it is
‘how things are put together’ that matters.
This has in turn led to a clear articulation of a philosophy of design.
Architectural and urban design, both in their formal and spatial aspects, are
seen as fundamentally configurational in that the way the parts are put together
to form the whole is more important than any of the parts taken in isolation. The
configurational techniques developed for research can, in fact, just as easily be
turned round and used to support experimentation and simulation in design. In
linking theoretical research to design in this way, we are following a historical
tradition in architectural theory which has both attempted to subject the pattern
aspect of things in architecture to rational analysis, and to test these analyses
by embodying them in real designs. The difference now is only that the
advent of computers allows us to bring a much great degree of rigour
and testing to theoretical ideas.
The aim of this book is to bring together some of these recent
developments in applying configurational analysis to issues of architectural and
urban theory into a single volume. The surprising success of configurational ideas
in capturing the inner logic of at least some aspects of the form and functioning
of built environments, suggests that it might in due course be useful to extend
these ideas to other areas where similar problems of describing and quantifying
configuration seem to be central, including some aspects of cognitive psychology,
but also perhaps sociology itself. At present we are encouraged by the current
interest in these ideas across a range of disciplines and, just as the last decade
has been devoted to the development and testing of techniques of configurational
1

Introduction

analysis within architecture and urban design, so we hope that the coming
decade will see collaborations amongst disciplines where configuration is identified
as a significant problem, and where some development of the configurational
methodology could conceivably play a useful role.
The immediate context of the book is the changing theoretical debate within
and around architecture. Looking back, it is easy to see that in spite of the attention
paid to theory in architecture in the twentieth century, and in spite of the great
influence that theories have had on our built environment, architectural theories in
the last decades have in general suffered from two debilitating weaknesses. First,
most have been strongly normative, and weakly analytic, in that they have been too
much concerned to tell designers how buildings and environments should be, and
too little concerned with how they actually are. As a result, theories of architecture
have influenced our built environment enormously, sometimes for good, sometimes
for ill, but they have done little to advance our understanding of architecture.
Second, there has been an explosion of the historic tendency to form
architectural theories out of ideas and concepts borrowed from other disciplines.
As a result, architectural discourse has been dominated by a series of borrowings,
first from engineering and biology, then from psychology and the social sciences,
then from linguistics and semiology, and most recently of all from literary theory.
Each of these has had the merit that it allowed architecture to become part of wider
intellectual debate. But there has been a price, in that very little attention has been
given to the internal development of architecture as a discipline. Through this turning
away, architecture has increasingly ignored the lessons waiting to be learned from
the intensive study of experimental twentieth-century architecture, and acquired
what now amounts to a hidden history in which key aspects of recent architectural
reality have been suppressed as though they were too painful to talk about.
The aim of this book is to begin the process of remedying this bias towards
overly normative theories based on concept borrowing from other disciplines, by
initiating the search for a genuinely analytic and internal theory of architecture,
that is, one based on the direct study of buildings and built environments, and
guided by concepts formed out of the necessities of this study. The guiding belief
is that what we need at the end of the twentieth century is a better and deeper
understanding of the phenomenon of architecture and how it affects people’s lives,
and how this relates to innovative possibility in architecture, and the central role of
the architectural imagination.
This book is therefore concerned with what buildings and cities are like,
why they are as they are, how they work, how they come about through design,
and how they might be different. The word ‘theory’ is used not in the common
architectural sense of seeking some set of rules which, if followed, will guarantee
architectural success, but in the philosophical and scientific sense that theories
are the abstractions through which we understand the world. An architectural
theory, as we see it, should deepen our grasp of architectural phenomena, and
only subsequently and with great modesty, suggest possible principles on which

Introduction

to base speculation and innovation in design. Such a theory is analytic before it is
normative. Its primary role is to enquire into the puzzle that we see and experience
architecture, but we do not understand what we see and experience. However
strongly we may feel that architecture may be wrong or right, we rarely understand
the architectural grounds on which such judgments are made. This book therefore
seeks an understanding of the theoretical content of architecture.
The book is in four parts. The first, ‘Theoretical Preliminaries’, deals with
the most basic of all questions which architectural theory tries to answer: what is
architecture, and what are theories, that they can be needed in architecture? In the
first chapter, ‘What architecture adds to building’, the key concepts of the book are
set out on the way to a definition of architecture. The argument is that in addition
to functioning as bodily protection, buildings operate socially in two ways: they
constitute the social organisation of everyday life as the spatial configurations of
space in which we live and move, and represent social organisation as physical
configurations of forms and elements that we see. Both social dimensions of
building are therefore configurational in nature, and it is the habit of the human mind
to handle configuration unconsciously and intuitively, in much the same way as we
handle the grammatical and semantic structures of a language intuitively. Our minds
are very effective in handling configuration in this way, but because we do work this
way, we find it very difficult to analyse and talk rationally about the configurational
aspects of things. Configuration is in general ‘non-discursive’, meaning that we do
not know how to talk about it and do not in general talk about it even when we are
most actively using it. In vernacular buildings, the configurational, or non-discursive,
aspects of space and form are handled exactly like the grammar of language,
that is, as an implication of the manipulation of the surface elements, or words
and groups of words in the language case, building elements and geometrical
coordinations in building. In the vernacular the act of building reproduces cultural
given spatial and formal patterns. This is why it seldom seems ‘wrong’. Architecture,
in contrast, is the taking into conscious, reflective thought of these non-discursive
and configurational aspects of space and form, leading to the exercise of choice
within a wide field of possibility, rather than the reduplication of the patterns specific
to a culture. Architecture is, in essence, the application of speculative and abstract
thought to the non-discursive aspects of building, and because it is so, it is also its
application to the social and cultural contents of building.
Chapter 2, ‘The need for an analytic theory of architecture’, then takes this
argument into architectural theory. Architectural theories are essentially attempts to
subject the non-discursive aspects of space and form to rational analysis, and to
establish principles to guide design in the field of choice, principles which are now
needed as cultural guidance is no longer automatic as it is in a vernacular tradition.
Architectural theories are both analytic in that they always depend on conjectures
about what human beings are like, but they are also normative, and say how the
world should be rather more strongly than they say how it is. This means that
architecture can be innovative and experimental through the agency of theories, but

Introduction

it can also be wrong. Because theories can be wrong, architects need to be able to
evaluate how good their theories are in practice, since the repetition of theoretical
error - as in much of the modernist housing programme - will inevitably lead to the
curtailment of architectural freedom. The consequence of this is the need for a truly
analytic theory of architecture, that is, one which permits the investigation of the
non-discursive without bias towards one or other specific non-discursive style.
Chapter 3, ‘Non-discursive technique’, outlines the prime requirement
for permitting architects to begin this theoretical learning: the need for neutral
techniques for the description and analysis of the non-discursive aspects of space
and form, that is, techniques that are not simply expressions of partisanship for
a particular type of configuration, as most architectural theories have been in the
past. The chapter notes a critical difference between regularities and theories.
Regularities are repeated phenomena, either in the form of apparent typing or
apparent consistencies in the time order in which events occur. Regularities are
patterns in surface phenomena. Theories are attempts to model the underlying
processes that produce regularities. Every science theorises on the basis of its
regularities. Social sciences tend to be weak not because they lack theories but
because they lack regularities which theories can seek to explain and which
therefore offer the prime test of theories. The first task in the quest for an analytic
theory of architecture is therefore to seek regularities. The first purpose of ‘non-
discursive technique’ is to pursue this task.
Part II of the book, ‘Non-discursive Regularities’, then sets out a number
of studies in which regularities in the relation between spatial configuration and
the observed functioning of built environments have been established using ‘non-
discursive techniques’ of analysis to control the architectural variables.
Chapter 4, ‘Cities as movement economies’ reports a fundamental research finding:
that movement in the urban grid is, other things being equal, generated by the
configuration of the grid itself. This finding allows completely new insights into the
structure of urban grids, and the way these structures relate to urban functioning.
The relation between grid and movement in fact underlies many other aspects of
urban form: the distribution of land uses, such as retail and residence, the spatial
patterning of crime, the evolution of different densities and even the part-whole
structure of cities. The influence of the fundamental grid-movement relation is so
pervasive that cities are conceptualised in the chapter as ‘movement economies’,
in which the structuring of movement by the grid leads, through multiplier effects, to
dense patterns of mixed use encounter that characterise the spatially successful city.
Chapter 5, ‘Can architecture cause social malaise?’ then discusses
how this can go wrong. Focussing on specific studies of housing estates using
configurational analysis coupled to intensive observation as well as social data it
is shown how the overly complex and poorly structured internal space of many
housing estates, including low-rise estates, leads to impoverishment of the ‘virtual
community’ — that is, the system of natural co-presence and co-awareness created
by spatial design and realised through movement - and this in turn leads to anti-

Introduction

social uses of space, which are the first stage in decline towards the ‘sink estate’.
Because the role of space in this process is to create a disorderly and unsafe
pattern of space use, and this is then perceived and experienced, it is possible to
conceptualise how architecture works alongside social processes to create social
decline. In a sense, the creation of disorderly space use through maladroit space
design creates the first symptoms of decline, even before any real decline has
occurred. In a sense then, it is argued, we find that the symptoms help to bring
about the disease.
Chapter 6, ‘Time as an aspect of space’ then considers another
fundamental difference between urban forms: that between cities which serve the
needs of production, distribution and trade, and those which serve the needs of
social reproduction, that is of government, major social institutions and bureaucracies.
A series of ‘strange towns’ are examined, and it is shown how in their spatial
properties, they are in many senses the opposite to the ‘normal’ towns considered
in Chapter 5. The detailed spatial mechanisms of these towns are examined, and
a ‘genotype’ proposed. An explanation is then suggested as to why ‘cities of social
reproduction’ tend to construct these distinctive types of spatial patterns.
Chapter 7, ‘Visible Colleges’, then turns to the interiors of buildings. It
begins by setting out a general theory of space in buildings, taking into account the
results of settlement analysis, and then highlights a series of studies of buildings.
A key distinction is made between ‘long and short models’, that is, between cases
where space is strongly governed by rules, and therefore acts to conserve given
social statuses and relationships and cases where space acts to generate relations
over and above those given by the social situation. The concept of long and short
models permits social relations and spatial configuration to be conceptualised in
an analogous way. A ritual is a long model social event, since all that happens
is governed by rules, and a ritual typically generates a precise system of spatial
relationships and movements through time, that is, a spatial ‘long model’. A party is
a short model event, since its object is to generate new relationships by shuffling
them in space, and this means that rules must be minimised by using a spatial
‘short model’. In a long model situation space is adapted to support the rules, and
behavioural rules must also support it. In a short model situation, space evolves to
structure, and often to maximise, encounter density.
Part III of the book, ‘The Laws of the Field’, then uses these noted
regularities to reconsider the most fundamental question of all in architectural
theory: how is the vast field of possible spatial complexes constrained to create
those that are actually found as buildings? First, in Chapter Eight, ‘Is architecture
an ars combinatoria?’, a general theory of ‘partitioning’ is proposed, in which it is
shown that local physical changes in a spatial system always have more or less
global configurational effects. It is the laws governing this passage form local
physical moves to global spatial effects that are the spatial laws that underlie
building. These local-to-global spatial laws are linked to the evolution of real
buildings through what will be called ‘generic function’, by which is meant the

Introduction

spatial implications of the most fundamental aspects of human use of space, that
is, the fact of occupation and the fact of movement. At this generic level, function
imposes restraints on what is spatially viable, and this is responsible for what all
buildings have in common as spatial designs. Generic function is the ‘first filter’
between the field of possibility and architectural actuality. The second filter is then
the cultural or programmatic requirement of that type of building. The third filter is
the idiosyncrasies of structure and expression that then distinguish that building
from all others. The passage from the possible to the real passes through these
three filters, and without an understanding of each we cannot decipher the form-
function relation. Most of all, without a knowledge of generic function and its spatial
implications we cannot understand that what all buildings have in common in their
spatial structures is already profoundly influenced by human functioning in space.
In Chapter 9, ‘The fundamental city’, the theory of generic function and the
three filters is applied to cities to show how much of the growth of settlements
is governed by these basic laws. A new computer modelling technique of ‘all
line analysis’, which begins by conceptualising vacant space as an infinitely
dense matrix of lines, containing all possible structures, is used to show how the
observable regularities in urban forms from the most local to the most global can be
seen to be products of the same underlying processes. A fundamental settlement
process is proposed, of which particular cultural types are parameterisations. Finally,
it is shown how the fundamental settlement process is essentially realised through
a small number of spatial ideas which have an essentially geometrical nature.
Part IV of the book, ‘Theoretical Syntheses’, then begins to draw together
some of the questions raised in Part I, the regularities shown in Part II and the
laws proposed in Part III, to suggest how the two central problems in architectural
theory, namely the form-function problem and the form-meaning problem, can be
reconceptualised. Chapter 10, ‘Space is the machine’, reviews the form-function
theory in architecture and attempts to establish a pathology of its formulation: how
it came to be set up in such a way that it could not be solved. It then proposes how
the configuration paradigm permits a reformulation, through which we can not only
make sense of the relation between form and function in buildings, but also we can
make sense of how and why buildings, in a powerful sense are ‘social objects’ and
in fact play a powerful role in the realisation and sustaining of human society.
Finally, in Chapter 11, ‘The reasoning art’, the notion of configuration is applied
to the study of what architects do, that is, design. Previous models of the design
process are reviewed, and it is shown that without knowledge of configuration
and the concept of the non-discursive, we cannot understand the internalities
of the design process. A new knowledge-based model of design is proposed,
with configuration at its centre. It is argued from this that because design is a
configurational process, and because it is the characteristic of configuration that
local changes make global differences, design is necessarily a top down process.
This does not mean that it cannot be analysed, or supported by research. It shows
however that only configurationally biased knowledge can really support the design

Introduction

process, and this, essentially, is theoretical knowledge. It follows from this that
attempts to support designers by building methods and systems for bottom up
construction of designs must eventually fail as explanatory systems. They can
serve to create specific architectural identities, but not to advance general
architectural understanding.
In pursuing an analytic rather than a normative theory of architecture,
the book might be thought by some to have pretensions to make the art of
architecture into a science. This is not what is intended. One effect of a better
scientific understanding of architecture is to show that although architecture as
a phenomenon is capable of considerable scientific understanding, this does not
mean that as a practice architecture is not an art. On the contrary, it shows quite
clearly why it is an art and what the nature and limits of that art are. Architecture is
an art because, although in key respects its forms can be analysed and understood
by scientific means, its forms can only be prescribed by scientific means in a
very restricted sense. Architecture is law governed but it is not determinate. What
is governed by the laws is not the form of individual buildings but the field of
possibility within which the choice of form is made. This means that the impact
of these laws on the passage from problem statement to solution is not direct but
indirect. It lies deep in the spatial and physical forms of buildings, in their
genotypes, not their phenotypes.
Architecture is therefore not part art, and part science, in the sense that it
has both technical and aesthetic aspects, but is both art and science in the sense
that it requires both the processes of abstraction by which we know science and
the processes of concretion by which we know art. The architect as scientist and
as theorist seeks to establish the laws of the spatial and formal materials with which
the architect as artist then composes. The greater scientific content of architecture
over art is simply a function of the far greater complexity of the raw materials of
space and form, and their far greater reverberations for other aspects of life, than any
materials that an artist uses. It is the fact that the architect designs with the spatial
stuff of living that builds the science of architecture into the art of architecture.
It may seem curious to argue that the quest for a scientific understanding
of architecture does not lead to the conclusion that architecture is a science, but
nevertheless it is the case. In the last analysis, architectural theory is a matter
of understanding architecture as a system of possibilities, and how these are
restricted by laws which link this system of possibilities to the spatial potentialities
of human life. At this level, and perhaps only at this level, architecture is analogous
to language. Language is often naïvely conceptualised as a set of words and
meanings, set out in a dictionary, and syntactic rules by which they may be
combined into meaningful sentences, set out in grammars. This is not what
language is, and the laws that govern language are not of this kind. This can be
seen from the simple fact that if we take the words of the dictionary and combine
them in grammatically correct sentences, virtually all are utterly meaningless and
do not count as legitimate sentences. The structures of language are the laws

Introduction

which restrict the combinatorial possibilities of words, and through these restrictions
construct the sayable and the meaningful. The laws of language do not therefore tell
us what to say, but prescribe the structure and limits of the sayable. It is within these
limits that we use language as the prime means to our individuality and creativity.
In this sense architecture does resemble language. The laws of the field
of architecture do not tell designers what to do. By restricting and structuring the
field of combinatorial possibility, they prescribe the limits within which architecture
is possible. As with language, what is left from this restrictive structuring is rich
beyond imagination. Even so, without these laws buildings would not be human
products, any more than meaningless but syntactically correct concatenations of
words are human sentences.
The case for a theoretical understanding of architecture then rests
eventually not on aspiration to philosophical or scientific status, but on the nature
of architecture itself. The foundational proposition of the book is that architecture
is an inherently theoretical subject. The very act of building raises issues about the
relations of the form of the material world and the way in which we live in it which
(as any archaeologist knows who has tried to puzzle out a culture from material
remains) are unavoidably both philosophical and scientific. Architecture is the
most everyday, the most enveloping, the largest and the most culturally determined
human artefact. The act of building implies the transmission of cultural conventions
answering these questions through custom and habit. Architecture is their rendering
explicit, and their transmutation into a realm of innovation and, at its best, of art. In a
sense, architecture is abstract thought applied to building, even therefore in a sense
theory applied to building. This is why, in the end, architecture must have
analytic theories.

Part one Space is the machine | Bill Hillier Space Syntax
Part one
Theoretical preliminaries

Defining architecture
What is architecture? One thing is clear: if the word is to serve a useful purpose we
must be able to distinguish architecture from building. Since building is the more
basic term, it follows that we must say in what sense architecture is more than
building. The essence of our definition must say what architecture adds to building.
The commonest ‘additive’ theory is that architecture adds art to building. In
this analysis, building is an essentially practical and functional activity on to which
architecture superimposes an artistic preoccupation which, while respecting the
practical and functional, is restricted by neither. The extreme version of this view
is that architecture is the addition to building of the practically useless and
functionally unnecessary.1 The more common is that builders make buildings
while architects add style.
From the point of view of finding what people ‘really mean’ when they say
‘architecture’, there are serious problems with these views. The most obvious is that
it defines architecture in terms of what is normally thought of as its degeneration,
that is, that architecture is no more than the addition of a surface appearance to
building. Even if we take the view that this is what architecture has become, it is
surely unacceptable as a definition of what it should be. Architects believe, and
clients on the whole buy, the idea that architecture is a way of being concerned
with the whole building, and a means of engaging the deepest aspects of what
a building is. If architecture is defined as an add-on which ignores the main
substance of building, then architecture would be an addition to building, but would
not be more than building. On the contrary, it would be considerably less. If we
accuse architecture of being no more than this, we imply that architecture ought to
be much more. We are therefore back to the beginning in our pursuit of a definition.
An equally difficult problem with this view is that it is very hard to find
examples of building with a purely practical and functional aim. Wherever we find
building, we tend to find a preoccupation with style and expression, however
modest. Some of the most striking instances of this have come from our growing
awareness of building by technologically simple societies, where we do not find
that simplicity of technique is associated with simplicity of cultural intent or the
elimination of the preoccupation with style. On the contrary, we find that through the
idiosyncrasies of style, building and settlement form becomes one of the primary
— though most puzzling and variable — expressions of culture.2 The term that
expresses this discovery. ‘architecture without architects’ confirms the existence of
architecture as something over and above building, even though at the same time it
affirms the absence of architects.3
It is the awareness of the cultural richness of everyday building that lead
Roger Scruton, in his The Aesthetics of Architecture to try to solve the definition
problem for architecture by arguing that since all building shares a preoccupation
with the aesthetic and the meaningful, all building should be seen as architecture.4
Scruton seeks to reintegrate architecture with the whole of building. In his view, all
that we ever find in architecture is found, at least in embryonic form, in the everyday
The visual impression, the
image produced by differences
of light and colour, is primary in
our perception of a building. We
empirically reinterpret this image
into a conception of corporeality,
and this defines the form of the
space within…Once we have
reinterpreted the optical image into
a conception of space enclosed
by mass, we read its purpose from
its spatial form. We thus grasp…its
content, its meaning.
Paul Frankl
What architecture adds to building
Chapter one
Theoretical preliminaries Space is the machine | Bill Hillier Space Syntax
10

11
vernacular in which most of us participate through our everyday lives. Thus: ‘Even
when architects have a definite “aesthetic” purpose, it may not be more than the
desire that their work should “look right” in just the way that tables and chairs, the
lay of places at a table, the folds in a napkin, an arrangement of books, may “look
right” to a casual observer.’ This leads him to a definition: ‘Architecture is primarily
a vernacular art: it exists first and foremost as a process of arrangement in which
every normal man [sic] may participate.’5
The difficulty with this definition is that it leads to exactly the wrong kind of
distinction between, for example, the careful formal and spatial rules that governed
the English suburban house as built endlessly and repetitiously between the wars by
speculative builders, and the works of, say, Palladio or Le Corbusier. The work of both
of these architects is characterised by radical innovation in exactly those areas of
formal and spatial organisation where according to Scruton’s definition, there should
be a preoccupation with cultural continuity and reduplication. It would seem to follow
that Scruton’s definition of architecture would cover the familiar English spec builders’
vernacular more easily than it would the works of major architectural innovators.
While it may be reasonable, then, to prefer the English inter-war vernacular
to the works of Palladio and Le Corbusier, it does not seem likely that a definition
of the ordinary use of the word architecture lies in this direction. On the contrary,
Scruton’s definition seems to lead us exactly the wrong way. Architecture seems
to be exactly not this preoccupation with cultural continuity, but a preference
for innovation. Far from using this as a basis for a definition then Scruton’s
preoccupation with the vernacular seems to accomplish the opposite. It tells us
more how to distinguish everyday building from the more ambitious aspirations
of what we call architecture.
Is architecture a thing or an activity?
In what direction should we look then for a definition of architecture as more
than building? Reflecting on the common meanings of the word, we find little help
and more difficulties. The word ‘architecture’ seems to mean both a thing and an
activity. On the one hand it seems to imply buildings with certain ‘architectural’
attributes imposed on them. On the other, it seems to describe what architects do,
a certain way of going about the process of making buildings. This double meaning
raises serious problems for a definition of architecture. If ‘architecture’ means both
attributes of things and attributes of activities, then which ‘really is’ architecture’?
The definition surely cannot encompass both. Properties of things seem to exist
regardless of the activity that creates them, and activities are what they are
regardless of their product. Is architecture, then, ‘essentially’ a thing or an activity?
It must, it seems, be one or the other.
However, when we try each definition in isolation we quickly run into
paradoxes. Let us experiment first with the idea that architecture is essentially a
thing; that is, certain attributes found in some, but not all, buildings. If that is what
architecture ‘essentially’ is, then it would follow that a copy of a building which

12
possesses the architectural attributes will also be architecture, to exactly the
same degree and in the same way as the original building. But we baulk at this
idea. Copies of architectural buildings seem not themselves to be architecture, but
what we have named them as, that is, copies of architecture. Certainly we would
not normally expect to win an architectural prize with a deliberate copy. On the
contrary, we would expect to be disqualified, or at least ridiculed.
What then is missing in the copy? By definition, it cannot be properties of the
building since these are identical in both cases. The disqualifying factor must lie in
the act of copying. The act of copying somehow makes a building with architectural
attributes no longer, in itself, architecture. This means that what is missing in the copy
is not to do with the building but to do with the process that created the building.
Copying is therefore in some crucial sense not ‘architectural’. Even if we start from the
proposition that architecture is attributes of building, and therefore in some sense, ‘in
the object’, the problem of the copy shows that after all architecture implies a certain
kind of activity, one which is missing in the act of copying.
What then is missing in the act of copying? It can only be that which
copying denies, that is, the intention to create, rather than simply to reproduce,
architecture. Without this intention, it seems, a building cannot be architecture. So
let us call this the ‘creative intention’ and try to make it the focus of a definition
of architecture. We may experiment with the idea as before. This time, let there
be an ambitious but talentless architect who intends as hard as possible to make
architecture. Is the product of this intention automatically architecture? Whether it
is or not depends on whether it is possible to approve the intention as architectural
but disqualify the result. In fact this is a very common form for architectural
judgments to take. The products of aspiring architects are often judged by their
peers to have failed in exactly this way. A jury may legitimately say: ‘We understand
your intention but do not think you have succeeded.’ How are such judgments
made? Clearly there is only one answer: by reference to the objective attributes
of the proposed buildings that our would-be architect has designed.
It seems then the normal use of words and common practice has led us in
a circle. Creative intention fails as a definition of architecture by reference to positive
attributes of things, just as positive attributes of things previously failed by reference
to intentions. Yet architecture seems at the same time to mean both. It seems it
can only be that the idea of architecture is at once a thing and an activity, certain
attributes of buildings and a certain way of arriving at them. Product and process
are not, it seems, independent. In judging architecture we note both the attributes
of the thing and the intellectual process by which the thing is arrived at.
This may seem at first sight rather odd. It violates the common conception
that attributes of things are independent of the processes that put them there. But
it does reflect how people talk about architecture. Architectural talk, whether by lay
people or by critics, typically mixes comment on product with comment on process.
For example, we hear: ‘This is an ingenious solution to the problem of…’, or ‘This is
a clever detail’, or ‘This spatial organisation is boldly conceived’, ‘I like the way the

13
architect has…’, and so on. Each of these is at one and the same time a comment
on the objective attributes of the building and a comment on the creative intellectual
process that gave rise to it. In spite of the unlikelihood of product and process
somehow being interdependent in the idea of architecture, this does seem to be
exactly the case. In describing our experience of architecture we describe not
only the attributes of things, but also the intellectual processes of which the thing
is a manifestation. Only with the simultaneous presence of both do we
acknowledge architecture.
There is, it seems, some inconsistency between our normal way of reasoning
about things and the way we talk, reasonably and reasoningly, about architecture.
We might even say that the idea of architecture exhibits some confusion between
subjects and objects, since the judgment that a building is architecture seems at
one and the same time to depend on the attributes of the ‘objective’ thing and on
attributes of the ‘subjective’ process that gives rise to the thing. It might be reasonable
to expect, then, that further analysis would show that this strangeness in the idea of
architecture was pathological and that, with a more careful definition, product and
process, and object and subject, could and should be separated.
In fact, we will find the contrary. As we proceed with our exploration of
what architecture is and what it adds to building we will find that the inseparability
of products and processes and of subject and objects is the essence of what
architecture is. It is our intellectual expectations that it should be otherwise which
are at fault. Architecture is at once product and process, at once attribute of things
and attribute of activity, so that we actually see, or think we see, both when we see
and name architecture.
How does this apparent interdependence of product and process then
arise as architecture from the act of making a building? To understand this we
must first know what building, the allegedly lesser activity, is, and we must
understand it both as product and as process. Only this will allow us to see what
is distinctive about architecture, and how this distinctiveness involves both product
and process. To allow this to become fully clear, the argument that follows will be
taken in two stages. first we will look at building as a product, in order to ask what
it is about the building as product that architecture takes hold of and adds
something to. Then we will look at building as a process, in order to ask how
the process of architecture, as adding something to building, is different.
So what is a building?
The question ‘what is a building?’ tends to provoke two kinds of simplification.
The first is that because buildings are purposeful objects we can say what they
are by saying what their purpose is. The second is that there must be some simple
primordial purpose which was the original reason for buildings and therefore
constitutes a kind of continuing essence of building. The first simplification is a
logical error, the second a historical one. Both find their commonest, but not only,
expression in such ideas as that buildings are essentially ‘shelter’.

14
Both simplifications arise because purposes are seen to be anterior to objects and
therefore in some sense explanatory of them. But logically, functional definitions
are absurd. In defining building in terms of a function, rather than an object, no
distinction is made between buildings as objects and other entities which also
can or do provide that function, as for example trees, tents, caves and parasols
also provide shelter. Functional definitions are also dishonest. One who defines a
building as a shelter has a picture of a building in mind, but one which is implicit
rather than explicit, so that the imprecision of the definition is never revealed to the
definer. If we say ‘a building is a shelter’ we mentally see a building and conceive
of it functioning as a shelter, so that the function seems to ‘explain’ the object.
Functional definitions only appear to work because they conceal an implicit idea of
the object. This prevents the imprecision of the definition from being apparent to the
definer. Even if the function were thought to be unique to the object, the definition
of an object through its function would never be satisfactory since we could never
be sure either that this function is necessarily unique to this object, or that this is
the only ‘essential’ function of this object.
Historically in fact all the evidence is that neither is the case. If we consider
the phenomenon of building even in the earliest and simplest societies, one of
the most striking things that we find is that buildings are normally multifunctional:
they provide shelter from the elements, they provide some kind of spatial
scheme for ordering social relations and activities, they provide a framework
for the arrangement of objects, they provide a diversity of internal and external
opportunities for aesthetic and cultural expression, and so on. On the evidence
we have, it is difficult to find historical or anthropological grounds for believing
that buildings are not in their very nature multifunctional.
Nor is there any reason why we should expect them to be. In spite of the
persistence of the absurd belief that humankind lived in caves until neolithic times
(beginning about 10–12,000 years ago), and then used the cave as the model for the
building,6 there is evidence that human beings have created recognisable buildings
for a very long time, perhaps as long as at least three hundred thousand years.7 We
do not know how the antiquity of building compares with that of language, but it is
clear that the evolutionary history of each is very long, and that conjectural historical
ontologies are equally irrelevant to both in trying to understand the complex nature
of either as social and cultural phenomenon. The speculation that buildings are
somehow ‘explained’ by being defined as shelters, because we imagine that there
must have been a time when this was all that building was, is about as useful
in understanding the social and cultural complexities of building as the idea that
language began with pointing and grunting is to theories of the structure and
functioning of language.
But it is not only time that has given buildings their variety of cultural
expression. The nature of the building as an object itself has complexities which
in themselves naturally tend to multifunctionality and diversity of cultural expression.
It is only by understanding the complex nature of the building as object that we

15
can begin to understand its natural tendency to multifunctionality. At the most
elementary level, a building is a construction of physical elements or materials into
a more or less stable form, as a result of which a space is created which is distinct
from the ambient space. At the very least then, a building is both a physical and a
spatial transformation of the situation that existed before the building was built. Each
aspect of this transformation, the physical and the spatial, already has, as we shall
see, a social value, and provides opportunity for the further elaboration of this value,
in that the physical form of the building may be given further cultural significance by
the shaping and decoration of elements, and the spatial form may be made more
complex, by conceptual or physical distinctions, to provide a spatial patterning of
activities and relationships.
However, even in the most primitive, unelaborated state, the effect of this
elementary transformation of material and space on human beings — that is, its
‘functional’ effect — is complex. Part, but only part, of this complexity is the functional
effect that the ‘shelter’ theorists have noted, namely the physical effect that bodies
are protected from ambient elements that in the absence of the building might be
experienced as hostile. These elements include inclement weather conditions,
hostile species or unwelcome conspecifics. When we say that a building is a
‘shelter’, we mean that it is a kind of protection for the body. To be a protective
shelter a building must create a protected space through a stable construction.
What is protective is the physical form of the building. What is protected is the
space. Buildings have a bodily function, broad and non-specific, but classifiable
as bodily, as a result of which the building has space able to contain bodies, and
certain physical properties through which bodies are protected.
However, even the simplest bodily act of making a shelter is more complex
than might appear at first sight. To enclose a space by a construction creates
not only a physical distinction on the surface of the earth, but also a logical, or
categoric distinction. We acknowledge this through terms like ‘inside’ and ‘outside’.
These are relational notions with an essentially logical nature, not simple physical
facts. They arise as a kind of ‘logical emergence’ from the more elementary physical
fact of making a boundary. The relationality of these ‘logical emergents’ can be
demonstrated by simply pointing to the interdependence of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’.
One implies the other, and we cannot create a space inside without also making
a space outside. Logicality can be demonstrated by direct analogy. The physical
process of drawing a boundary is analogous to naming a category, since when we
do so we also by implication name all that is not that category, that is, we imply
the complement of that category, in the same sense that when we name the space
inside we also imply all the space that is outside. In that sense the space outside
is the complement of the space inside. Logicians confirm this analogy by drawing
Venn diagrams, that represent concepts as all that falls within the space of a circle,
an exactly analogous logical gesture to the creation of a boundary in real space.
As Russell has pointed out,8 relations, especially spatial relations, are very
puzzling entities. They seem to exist ‘objectively’, in the sense (to use the example

16
given by Russell) that ‘Edinburgh is to the north of London’, but we cannot point
directly to the relation in the way that we can to other entities which seem to ‘really
exist’. We must accept, Russell argues, that ‘the relation, like the terms it relates,
is not dependent on thought, but belongs to the independent world which thought
apprehends, but does not create’. We must then accept, he continues, that a relation
‘is neither in space nor in time, neither material nor mental, yet it is something’.
The ‘objectivity’ of relations, and of the more complex relational schemes
we call ‘configurations’, will be a continuing theme in this book. However, even
at the simplest level of the creation of a boundary by the simplest act of building,
matters are yet more complex. The logical distinctions made by drawing boundaries
are also sociological distinctions, in that the distinction between inside and
outside is made by a social being, whose power to make this distinction becomes
recognised not only in the physical making of the boundary and the creation of the
protected space but also in the logical consequences that arise from that distinction.
This is best expressed as a right. The drawing of a boundary establishes not only a
physical separateness, but also the social separateness of a domain — the protected
space — identified with an individual or collectivity, which creates and claims special
rights in that domain. The logical distinction and the sociological distinction in that
sense emerge from the act of making a shelter even if they are not intended. The
primary act of building, we might say, is already complex in that minds, and even
social relations, are engaged by bodily transformations.
As is the case with the logical complexity, the sociological complexity
implied by the boundary is in its very nature relational. Indeed, it is the logic of
the relational complex that gives rise to the sociological distinctions through which
building first begins to reflect and intervene in social relations. It is this essential
relationality of form and of space which is appropriated in the processes by which
buildings are transformed from bodily objects to social and cultural objects. The
fundamental relational complex of form and space created by the act of making the
simplest built object is the seed of all future relational properties of spaces through
which buildings become fully social objects.
A building then becomes socially significant over and above its bodily
functions in two ways: first by elaborating spaces into socially workable patterns
to generate and constrain some socially sanctioned — and therefore normative
— pattern of encounter and avoidance; and second by elaborating physical forms
and surfaces into patterns through which culturally or aesthetically sanctioned
identities are expressed. The fundamental duality of form and space that we noted
in the most elementary forms of the building thus continues into its complex forms.
By the elaboration of space, a social domain is constituted as a lived milieu. By
the elaboration of form a social domain is represented as significant identities and
encounters. In both senses, buildings create more complex patterns from the basic
bodily stuff of form and space. It is through these patterns that buildings acquire
their potential at once to constitute and represent — and thus in time to appear as
the very foundation of — our social and cultural existence.

17
We may summarise what we have said about the nature of buildings as
objects in a diagram which we will use from now on as a kind of fundamental
diagram of the building as object, (see fig. 1.1). The essence of the diagram is that a
building even at the most basic level embodies two dualities, one between physical
form and spatial form and the other between bodily function and socio-cultural
function. The link between the two is that the socio-cultural function arises from the
ways in which forms and spaces are elaborated into patterns, or, as we will in due
course describe them, into configurations. We must now look more carefully at what
we mean by the elaboration of form and space into configuration, since this will
be the key to our argument not only about the nature of buildings, but also, in due
course, to how architecture arises from building.
Let us begin with a simple and familiar case of the elaboration of the
physical form of the building: the doric column. When we look at a doric column,
we see a plinth, a pedestal, a shaft, a capital, and so on, that is, we see a
construction. The elements rest one upon the other, and their relation to each other
takes advantage of and depends on the natural law of gravity. But this is not all that
we see. The relations of the elements of a column governed by the law of gravity
would hold regardless of the ‘doricness’ of the elements. If, for example, we were to
replace the doric capital with an ionian capital, the effect on the construction would
be negligible, but the effect on the ‘doricness’ of the ensemble would be devastating.
So what is doricness? Clearly it is not a type of construction, since we may
substitute non-doric elements in the ensemble without constructional penalty. We
must acknowledge that doricness is not then in itself a set of physical relations,
although it depends on them. Doricness is a scheme in which elements with
certain kinds of elaboration are ‘above’ and ‘below’ others in a certain relational
sequence which emerges from construction but is not given by construction. On
the contrary, the notion of ‘above’ and below’ as we find them in doricness seem
to be ‘logical emergents’ from the act of construction in exactly the same sense
that ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ were logical emergents from the physical construction
of a boundary. Doricness is then a logical construction, one built on the back of a
physical construction but a logical construction nonetheless. Through the logical
Figure 1.1

18
doricness of the ensemble, we may say that we move from the simple visuality of
the physically interdependent system, to enter the realm of the intelligible. Doricness
is a configuration of properties that we understand, over and above what we
see as physical interdependencies, a form of relational elaboration to something
which exists in physical form, but which through this elaboration stands clear of its
physicality. This process of moving from the visible to the intelligible is, we will see
in due course, very basic to our experience both of building and of architecture,
and, even more so, to the difference between one and the other.
Spatial patterns in buildings also arise as elaborations on primitive logical
emergents from the physical act of building. As with doricness, they depend on but
cannot be explained by natural law (as many have tried to do by appeal to biological
‘imperatives’ such as ‘territoriality’). The origins of relational schemes of space lie
somewhere between the ordering capacities of the mind and the spatial ordering
inherent in the ways in which social relationships are realised in space. With space,
as with form, we therefore find a split in building between a bodily nature, albeit
with a rudimentary relational nature, and a more elaborated configurational nature
which relates to minds and social experience rather than to bodies and individual
experience. The passage from the simple space to a configuration of space is also
the passage from the visible to the intelligible.
Space is, however, a more inherently difficult topic than physical form, for
two reasons. First, space is vacancy rather than thing, so even its bodily nature is
not obvious, and cannot be taken for granted in the way that we think we can take
objects for granted. (See Chapter 10 for a further discussion of this assumption.)
Second, related spaces, almost by definition, cannot be seen all at once, but require
movement from one to other to experience the whole. This is to say that relationality
in space is rarely accessible to us as a single experience. We must therefore
digress for a moment to talk about space as a phenomenon, and how we can
overcome the difficulties that exist in talking about it. We will take this in two stages.
First, we will talk about the problem of how far space can be seen as an objective,
independent ‘thing-in-itself’. We must do this because there is great confusion about
the status of space and how far it can be regarded as an independent entity rather
than simply as a by-product of, say, the arrangement of physical things. Second, we
will talk about space as configuration, since it is as configuration that it has its most
powerful and independent effects on the way buildings and built environments are
formed and how they function for their purposes.

19
About space
It is far from obvious that space is, in some important sense, an objective property
of buildings, describable independently of the building as a physical thing. Most
of our common notions of space do not deal with space as an entity in itself but
tie it in some way to entities that are not space. For example, even amongst those
with a interest in the field, the idea of ‘space’ will usually be transcribed as the ‘use
of space’, the ‘perception of space’, the ‘production of space’ or as ‘concepts of
space’. In all these common expressions, the idea of space is given significance
by linking it directly to human behaviour or intentionality. Common spatial concepts
from the social sciences such as ‘personal space’ and ‘human territoriality’ also tie
space to the human agent, and do not acknowledge its existence independently of
the human agent. In architecture, where concepts of space are sometimes unlinked
from direct human agency, through notions such as ‘spatial hierarchy’ and ‘spatial
scale’ we still find that space is rarely described in a fully independent way. The
concept of ‘spatial enclosure’ for example, which describes space by reference to
the physical forms that define it rather than as a thing in itself, is the commonest
architectural way of describing space.
All these concepts confirm the difficulty of conceptualising space as a
thing in itself. On occasion, this difficulty finds an extreme expression. For example,
Roger Scruton believes that the idea of space is a category mistake made by
pretentious architects, who have failed to understand that space is not a thing in
itself, but merely the obverse side of the physical object, the vacancy left over by
the building. For Scruton, it is self-evident that space in a field and in a cathedral
are the same thing except insofar as the interior built surfaces of the cathedral
make it appear that the interior space has distinctive properties of its own. All talk
about space is error, he argues, because it can be reduced to talk about buildings
as physical things.9
In fact, even at a practical level, this is a bizarre view. Space is, quite simply,
what we use in buildings. It is also what we sell. No developer offers to rent walls.
Walls make the space, and cost the money, but space is the rentable commodity. Why
then is Scruton embarrassed by the concept of space? Let me suggest that Scruton
is making an educated error, one that he would not have made if he had not been so
deeply imbued with the western philosophical tradition in which he has earned his
living — and to which, incidentally, he has written an outstanding introduction.10
The dominant view of space in western culture has been one we might
loosely call the ‘Galilean-Cartesian’. This view arises from a scheme of reasoning
first set out in full clarity by Descartes.11 The primary properties of physical objects
are, he argued, their ‘extension’, that is, their measurable properties like length,
breadth and width. Because extension can be quantified by measuring devices
which do not depend on human agency, extensions can be seen as the indubitably
objective properties of things, unlike ‘secondary’ properties like ‘green’ or ‘nice’
which seem to depend in some way on interaction with observers.
Now if extension is the primary property of objects, then it is a short step

20
to see it also as the primary property of the space within which objects sit. As
Descartes says: ‘After examination we shall find that there is nothing remaining in
the idea of body excepting that it is extended in length, breadth and depth; and this
is comprised in our idea of space, not only of that which is full of body, but also that
which is called a vacuum.’12 In other words, when we take the object away from
its space its extension is still present as an attribute of space. Space is therefore
generalised extension, or extension without objects. Descartes again: ‘In space…
we attribute to extension a generic unity, so that after having removed from a certain
space the body which occupied it, we do not suppose we have also removed the
extension of that space.’13
Following this reasoning, space comes to be seen as the general abstract
framework of extension against which the properties of objects are defined, a
metric background to the material objects that occupy space. This view of space
seems to most of us quite natural, no more than an extrapolation of commonsense.
Unfortunately, once we see space in this way, we are doomed not to understand
how it plays a role in human affairs. Culturally and socially, space is never simply
the inert background of our material existence. It is a key aspect of how societies
and cultures are constituted in the real world, and, through this constitution,
structured for us as ‘objective’ realities. Space is more than a neutral framework for
social and cultural forms. It is built into those very forms. Human behaviour does not
simply happen in space. It has its own spatial forms. Encountering, congregating,
avoiding, interacting, dwelling, teaching, eating, conferring are not just activities that
happen in space. In themselves they constitute spatial patterns.
It is because this is so that spatial organisation through buildings and built
environments becomes one of the principle ways in which culture is made real
for us in the material world, and it is because this is so that buildings can, and
normally do, carry social ideas within their spatial forms. To say this does not imply
determinism between space to society, simply that space is always likely to be
structured in the spatial image of a social process of some kind. The question is:
how exactly does this happen, and what are these structures like?
Space as configuration
One thing is clear. Encountering, congregating, avoiding, interacting, dwelling,
conferring are not attributes of individuals, but patterns, or configurations, formed
by groups or collections of people. They depend on an engineered pattern of co-
presence, and indeed co-absence. Very few of the purposes for which we build
buildings and environments are not ‘people configurations’ in this sense. We should
therefore in principle expect that the relation between people and space, if there is
one, will be found at the level of the configuration of space rather than the individual
space. This is confirmed by commonsense. Individual spaces place little limit on
human activity, except for those of size and perhaps shape. In most reasonable
spaces, most human activities can be carried out. But the relation between space and
social existence does not lie at the level of the individual space, or individual activity.

21
Figure1.2
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
depth
0
1
2
3
4
depth
c.
b.
a.
d.
Figure 1.2

22
It lies in the relations between configurations of people and configurations of space.
To take the first steps towards understanding how this happens, we
must understand how, in principle, a configuration of space can be influenced
by, or influence, a configuration of people. Let us therefore consider some simple
hypothetical examples. The two notional ‘courtyard’ buildings of figure 1.2a and b
show in the first column in black, in the normal way, the pattern of physical elements
of the buildings. The corresponding figures in the second column then show in black
the corresponding pattern of spatial elements. The basic physical structures and
cell divisions of the two ‘buildings’ are the same, and each has the same pattern of
adjacencies between cells and the same number of internal and external openings.
All that differs is the location of cell entrances. But this is enough to ensure that from
the point of view of how a collection of individuals could use the space, the spatial
patterns, or ‘configurations’, are about as different as they could be. The pattern of
permeability created by the disposition of entrances is the critical thing. Seen this way,
one layout is a near perfect single sequence, with a minimal branch at the end. The
other is branched everywhere about the strong central spaces.
Now the pattern of permeability would make relatively little difference to the
building structurally or climatically, that is, to the bodily aspect of buildings, especially
if we assume similar patterns of external fenestration, and insert windows wherever
the other had entrances onto the courtyard. But it would make a dramatic difference
to how the layout would work as, say, a domestic interior. For example, it is very
difficult for more than one person to use a single sequence of spaces. It offers
little in the way of community or privacy, but much in the way of potential intrusion.
The branched pattern, on the other hand, offers a definite set of potential relations
between community and privacy, and many more resources against intrusion.
These differences are inherent in the space patterns, and would apply to
whole classes of human activity patterns. In themselves the spatial layouts offer a
range of limitations and potentialities. They suggest the possibility that architectural
space might be subject to limiting laws, not of a deterministic kind, but such as to
set morphological bounds within which the relations between form and function in
buildings are worked out.
We will see from Chapter 3 onwards that it is by expressing these
pattern properties in a numerical way that we can find clear relations between
space patterns and how collections of people use them. However, before we
embark on numbers, there is a visually useful way of capturing some of the key
differences between the two spatial patterns. This is a device we call a justified
graph, or j-graph. In this we imagine that we are in a space which we call the root
or base of the graph, and represent this as a circle with a cross inscribed. Then,
representing spaces as circles, and relations of access as lines connecting them,
we align immediately above the root all spaces which are directly connected to the
root, and draw in the connections. These are the spaces at ‘depth one’ from the
root. Then an equal distance above the ‘depth one’ row we align the spaces that
connect directly to first row spaces, forming the line of ‘depth two’ spaces, and

23
connect these to the depth one spaces, and so on. Sometimes we will have to
draw rather long and circuitous lines to link spaces at different levels, but this does
not matter. It is the fact of connection that matters. The laws of graphs guarantee
that if the layout is all at one level then we can make all the required connections
by drawing lines connecting the spaces without crossing other lines.14
The resulting j-graph is a picture of the ‘depth’ of all spaces in a pattern
from a particular point in it. The third column in figure 1.2a and b shows j-graphs
for the corresponding spatial structures, drawn using the exterior space as root. We
can immediately see that the first is a ‘deep tree’ form, and the second a ‘shallow
tree’ form. By ‘tree’ we mean that there is one link less than the number of cells
linked, and that there are therefore no rings of circulation in the graph. All trees,
even two as different as in the two in the figures, share the characteristic that there
is only one route from each space to each other space — a property that is highly
relevant to how building layouts function. However, where ‘rings’ are found, the
justified graph makes them as clear as the ‘depth’ properties, showing them in a
very simple and clear way as what they are, that is, alternative route choices from
one part of the pattern to another. The series of figures in figure 1.2c shows
a hypothetical case, based on the same basic ‘building’ as the previous figures.
We do not have to justify the graph using the outside space as root. This
is only one way — though a singularly useful way — of looking at a building. We
can of course justify the graph from any space within it, and this will tell us what
layout is like from the point of view of that space, taking into account both depth
and ring properties. When we do this we discover a fact about the spatial layouts
of buildings and settlements that is so fundamental that it is probably in itself the
key to most aspects of human spatial organisation. This is the simple fact that a
pattern of space not only looks different but actually is different when justified from
the point of view of its different constituent elements. The three notional j-graphs
shown in figure 1.2d appear very different from each other, but all three are in fact
the same graph justified from the point of view of different constituent spaces. The
depth and ring properties could hardly appear more different if they were different
configurations. It is through the creation and distribution of such differences that
space becomes such a powerful raw material for the transmission of culture through
buildings and settlement forms, and also a potent means of architectural discovery
and creation. Let us see how.
Formally defining configuration
First we need to bring a little more formality into the definition of ‘configuration’.
Like the word ‘pattern’ (which we do not use because it implies more regularity
than we will find in most spatial arrangements), configuration seems to be a
concept addressed to the whole of a complex rather than to its parts. Intuitively,
it seems to mean a set of relationships among things all of which interdepend in
an overall structure of some kind. There is a way of formalising this idea that is
as simple as it is necessary. If we define spatial relations as existing when there
is any type of link — say adjacency or permeability — between two spaces, then

24
configuration exists when relations between two spaces are changed according
to how we relate one or other, or both, to at least one other space.
This rather odd sounding definition can be explained through a simple
graphic example. Figure 1.3a shows a cell divided by a partition into two, sub-cell a
and sub-cell b, with a door creating a relation of permeability between the two. It is
clear that the relation is formally ‘symmetrical’ in the sense that cell a is to cell b as
b is to a. The same would be true of two cells which were adjacent and therefore in
the relation of neighbour to each other. If a is b’s neighbour, then b must also be a’s
neighbour. This ‘symmetry’, which follows the algebraic rather than the geometrical
definition, is clearly an objective property of the relation of a and b and does not
depend on how we choose to see the relation.
Now consider figures 1.3b and c in which we have added relations to a
third space, c (which is in fact the outside space), but in a different way so that
in 1.3b both a and b are directly permeable to c, whereas in 1.3c, only a is directly
permeable to c. This means that in 1.3c we must pass through a to get to b from
c, whereas in 1.3b we can go either way. In 1.3c therefore, a and b are different
with respect to c. We must pass through a to get to b from c, but we do not need
to pass through b to get to a from c. With respect to c, the relation has become
asymmetrical. In other words, the relation between a and b has been redefined
by the relation each has to a third space. This is a configurational difference.
Configuration is a set of interdependent relations in which each is determined
by its relation to all the others.
We can show such configurational differences rather neatly, and clarify their
nature, by using the j-graph, as in figure 1.3d and e, corresponding to 1.3b and 1.3c
respectively. Compared to 1.3a, spaces b and c in 1.3e have acquired ‘depth’ with
a b
c
Figure 1.3
c
a b
a b
c
a
b
c
a b
c.
b.
a.
e.
d.
2 2
2
3
2
3
Figure 1.3

25
respect to each other, in that their relation is now indirect and only exists by virtue
of a. The numbers adjacent to each space in the j-graph index this by showing the
total depth of each space from the other two. In contrast, 1.3d has acquired a ‘ring’
that links all three spaces, meaning that each has a choice of route to each of the
others. The graph of 1.3d is identical when seen from each of its spaces, while in
1.3e, b and c are identical, but a is different.
Society in the form of the object
Now let us use this concept of configuration, and its key spatial dimensions of
depth and rings, to try to detect the presence of cultural and social ideas in the
spatial forms of buildings. Figures 1.4a, b and c show, on the left, the ground-
floor plans of three French houses, and to their immediate right, their j-graphs
drawn initially from the outside, treating it as a single space, then to the right again
three further j-graphs justified from three different internal spaces.15 Looking at
the j-graphs drawn from the outside, we can see that in spite of the geometrical
differences in the houses there are strong similarities in the configurations. This can
be seen most easily by concentrating on the space marked sc, or salle commune,
which is the main everyday living space, in which cooking also occurs and everyday
visitors are received. In each case, we can see that the salle commune lies on all
non-trivial rings (a trivial ring is one which links the same pair of spaces twice), links
directly to an exterior space — that is, it is at depth one in the complex — and acts
as a link between the living spaces and various spaces associated with domestic
work carried out by women.
The salle commune also has a more fundamental property, one which
arises from its relation to the spatial configuration of the house as a whole. If we
count the number of spaces we must pass through to go from the salle commune
to all other spaces, we find that it comes to a total which is less than for any other
space — that is, it has less depth than any other space in the complex. The general
form of this measure16 is called integration, and can be applied to any space in any
configuration: the less depth from the complex as a whole, the more integrating the
space, and vice versa. This means that every space in the three complexes can be
assigned an ‘integration value’.17
Now once we have done this we can ask questions about how the different
functions in the house are ‘spatialised’, that is, how they are embedded in the overall
spatial configuration. When we do this, we find that it is very common that different
functions are spatialised in different ways, and that this can often be expressed
clearly through ‘integration’ analysis. In the three French houses, for example, we
find that there is a certain order of integration among the spaces where different
functions are carried out, always with the salle commune as the most integrated, as
can be seen in the j-graphs beside each plan. If all the functions of the three houses
are set out in order of the integration values of the spaces in which they occur,
beginning with the most integrated space, we can read this, from left to right, as:
the salle commune is more integrated (i.e. has less depth to all other spaces) than

26
Figure 1.4

27
the corridor, which is more integrated than the exterior, and so on. To the extent that
there are commonalities in the sequence of inequalities, then we can say that there
is a common pattern to the way in which different functions are spatialised in the
house. We call such common patterns ‘inequality genotypes’, because they refer
not to the surface appearances of forms but to deep structures underlying spatial
configurations and their relation to living patterns.18
These results flow from an analysis of space-to-space permeability. But what
about the relation of visibility, which passes through spaces? The three rows of
figures on the right in figure 1.4 (lower panel) show all the space that can be seen
with the doors open from a diamond-shaped space within each salle commune and
one other space, drawn by joining the centre points of each wall of a room, and thus
covering half of the space in the room. The idea of the diamond shape is that space
use (in most western cultures) is normally concentrated within this diamond shape,
the corners commonly being reserved for objects. The diagrams show that in each
case the salle commune has a far more powerful visual field than the salle. In other
words, the spatial and functional differences between spaces that we find through the
analysis of permeability in the houses also appear in the analysis of visibility. These
visibility differences can also form the basis for quantitative and statistical analysis.
This type of method allows us to retrieve from house plans configurational
properties that relate directly to the social and cultural functioning of the house.
In other words, through spatial configuration culturally determined patterns are
embedded in the material and spatial ‘objectivity’ of buildings. By the analysis of
spaces and functions in terms of their configurational relations within the house,
and the search for common patterns across samples, we can see how buildings
can transmit common cultural tendencies through spatial form. We must now ask
how and why this is the case, and what follows from it?
The non-discursivity of configuration: ideas we think of and ideas we think with
The answer will take us to the centre of our argument: the non-discursivity of
configuration. Non-discursivity means that we do not know how to talk about it. The
difficulty of talking about spatial or formal configurations in architecture has always
seemed a rather peripheral problem to architectural theory. I suggest it is the central
problem, and part of a much more general problem in human affairs.
Let us begin to explore the intuitive aspects of the idea of configuration
a little further. Consider the four groups of elements in figure 1.5. Each group is a
different set of ‘things’, but placed in more or less the same overall ‘configuration’.
The human mind has no difficulty in seeing that the configurations are the same,
in spite of the differences in the constituent ‘things’, and this shows that we easily
recognise a configuration, even where we have no way of giving it a name and thus
assigning it to a category — although we might try to do so by making analogies
with configurations for which names are already at hand, such as ‘L-shaped’, or
‘star-shaped’. However, the fact that our minds recognised configurations as being
the same even when there is no name at hand to link them shows that our ability

28
to recognise and understand configuration is prior to the assignment of names.
Configuration seems in fact to be what the human mind is good at intuitively,
but bad at analytically. We easily recognise configuration without conscious thought,
and just as easily use configurations in everyday life without thinking of them, but
we do not know what it is we recognise and we are not conscious of what it is we
use and how we use it. We have no language for describing configurations, that is,
we have no means of saying what it is we know. This problem is particularly salient
in buildings and architecture, because both have the effect of imposing spatial
and formal configuration on the world in which we live. But the problem is not
confined to architecture. On the contrary it appears to be present to some degree
in most cultural and social behaviours. In using language, for example, we are
aware of words and believe that in speaking and hearing we are handling words.
However, language only works because we are able to use the configurational
aspects of language, that is, the syntactic and semantic rules which govern how
words are to be assembled into meaningful complexes, in a way which makes their
operation automatic and unconscious. In language we can therefore distinguish
ideas we think of, that is, the words and what they represent, and ideas we think
with, that is, syntactic and semantic rules which govern how we deploy words
to create meaning. The words we think of seem to us like things, and are at the
level of conscious thought. The hidden structures we think with have the nature
of configurational rules, in that they tell us how things are to be assembled, and
work below the level of consciousness. This ‘unconscious configurationality’ seems
to prevail in all areas where we use rule systems to behave in ways which are
recognisable as social. Behaviour at table, or the playing of games, appear to us
as spatio-temporal events, but they are given order and purpose by the underlying
Figure 1.5

29
configurational ‘ideas-to-think-with’ through which these events are generated. We
acknowledge the importance of this unseen configurationality labelling it as a form
of knowledge. We talk about ‘knowing how to behave’, or ‘knowing a language’.
We can call this kind of knowledge ‘social knowledge’, and note that its
purpose is to create, order and make intelligible the spatio-temporal events through
which we recognise the presence of culture in everyday life. We must of course
take care to distinguish social knowledge from forms of knowledge which we learn
in schools and universities whose purpose is to understand the world rather than
to behave in it, and which we might therefore call analytic, or scientific knowledge.
In itself (though not necessarily in its consequences) analytic knowledge leaves the
world as it is, since its purpose is to understand. Analytic knowledge is knowledge
where we learn the abstract principles through which spatio-temporal phenomena
are related — we might say the ‘configurationality’ — consciously. We are aware
of the principles both when we acquire and when we use the knowledge. As a
result, through the intermediary of the abstract, we grasp the concrete. In social
knowledge, in contrast, knowledge of abstract configurationality is acquired through
the process of creating and experiencing spatio-temporal events. Social knowledge
works precisely because the abstract principles through which spatio-temporal
phenomena are brought together into meaningful patterns are buried beneath
habits of doing, and never need be brought to conscious attention.19
In spite of these functional differences, social knowledge and analytic
knowledge are made up of the same elements: on the one hand, there is
knowledge of spatio-temporal phenomena, on the other, there are abstract
‘configurational’ structures that link them together. But whereas in social knowledge
the abstract ideas are held steady as ideas to think with in order to create spatio-
temporal events in the real world, so that the abstract ideas become the normative
bases of behaviour, in scientific knowledge, an attempt is made to hold spatio-
temporal phenomena steady in order to bring the abstract structures through
which we interpret them to the surface in order to examine them critically and,
if necessary, to reconstitute them.
This can be usefully clarified by a diagram, see figure 1.6. The difference
between the two forms of knowledge lies essentially in the degree to which abstract
ideas are at the level of conscious thought and therefore at risk. The whole purpose
of science is to put the abstract ‘ideas we think with’ in making sense of spatio-
temporal events at risk. In social knowledge, the whole purpose of the ‘knowledge’
would be put at risk by bringing them to conscious thought since their function
is to be used normatively to create society. However, it is clearly a possibility that
the abstract structures of social knowledge could, as with science, themselves
become the object of conscious thought. This, in a nutshell, is the programme of
‘structuralism’. The essence of the structuralist method is to ask: can we build a
model of the abstract principles of a system (e.g. language) that ‘generates’ all
and only the spatio-temporal events that can legitimately happen? Such a model
would be a theory of the system. It would, for example, ‘explain’ our intuitive sense

30
that some strings of words are meaningful sentences and others — most — are not.
Structuralism is rather like taking the output of a computer as the phenomena to be
explained, and trying to find out what programme could generate all and only these
phenomena. Structuralism is an enquiry into the unconscious configurational bases
of social knowledge, that is, it is an inquiry into the non-discursive dimensions of
social and cultural behaviour.
Building as the transmission of culture through artefacts
The spatial and formal patterns that are created through buildings and settlements
are classic instances of the problem of non-discursivity, both in the sense of the
configurational nature of ideas we think with in creating and using space, and in the
sense of the role these play in social knowledge. As has already been indicated,
one of the most pervasive examples of this is the dwelling. Domestic space varies
in the degree to which it is subject to social knowledge, but it is not uncommon
for it to be patterned according to codes of considerable intricacy which govern
what spaces there are, how they are labelled, how bounded they are, how they
are connected and sequenced, which activities go together in them and which are
separated, what individuals or categories of persons have what kinds of rights in
them, how they are decorated, what kinds of objects should be displayed in them
and how, and so on. These patterns vary from one cultural group to another, but
invariably we handle domestic space patterns without thinking of them and even
without being aware of them until they are challenged. In general, we only become
aware of the degree of patterning in our own culture when we encounter another
form of patterning in another culture.
But domestic space is only the most intensive and complex instance of a
more generalised phenomenon. Buildings and settlements of all kinds, and at all
levels, are significantly underpinned by configurational non-discursivity. It is through
this that buildings — and indeed built environments of all kinds — become part of
what Margaret Mead called ‘the transmission of culture through artefacts’.20 This
transmission occurs largely through the configurational aspects of space
and form in those environments. For example, we think consciously of buildings
as physical or spatial objects and we think of their parts as physical or spatial
parts, like columns or rooms. But we think of ‘buildings’ as whole entities through
the unconscious intermediary of configuration, in that when we think of a particular
abstract principles spacial-temporal events
social knowledge codes, rules speech, social behaviour,
ideas to think spaces, ideas to think
analytic knowledge theories, hypotheses ‘facts’, phenomena
paradigms
Figure 1.6

31
kind of building, we are conscious not only of an image of an object, but at the
same time of the complex of spatial relations that such a building entails. As space
— and also as meaningful forms — buildings are configurational, and because
they are configurational their most important social and cultural properties are
non-discursive. It is through non-discursivity that the social nature of buildings is
transmitted, because it is through configuration that the raw materials of space and
form are given social meaning. The social stuff of buildings, we may say, is the
configurational stuff, both in the sense that buildings are configurations of space
designed to order in space at least some aspects of social relationships, and in
the sense that it is through the creation of some kind of configuration in the form
of the building that something like a cultural ‘meaning’ is transmitted.
Building as process
How then can this help us make the distinction between architecture and building?
We note of course that we now begin not from the notion that buildings prior to
architecture are only practical and functional objects, but from the proposition that
prior to architecture buildings are already complex instances of the transmission of
culture through artefacts. This does not mean of course that buildings of the same
type and culture will be identical with each other. On the contrary, it is common for
vernacular architectures to exhibit prodigious variety at the level of individual cases,
so much so that the grounds for believing that the cases constitute instances of a
common vernacular style, either in form or space, can be quite hard to pin down.
The crucial step in arriving at our definition of architecture is to understand
first how the vernacular builder succeeds in making a building as a complex
relational structure through which culture is transmitted, while at the same time
creating what will often be a unique individual building. We do not have to look
far for the answer. This combination of common structure and surface variety is
exactly what we find where social knowledge is in operation in the form in which
we have just described it: complex configurational ideas at the non-discursive level
guide the ways in which we handle spatio-temporal things at the surface level, and
as a result configurational ideas are realised in the real world. In building terms,
the manipulation of the spatial and formal elements which make up the building
will, if carried out within the scope of non-discursive configurational ideas to think
with, which govern key aspects of their formal and spatial arrangement, lead to
exactly the combination of underlying common structure and surface variety that
characterises vernacular architectures in general.
To understand how this happens in particular cases, we can draw on the
remarkable work of Henry Glassie.21 Glassie proposes that we adapt from Noam
Chomsky’s studies of language a concept which he calls ‘architectural competence.’
‘Architectural competence’ is a set of technological, geometrical and manipulative
skills relating form to use, which constitute ‘an account not of how a house is made,
but of how a house is thought…set out like a programme…a scheme analogous to a
grammar, that will consist of an outline of rule sets interrupted by prosy exegesis’.

32
The analogy with language is apposite. It suggests that the rule sets the vernacular
designer uses are tacit and taken for granted in the same way as the rule sets that
govern the use of language. They are ideas the designer thinks with rather than of.
They therefore have a certain degree of abstraction from the material reality they
help to create. They specify not the specific but the generic, so that the vernacular
designer may use the rules as the basis of a certain restrained creativity in
interpreting the rules in novel ways.
Now the implication of Glassie’s idea is that ‘architectural competence’
provides a set of normative rules about how building should be done, so that a
vernacular building reproduces a known and socially accepted pattern. The house
built by a builder sharing the culture of a community comes out right because
it draws on the normative rules that define the architectural competence of the
community. In this way buildings become a natural part of ‘the transmission of
culture by artefacts’. Through distinctive ways of building, aspects of the social
knowledge distinctive of a community are reproduced. Thus the physical act of
building, through a system of well defined instrumentalities, becomes the means
by which the non-discursive patterns we call culture are transmitted into and
through the material and spatial forms of buildings. The non-discursive aspects of
building are transmitted exactly as we would expect them to be: as unconscious
pattern implications of the manipulation of things.
So what is architecture?
To understand building, then, we must understand it both as a product and as a
process. Having done this, we can return to our original question: what is it that
architecture adds to building? By unpacking the cultural and cognitive complexity
of building, it will turn out that we are at last in sight of an answer. Whatever
architecture is, it must in some sense go beyond the process by which the culturally
sanctioned non-discursivities are embedded in the spatial and physical forms of
buildings. In what sense, then, is it possible to ‘go beyond’ such a process?
The answer is now virtually implied in the form of the question. Architecture
begins when the configurational aspects of form and space, through which buildings
become cultural and social objects, are treated not as unconscious rules to be
followed, but are raised to the level of conscious, comparative thought, and in this
way made part of the object of creative attention. Architecture comes into existence,
we may say, as a result of a kind of intellectual prise de conscience: we build, but
not as cultural automata, reproducing the spatial and physical forms of our culture,
but as conscious human beings critically aware of the cultural relativity of built forms
and spatial forms. We build, that is, aware of intellectual choice, and we therefore
build with reason, giving reasons for these choices. Whereas in the vernacular the
non-discursive aspects of architecture are normative and handled autonomically, in
architecture these contents become the object of reflective and creative thought. The
designer is in effect a configurational thinker. The object of architectural attention
is precisely the configurational ideas to think with that in the vernacular govern

33
configurational outcomes. This does not mean that the designer does not think
of objects. It means that at the same time the designer thinks of configuration.
The essence of architecture lies therefore in building not by reference to
culturally bound competences, and the way in which they guide the non-discursive
contents of buildings through programmes of social knowledge specific to one
culture, but by reference to a would-be universalistic competence arrived at through
the general comparative study of forms aimed at principle rather than cultural
idiosyncrasy, and, through this, at innovation rather than cultural reduplication. It is
when we see in the non-discursive contents of buildings evidence of this concern
for the abstract comparability of forms and functions that building is transcended
and architecture is named. This is why the notion of architecture seems to contain
within itself aspects of both the product which is created and of the intellectual
process through which this creation occurs.
Architecture exists, we might say, where we note as a property of things
evidence not only of a certain kind of systematic intent — to borrow an excellent
phrase proposed by a colleague in reviewing the archaeological record for the
beginning of architecture22 — in the domain of non-discursivity, but of something
like theoretical intent in that domain. In a key sense architecture transcends building
in the same way that science transcends the practical crafts of making and doing.
It introduces into the creation of buildings an abstract concern for architectural
possibility through the principled understanding of form and function. The innovative
imperative in architecture is therefore in the nature of the subject. We should no
more criticise architects for their penchant towards innovation than we should
scientists. In both cases it follows from the social legitimations which give each
its name and identity. Both architecture and science use the ground of theoretical
understanding to move from past solutions to future possibility, the latter in the
direction of new theoretical constructs, the former in the direction of new realities.
The judgment we make that a building is architecture arises when the evidence of
systematic intent is evidence of intellectual choice and decision exercised in a field
of knowledge of possibility that goes beyond culture into principle. In this sense,
architecture is a form of practice recognisable in its product. The judgment we make
that a building is architecture comes when we see evidence in the building both of
systematic intent which requires the abstract and comparative manipulation of form
within the general realm of architectural possibility, and that this exploration and this
exercise of intellectual choice has been successfully accomplished.
Architecture is thus both a thing and an activity. In the form of the thing
we detect evidence of a systematic intent of the architectural kind. From the built
evidence we can judge both that a building is intended to be architecture and, if we
are so inclined, that it is architecture. We see now why the definition of architecture
is so difficult. Because it is the taking hold of the non-discursive contents of building
by abstract, universalistic thought, it is at once an intentional mental act and a
property we see in things. It is because we see in things the objectivised record
of such thought that we name the result architecture.

34
It is clear from this analysis that architecture does not depend on architects,
but can exist within the context of what we would normally call the vernacular. To
the extent that the vernacular shows evidence of reflective thought and innovation
at the level of the genotype, then that is evidence of the kind of thought we call
architectural within the vernacular. This does not mean that the innovative production
of buildings which are phenotypically individual within a vernacular should be thought
of as architecture. Such phenotypical variety is normal as the product of culturally
constrained non-discursive codes. It is only when the innovation, and therefore the
reflective thought, changes the code that underlies the production of phenotypes
that we detect the presence of abstract and comparative — and therefore architectural
— thought within the confines of vernacular tradition. It is therefore perhaps at times
of the greatest change that we become aware of this type of thought in vernacular
traditions, that is, when a new vernacular is coming into existence. This is why
the demarcation between the vernacular and architecture constantly shifts. The
reproduction of existing forms, vernacular or otherwise, is not architecture because
that requires no exercise of abstract comparative thought, but the exploitation of
vernacular forms in the creation of new forms can be architecture.
Architecture exists then to the degree that there is genotypical invention
in the non-discursive, that is, invention with the rules that govern the variability that
is possible within a style. The precondition for such invention is an awareness of
possibilities which are not contained in contemporary cultural knowing but which
are at the same time within the laws of what is architecturally possible. Architecture
is characterised therefore by a preoccupation with non-discursive means rather than
non-discursive ends. This is not the outcome of a perverse refusal to understand
the cultural nature of building, but a taking hold of this very fact as a potentiality to
explore the interface between human life and its spatial and physical milieu. In the
act of architectural creation, the configurational potentialities of space and form
are the raw materials with which the creator works.
Like any creative artist, therefore, the architect must seek to learn, through
intellectual inquiry, the limits and potentialities of these raw materials. In the absence
of such inquiry, there are manifest and immediate dangers. In the vernacular the
pattern of form and the pattern of space which give the building its social character
are recreated through the manipulation and assembling of objects. We can say
then that the form, the spatial pattern and the functional pattern — the form-function
relation, in short — are known in advance and need only be recreated. Because
architecture of its nature unlinks the pattern aspects of the building from their
dependence on social knowledge, these aspects of the building — and above all
their relation to social outcomes — become uncertain.
In architecture then, because these crucial relations between non-discursive
forms and outcomes are not known in advance, architecture has to recreate in a
new, more generalised form, the knowledge conditions that prevail in the vernacular.
Because architecture is a creative act, there must be something in the place of
the social knowledge structure as ideas to think with. Since architecture is based

35
on the general comparability of possible forms, this knowledge cannot simply
encompass particular cases. It must encompass the range of possible cases
and if possible cases in general. There is only one term for such knowledge. It is
theoretical knowledge. We will see in the next chapter that all architectural theories
are attempts to supply principled knowledge of the non-discursive, that is, to render
the non-discursive discursive in a way that makes it accessible to reason. In the
absence of such knowledge, architecture can be, as the twentieth century has
seen, a dangerous art.
The passage from building to architecture is summarised in figure 1.7. The
implication of this is that, although we know the difference between architecture
and building, there is no hard and fast line to be drawn. Either can become the
other at any moment. Taking a broader view which encompasses both, we can
say that in the evolution of building we note two ways in which things are done: in
obedience to a tradition, or in pursuit of innovation. Building contains architecture
to the degree that there is non-discursive invention, and architecture becomes
building to the degree that there is not. Vernacular innovation is therefore included
within architecture, but the reduplication of vernacular forms is not. Architecture is
therefore not simply what is done but how it is done.
The bringing of the non-discursive, configuration dimension of built
form from cultural reproduction to reflective awareness and abstract exploration
of possibility is at once a passage from the normative to the analytic and from
the culture-bound to the universal, the latter meaning that all possibilities are
open rather than simply the permutations and phenotypical innovations that are
sanctioned by the vernacular. The passage is also one which transforms the idea
of knowledge from cultural principle to theoretical abstraction.
In a strong sense, then, architecture requires theory. If it does not have
theoretical knowledge, then it will continue to depend on social knowledge. Worse,
there is every possibility that architecture can come to be based on social knowledge
masquerading as theoretical knowledge, which will be all the more dangerous
because architecture operates in the realms of the non-discursive through which
society is transmitted through building.23 Architecture is therefore permanently
enjoined to theoretical debate. It is in its nature that it should be so. In that it is the
application of reflective abstract thought to the non-discursive dimensions of building,
and in that it is through these dimensions that our social and cultural natures are
inevitably engaged, architecture is theory applied to building. In the next chapter we
will therefore consider what we mean by theory in architecture.

36
Notes
J. Ruskin: Seven Lamps of Architecture, London 1849, chap. 1.
The literature on vernacular architecture as culture is now extensive, and growing
rapidly. Among the seminal texts offering wide coverage are Rudovsky’s Architecture
Without Architects, 1964; Paul Oliver’s Shelter and Society, Barrie Rockliff, The
Cresset Press, 1969 and its follow-up Shelter in Africa, Barrie Jenkins, London,
1971; Amos Rapoport’s House Form and Culture, Prentice Hall, 1969; Labelle
Prussin’s classic review of the contrasting vernaculars within a region, Architecture
in Northern Ghana, University of California Press, 1969; Susan Denyer’s African
Traditional Architecture, Heineman, 1978; and Kaj Andersen’s African Traditional
Architecture, Oxford University Press, 1977; in addition to earlier anthropological
classics such as C. Daryll Forde’s Habitat, Economy and Society, Methuen, 1934.
Studies of specific cultures are now too numerous to mention, as are the much
large-number of texts which have now dealt with the architecture of particular
cultures and regions, but which are not yet available in English. Among recent
studies of the vernacular, the most important to my mind — and by far the most
influential in this text — has been the work of Henry Glassie, and in particular his
Folk Housing in Middle Virginia, University of Tennessee Press, 1975, references
to which, explicit and implicit, recur throughout this text.
The same has often been said of ‘industrial’ architecture. J. M. Richards, for
example, in his An Introduction to Modern Architecture, Penguin, 1940, describes
Figure 1.7
1
2
3

37
Thomas Telford’s St Katharine’s Dock as ‘Typical of the simple but noble engineer’s
architecture of his time’.
Roger Scruton, The Aesthetics of Architecture,. Methuen, 1977.
Ibid., p. 16.
For a recent restatement of this belief see S. Gardiner, The Evolution of the House,
Paladin, 1976.
See for example prehistorical sections of the most recent (nineteenth) edition of
Sir Banister fletcher’s A History of Architecture (edited by Professor John Musgrove)
written by my colleague Dr Julienne Hanson. It is a comment on architectural history
that it is only very recently that the true antiquity of building has been reflected in
the histories of world architecture. Some of Dr Hanson’s sources are in themselves
remarkable texts which if better known would entirely change popular conception of
the history not only of building but also of human society. The key texts are given in
Dr Hanson’s bibliography, but I would suggest the remarkable R. G. Klein, Ice Age
Hunters of the Ukraine, Chicago and London, 1973 as a good starting point.
B. Russell, The Problems of Philosophy, Home University Library, 1912, Oxford
University Press paperback, 1959; Chapter 9 ‘The world of universals’.
R. A. Scruton, The Aesthetics of Architecture, p. 43 et seq.
R. A. Scruton, A Short History of Modern Philosophy: from Descartes to Wittgenstein,
ARK Paperbacks,1984.
R. Descartes, The Principles of Philosophy, Part 2, Principle X in The Philosophical
Works of Descartes, Cambridge University Press, vol. 1, p. 259.
Descartes, Principle XI, p. 259.
Descartes, Principle X ,p. 259.
Graphs which have this property are called ‘planar’ graphs. Any spatial layout on
one level, considered as a graph of the permeability relations, is bound to be planar.
These examples are taken from a study of seventeen houses in Normandy carried
out for the Centre Nationale de Recherche Scientifique, and published as ‘Ideas
are in things’ in Environment and Planning B, Planning and Design 1987, vol. 14, pp.
363–85. This article then formed one of the basic sources for a much more extended
treatment in J. Cuisenier, La Maison Rustique: logique social et composition
architecturale, Presses Universitaires de France, 1991.
The ‘normalisation’ formula for taking the effect of the number elements in the
graph out of the total depth calculation from an element is 2(md–1)/k–2, where md
is the mean depth of other elements from the root element, and k is the number
of elements. There is a discussion of this measure in P. Steadman, Architectural
Morphology, Pion, 1983, p. 217. The measure was first published in Hillier et al.,
‘Space Syntax: a new urban perspective’ in the Architect’s Journal, no 48, vol. 178,
30.11.83. There is an extensive discussion of its theoretical foundations and why it is
so important in space in Hillier and Hanson, The Social Logic of Space, Cambridge
University Press, 1984. The measure theoretically eliminates the effect of the
numbers of elements in the system. However, in architectural and urban reality there
is an additional problem: both buildings and settlements, for practical and empirical
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“But that would have been binding me unfairly, most people
would say,” replied Lilias, softly. “I believe he means to
leave me quite free, but that he could not help catching at a
straw, as it were, and therefore said that about two years.”
“I don’t believe in the two years,” persisted Mary; “even if
he does not come into his property for two years, you might
have been engaged, though not marrying for that time. No,
I see no sense in it—it is some clever pretext of that—”
“that scheming Mr Cheviott’s,” she was going to have said,
but she stopped in time.
“Mary,” said Lilias, drawing away the hand which her sister
had held in hers, “I told you I would not let you speak
against him.”
“Forgive me. I won’t,” said Mary, penitently.
“Whatever the future brings—if he marry some one else
within the two years,” said Lilias, “I shall still always believe
in the Arthur Beverley I have known. He may change—
circumstances and other influences may change him, but
the man I have known is true and honourable, and has
wished and tried to act rightly. This I shall always believe—
till I am quite an old woman—an old maid,” she added with
an attempt at a smile.
“Lily,” exclaimed Mary, with a touch of actual passion in her
tone—“Lily, don’t. You are so beautiful, my own Lily, why
should you be so tried? So beautiful and so good!” And
Mary, Mary the calm, Mary the wise, ended up her attempt
at strengthening and consoling her sister by bursting into
tears herself.
It did Lilias good. Now it was her turn to comfort and
support.

“I am not an old woman yet, Mary,” she said, caressingly,
“and I don’t intend to become one any sooner than I can
help. My hair isn’t going to turn grey by to-morrow
morning. To-morrow, oh! Mary, do you remember what I
said yesterday about ‘this time to-morrow’? I was so happy
this time yesterday, and he said he would be here to-day—it
was the very last thing he said to me. What can have
happened to change it all?”
Again the misgiving shot through Mary’s heart. Had she
done harm? She said nothing, and after a moment’s pause
Lilias spoke again:
“The great thing you can do to help me just now, Mary, is to
prevent any of the others thinking there is anything the
matter. Outside people may say what they like—I don’t care
for that—but it is at home I couldn’t stand it. Besides, we
have so few neighbours and friends, we are not likely to be
troubled with many remarks. Except Mrs Greville, perhaps, I
don’t suppose any one has heard anything about Captain
Beverley’s knowing us.”
“Only at the ball,” said Mary, hesitatingly; “he picked you
out so.”
“Yes,” said Lilias, smiling sarcastically, “no doubt all the
great people said I was behaving most unbecomingly; but
they may say what they like. I know I don’t care for that
part of it. Mary, you will say something to mother to
prevent her asking me about it.”
“Yes,” said Mary. “Lilias, would you like to go away from
home for a while?”
“I don’t know. How could I? There is nowhere I could go,
unless you mean that I should be a governess, after all, and
—” She stopped, and her face flushed again.

“And what?”
“I don’t like to say it; you will not enter into my feelings—I
don’t like to do anything he would not like.”
Mary looked at her sadly.
“Poor Lilias!” she thought, “is ‘he’ worthy of it all?”—“I was
not thinking of that,” she said aloud. “I meant, if it could be
arranged, for you to go away for a visit for a little. Mrs
Greville’s sister asked you once.”
“Yes, but ever so long ago, and I wouldn’t on any account
propose such a thing to Mrs Greville just now.”
“Very well,” said Mary.
Then they kissed each other, and said good-night.
“Two years—two long years!” were the words that Lilias said
to herself over and over again that night—words that
mingled themselves in the dreams that disturbed such sleep
as came to her. “Two years!—what can it all mean? But I
will trust you, Arthur—I will trust you!”
“Two years!” thought Mary. “That part of it can be nothing
but a pretext. And if Lilias goes on trusting and hoping, it
will make it all the worse for her in the end. She has never
had any real trouble, and she thinks herself stronger to bear
it than she really is. I have always heard that that terrible
sort of waiting is worse for a girl than anything. Oh! Lily,
what can I do for you? And have I made it worse? If I had
been gentler, perhaps, to that hard, proud man—there was
a kind look in his eyes once or twice; he cannot know that it
is no piece of idle flirtation—he cannot know how Lilias
cares. If I could see him again! I feel as if I could say

burning words that would make him realise the
wretchedness of separating those two.”

Chapter Thirteen.
A Tempting Opportunity.
“Thou troublest me; I am not in the vein.”
Richard III.
The days went on, and things at Hathercourt Rectory looked
much the same as usual. But not many had passed before,
to Mary’s watching eyes, it seemed that Lilias was flagging.
She had kept up, as she said she would, she had seemed as
cheerful, almost, as usual, she had not overacted her part
either, there had been no excitement or affectation about
her in any way. But, all the more, it had been hard work,
very hard work, and Mary’s heart ached when she saw the
first signs of physical prostration beginning to show
themselves.
“She looks so pale and so thin, and her eyes haven’t the
least of their old sparkle,” said Mary to herself, “if it goes
on, she will get really ill, I know.”
And, in truth, Lilias was beginning herself to lose faith in her
own strength and self-control. She had been buoyed up by
a hope she had not liked to allude to to Mary. A hope which,
long deferred, has made many a heart sick besides Lilias
Western’s—the hope of a letter!
There was no reason, which she knew of, why Arthur should
not write to her.
“He might say in a letter what, perhaps, he would have
shrunk from saying directly,” she thought, forgetting that
the same strong influence which had sent Arthur away

would have foreseen and guarded against his writing to her.
And as day by day came and went, and every morning the
post-bag was opened without her hopes being fulfilled,
Lilias’s heart grew very weary.
“If I had known him anywhere but here,” she said to Mary
one day, “I don’t think it would have been quite so hard.
But here, at home, he seemed to have grown already so
associated with everything. And, Mary,” she went on, with a
sort of little sob, “it wasn’t all only about myself I was
thinking. He is rich, you know; and I couldn’t help fancying
sometimes it might be a good thing for us all—for you and
the younger girls, and for mother. He even encouraged this,
for he more than once made little allusions to the sort of
things he would like to do if he dared. One day, I remember,
when mother was tired, he said to me ‘how he would like to
choose a pony carriage for her that she could get about in,
and have more variety without fatigue.’ We were walking up
and down the terrace—it was late in the afternoon, and
there was red in the sky that shone through the branches of
the group of old oaks at the end—do you remember that
afternoon, Mary? The sky looks something the same to-day,
but not so bright—it was that that reminded me of it.”
“No,” said Mary, “I don’t remember that particular
afternoon. But I do know that he was always kind and
considerate, especially to mother, and I cannot believe that
it was not sincere.”
She gave a little sigh as she spoke; they were standing
together at the window, and as Lilias leaned against the
panes, gazing out, her attitude so languid and hopeless, the
sharpened lines of her profile, all struck Mary with a chill
misgiving.

“Lilias,” she said, suddenly, “you must go away from home
for a while. What you have said just now about the
associations here strengthens my feeling about it. You must
have some change.”
“I don’t think it is possible, and I would much, very much
rather stay at home,” said Lilias.
And till she had some definite scheme to propose, Mary
thought it no use to contradict her.
But morning, noon, and night she was thinking of Lilias,
always of Lilias and her troubles, and revolving in her head
over and over again every possible and impossible means of
making her happy again.
Two mornings after the conversation in the window the
postboy brought a note for Lilias from Mrs Greville. It was
at breakfast-time that it came. They were all together at
the table.
“A letter for you, Lilias,” said her father, as he handed it to
her.
Now letters for the Western girls were a rarity. They had few
relations and almost fewer friends, for they had never been
at school, and seldom left home. So when Mr Western’s
apparently most commonplace announcement was made,
six pair of eyes turned with interest, not to say curiosity, in
Lilias’s direction, and even her mother and Mary glanced
towards her with involuntary anxiety.
“A letter for Lily,” cried Josey, darting up from her seat. “Do
let’s see it. Who’s it from?”
“Josephine!” exclaimed Mary, severely, “how can you be so
unladylike? Mother, do speak to her,” and the little bustle of

reproof of Josey that ensued effectually diverted the general
attention.
Mary’s little ruse had succeeded, and her mother
understood it. But for this, even little Francie could hardly
have failed to notice the deathly paleness which, at her
father’s words, overspread poor Lilias’s face. For an instant
only; one glance at the envelope, and the intensity passed
out of her eyes.
“A note from Mrs Greville,” she said, carelessly, as soon as
she felt able to control the trembling in her voice. “She
wants Mary and me to go to stay there for two nights—she
expects one or two young friends from somewhere or other,
and wants us to help to entertain them, I suppose.”
“It is very kind of her to think of the variety for you, I
think,” said Mr Western. “Why should you be so ungracious
about it, Lilias?”
The girl’s face flushed painfully.
“I don’t mean to be ungracious, father dear,” she said,
gently, “but I don’t care about going.”
Mr Western was beginning to look, mystified, when Mary’s
voice diverted his attention.
“I shall go,” she said, abruptly, “that is to say,” she added,
colouring a little in her turn, “I should like to go, if I can.”
“Dear me,” said her father, “how the tables are turned! It
used to be always Lilias who was eager to go, and Mary to
stay at home.”
“But there is no objection to Mary’s going, if she likes,”
interposed Mrs Western, hastily.

“Objection, of course not. There is no objection to their both
going that I can see,” said Mr Western.
“Well, we’ll talk about it afterwards,” said Mrs Western.
“Girls, you had better go to the school-room. We are later
than usual this morning.”
They all rose, and Lilias was thankful to get away; but as
Mary and she left the room together, they overheard a
remark of their father to the effect that Lilias was not
looking well, had not her mother observed it?
“I dare say she would be the better for a thorough change,”
replied Mrs Western. “It is so long since she left home.”
“Oh, yes!” said her father, with a sigh. “They would all enjoy
a change, and no one needs it more than yourself,
Margaret. It makes me very anxious when I think about
these girls sometimes.”
“But, at the worst, they are far better off in every other way
than I was at their age,” said Mrs Western, “and see how
happy I have been.”
“Ideas of happiness differ so,” said her husband. “I fear a
quiet life in a country parsonage on limited means would
hardly satisfy Lilias. As to Mary, I somehow feel less
anxiety. She takes things so placidly.”
“Not always,” said Mrs Western, under her breath; but she
was glad that her husband did not catch the words, and
that little Brooke’s running in with some inquiry about his
lessons interrupted the conversation—for it was trenching
on dangerous ground.
“I am afraid papa thinks there is something vexing me,”
said Lilias, when Mary and she were alone together for a

little.
“You have yourself to blame for it,” said Mary, with some
asperity; “why did you speak so indifferently of Mrs
Greville’s invitation? Usually you would have been very
pleased to go.”
“Oh, Mary, don’t scold me,” said Lilias, pathetically. “I
couldn’t go to Uxley—you forget how near Romary it is—I
should be sure to hear gossip about him—perhaps that he
was going to be married, or some falsehood of the kind. I
could not bear it. I almost wondered at your saying you
would like to go.”
“It will only be for a couple of days,” said Mary.
“But you are not intending to make any plan with Mrs
Greville for my leaving home, I hope, Mary?” said Lilias,
anxiously. “It may be better for me to go away after a
while, but not yet. And if you came upon the subject with
Mrs Greville in the very least, she would suspect something.
Promise me you will not do anything without telling me.”
“Of course not,” said Mary. “I would not dream of doing
such a thing without telling you.”
But her conscience smote her slightly as she spoke. Why?
A design was slowly but steadily taking shape in her mind,
and Mrs Greville’s note this morning had strangely
forwarded and confirmed it. Practically speaking, indeed, it
had done more than confirm it—it had rendered feasible
what had before floated in Mary’s brain as an act of
devotion scarcely more possible of achievement than poor
Prascovia’s journey across Siberia. And though Mary was
sensible and reasonable, there lay below this quiet surface
stormy possibilities and an impressionability little suspected

by those who knew her best. Her mind, too, from dwelling
of late so incessantly on her sister’s affairs, had grown
morbidly imaginative on the point, though to this she
herself was hardly alive.
“I am not superstitious or fanciful—I know I am not. I never
have been,” she argued, “yet it does seem as if this
invitation to Uxley had come on purpose. If I were
superstitious I should think it a ‘sign.’”
And who is not superstitious?—only for no other human
weakness have we so many names, so many or such
skilfully contrived disguises!
Two days later, “the day after to-morrow,” found Mary on
her way to Uxley Vicarage. Mrs Greville had sent her pony-
carriage to fetch her. The old man who drove it was very
deaf and hopelessly irresponsive, therefore, to the young
lady’s kindly-meant civilities in the shape of inquiries about
the road and commendation of the fat pony, so before long
she felt herself free to lapse into perfect silence, and as
they jogged along the pretty country lanes—pretty to-day,
though only February, for the sky was clear and the air mild
with a faint odour of coming spring about it—Mary had
plenty of time to think over her plan of action.
But thinking it over, after all, was not much good, till she
knew more of her ground.
“I must to some extent be guided by circumstances,” she
said to herself, but with a strong sense of confidence in her
own ability to prevent circumstances being too much for
her. She had never before felt so certain of herself as now,
when about, for the first time in her life, to act entirely on
her own responsibility, and the sensation brought with it a
curious excitement and invigoration. She had not felt so

hopeful or light-hearted since the day of the Brocklehurst
bail, and she was thankful to feel so, and to be told by Mrs
Greville, when she jumped out of the pony-carriage and was
met by her hospitable hostess at the gate, that she had
never seen her looking so well in her life.
“There is no fear of her suspecting anything about Lilias,”
thought Mary, with relief, “if she thinks me in such good
spirits.”
“And how are you all at home, my dear?” said Mrs Greville,
as she led Mary into her comfortable drawing-room, and
bade her “toast” herself a little before unfastening her
wraps. “Your poor dear mother and all?”
“They are all very well, thank you,” Mary replied. “Mamma
is quite well, and so pleased at Basil’s getting on so well—
we have such good news of him.”
She always felt inclined to make the very best of the family
chronicle in answer to Mrs Greville’s inquiries, for though
unmistakably prompted by the purest kindness her want of
tact often invested them with a slight tone of patronage
which Lilias herself could scarcely have resented more
keenly than her less impulsive sister. The “poor dear
mother,” especially grated on Mary’s ears. “Mamma,” so
pretty and young-looking, was no fit object for the “poor
dears” of any one but themselves, thought Mrs Western’s
tall sons and daughters.
But of course it would have been no less ungrateful than
senseless to have taken amiss Mrs Greville’s well-meant
interest and sympathy, even when they directed themselves
to more delicate ground.
“And what about Lilias, Mary dear?” she inquired next. “I
had been longing to hear all about it, and wishing so I had

authority to contradict the absurd rumours that I have
heard about Captain Beverley. I was dreadfully disappointed
at Lilias’s not coming, but consoled myself by thinking you
would tell me all about it.”
“But what are the rumours, and what have they to do with
Lilias?” asked Mary.
“That’s just what I want to know,” replied Mrs Greville.
“Captain Beverley has left Romary suddenly—of course you
know that—and some people say he has made a vow never
to return there because Miss Cheviott refused him the night
of the Brocklehurst ball. That story I don’t believe, of
course. Others say it was not Miss Cheviott, but another
young lady, whose name no one about here seems to know,
but whom he was seen to dance with tremendously that
night, who refused him.”
Mrs Greville stopped and looked curiously at Mary, who
smiled quietly, but said nothing, and felt increasingly
thankful that Lilias had not accompanied her to Uxley.
“And there are stranger stories than these even,” pursued
Mrs Greville. “You will think me a terrible gossip, Mary, but
in a general way I really don’t listen to idle talk, only I felt
so interested in Captain Beverley after what I saw, and I
can’t believe any harm of him.”
“Who can have said any harm of him?” inquired Mary. “I
should have thought him quite a general favourite; he is so
bright, and kindly, and unaffected.”
“Yes, I thought him very nice,” said Mrs Greville. “But there
are dreadful stories about, as to the reason of his leaving
Romary so suddenly. One is that he has been gambling so
furiously that he is embarrassed past redemption, and that
he will only come into his property for it to be sold; and

another is that Mr Cheviott found out that he had secretly
made some low marriage, and turned him out of the house
on that account, it having been always intended that he
should marry Miss Cheviott.” Mary was standing by the fire
looking down on it as Mrs Greville spoke—the reflection of
its ruddy glow hid the intense paleness which came over her
face, and explained, too, the burning flush which almost
instantly succeeded it. She felt obliged to speak, for silence
might have seemed suspicious.
“What a shame of people to say such things!” she
exclaimed, looking up indignantly. “No, I certainly don’t
believe them, but I am glad to know about it all, for it
shows what disagreeable gossip there might have been
about Lilias had her name been mixed up with it.”
“Yes, indeed, but my dear child, you are scorching your face
to cinders—you should not play such pranks with your
complexion, though that brawny pink skin of yours is a very
good kind to wear, and quite as pretty in my opinion, as
Lilias’s lilies and roses—but what was I saying? Oh, yes, by-
the-bye, I do wish you would tell me—I shall be as discreet
as possible—is Lilias engaged to him?”
Mary hesitated a moment, then she said, gently:
“Dear Mrs Greville, I wish you wouldn’t ask me, for I can’t
tell you.”
“Ah, well, never mind,” said her hostess, good-naturedly.
“You’ll tell me whenever you can, no doubt, and I hope it
will all come right in the end, however it stands at present.”
“Thank you,” said Mary, with sincerity.
Then they went on to talk of other things. Mrs Greville
described to Mary the “young people” who were staying

with her, two girls and their brother, cousins of Mr Greville’s
first wife, and counselled her to make herself as pretty and
charming as possible, to fascinate young Morpeth, who
would be a conquest by no means to be despised.
“He is nothing at present,” she said; “he has a thousand a
year, and his sisters the same between them. They are
orphans and have had no settled home since their mother’s
death. Vance Morpeth is talking of going into the cavalry for
a few years, but his elder sister is against it, and he will be
too old if he isn’t quick about it. They have been abroad all
the winter. Now remember, Mary, you are to do your best to
captivate him, unless, indeed,” she went on, as Mary was
turning to her with some smiling rejoinder—“unless you
have some little secret of your own too, with that haughty-
looking Mr Cheviott for its hero.”
The smile died out of Mary’s face.
“Don’t joke about that man, please, Mrs Greville,” she said,
beseechingly. “You do not know how I dislike him. I have
never regretted anything more in my whole life than
dancing with him that night.”
And just then the time-piece striking five, she was glad to
make the excuse that she would be late for dinner unless
she hurried up-stairs to get her things unpacked, for
fashionable hours had not yet penetrated to Uxley.
“Yes, go, my dear,” said Mrs Greville. “Fancy, we have been
a whole hour talking over the fire. I hear the Morpeths
coming in—they must have been a very long walk, and it’s
quite dark outside. I cannot understand why people can’t go
walks in the morning instead of putting off till late in the
afternoon, and then catching colds and all sorts of

disagreeables. Run off, Mary. I dare say you would rather
not see them till you are dressed.”
Which Mary, who cared very little for seeing “them” at all,
rightly interpreted as meaning, “I don’t want Mr Morpeth to
see you till you are nicely dressed, and looking to the best
advantage.”
Her powers of looking her best depended much more on
herself than on her clothes, for her choice of attire was
limited enough. But the suppressed excitement under which
she was labouring had given unusual brilliance to Mary’s at
all times beautiful brown eyes, and a certain vivacity to her
manner, in general somewhat too staid and sober for her
age. So she looked more than “pretty” this evening, though
her dress was nothing but a many-times-washed white
muslin, brightened up here and there by a little rose-
coloured ribbon.
“I thought you told me that it was not the pretty Miss
Western that you expected?” said Mr Morpeth to Mrs
Greville in a low voice, after the introductions had been
accomplished.
Mrs Greville glanced up to the young man as she answered.
There was a puzzled expression in his innocent-looking
eyes; she saw that he was quite in earnest, and, indeed,
she felt sure he was too little, of a man of the world to have
intended his inquiry for a compliment.
“Does that mean that you think this one pretty?” she asked.
“Of course it does. I think she’s awfully pretty, don’t you?”
he said, frankly.
Mrs Greville felt well pleased, but the announcement of
dinner interrupted any more talk between them. Mr Morpeth

had to take Mrs Greville, but she took care that Mary should
sit at his other side.
“How would you define ‘awfully pretty,’ Mary?” she said,
mischievously, when they were all seated at table, and the
grace had been said, and nobody seemed to have anything
particular to talk about.
“Awfully pretty,” repeated Mary. “Awfully pretty what?”
“An ‘awfully pretty’ girl was the ‘what’ in question,” said Mr
Morpeth, shielding himself by taking the bull by the horns,
with more alertness than Mrs Greville had given him credit
for.
Mary smiled.
“I could easily define, or point out to you rather, what, if I
were a man, I should call an awfully pretty girl in this very
neighbourhood,” she said, turning to Mrs Greville.
“I know whom you mean,” replied her hostess. “Miss
Cheviott, is it not? Yes, she is exceedingly pretty. You have
not seen her, Frances,” she went on to the eldest Miss
Morpeth. “I wish you could.”
“Shall we not see her at church on Sunday?” said Miss
Morpeth. “Are not the Cheviotts the principal people here,
now?”
“Yes,” said Mrs Greville, “but they are a good deal away
from home.” Here Mary’s heart almost stopped beating—this
was what she had been longing yet dreaded to inquire
about—what would become of all her plans should Mr
Cheviott be away? But it was not so. “They are a good deal
away from home,” Mrs Greville went on, “and there is
another church nearer Romary than ours, where they go in

the morning. But they very often—indeed, almost always
the last few weeks, come to Uxley in the afternoon—Mr
Cheviott likes Mr Greville’s preaching better than the old
man’s at Romary Moor.”
“That’s not much of a compliment, my dear,” said Mr
Greville from the end of the table, “considering that poor
old Wells is so asthmatic that you can hardly catch a word
he says now.”
A little laugh went round, and under cover of it Mary
managed to say gently to Mr Greville:
“Then Mr Cheviott is at Romary now?”
“Oh, yes; saw him this morning riding past,” was the reply.
Mary gave a little sigh of relief, yet her heart beat faster for
the rest of the evening.
“I wonder if I must do it to-morrow,” she said to herself, “or
not till the day after. I have only the two days to count
upon, and supposing he is out and I have to go again! I
must try for to-morrow, I think.”
“Romary is just two miles from here, is it not?” she said, in
a commonplace tone.
“Not so much,” replied Mr Greville. “Have you never seen it?
It is quite a show place.”
“I was there once—some years ago,” said Mary.
“It is very much improved of late. If the family had been
away we might easily have driven you over to see it,” said
Mr Greville, good-naturedly. “However, some other time,
perhaps, when your sister is here too. You must come over

oftener this summer,” he added, utterly forgetting, if ever
he had quite taken in, all his wife’s confidences about the
Western girls’ wonderful successes at the Brocklehurst ball,
and her more recent misgiving that something had “come
between” Lilias and “that handsome Captain Beverley.”
“Thank you,” said Mary; and after this no more was said
about Romary or the Cheviotts.

Chapter Fourteen.
Mr Cheviott’s Ultimatum.
”‘But methinks,’ quoth I, under my breath,
‘’Twas but cowardly work.’”
Songs of Two Worlds.
The next morning gave promise of a fine day, and Mary felt
that she must be in readiness to seize any favourable
opportunity for her meditated expedition.
“For to-morrow,” she said to herself, while she was dressing,
“may be wet and stormy, and I must not weaken my
position by making myself look ridiculous, if I can help it.
And I certainly should look the reverse of dignified if I
trudged over to Romary in a waterproof and goloshes! I
very much doubt if I should get a sight of Mr Cheviott at all
in such a case.”
She was trying to laugh at herself, by way of keeping up her
spirits, but of real laughter there was very little in her heart.
Even yesterday’s excitement seemed to have deserted her,
and but for a curious kind of self-reliance, self-trust rather,
which Mary possessed a good deal of, the chances are that
she would have given up her intention and returned to
Hathercourt and to Lilias, feeling that the attempt to
interfere had been impossible for her.
“But I foresaw this,” she said to herself, reassuringly. “I
knew I should lose heart and courage when it came to close
quarters—but close quarters is not the best position for
deciding such an action as this. I must remember that I
resolved upon what I am going to do deliberately and coolly.

It seemed to me a right thing to do, and I must have faith
in my own decision. At the worst, at the very worst, all that
can happen to me will be that that man will think I am mad,
or something like it, to take such a step—perhaps he will
make a good story of it, and laugh me over with his friends
—though I must say he hasn’t the look of being given to
laugh at anything! But why need I care if he does? I care
nothing, less than nothing, what he thinks of me. I can
keep my own self-respect, and that is all I need to care
about.”
And so speaking to herself, in all sincerity, with no bravado
or exaggeration, Mary more firmly riveted her own decision,
and determined to go back upon it no more.
But she was paler than usual this, morning when she made
her appearance at Mrs Greville’s breakfast-table, and her
eyes had an unmistakable look of anxiety and weariness.
“Have you not slept well, my dear Mary?” asked Mrs
Greville, kindly. “You look so tired, and last night you looked
so very well.”
Mary’s colour rose quickly at these words and under the
consciousness of a somewhat searching glance from Mr
Morpeth, who was seated opposite her.
“I am perfectly well, thank you,” she replied, to her hostess,
“but somehow I don’t think I did sleep quite as soundly as
usual.”
“Miss Western’s room is not haunted, surely?” said Mr
Morpeth, laughing. “All this sounds so like the preamble to
some ghostly revelation.”
“No, indeed. There is no corner of this house that we could
possibly flatter ourselves was haunted. I wish there were—it

is all so very modern,” said Mrs Greville. “At Romary, now,
there is such an exquisite haunted room—or suite of rooms
rather. They are never used, but I think them the prettiest
rooms in the house. It is so provoking that the Cheviotts
are at home just now. I should so have liked you and Cecilia
to see the house, Frances—and you, too, Mary, as you had
never been there, and we can get an order from the agent
any time.”
“I think the outside of the house as well worth seeing as
any part of it,” said Mr Greville. “It is so well situated, and
seen from the high road it looks very well indeed. By-the-
bye, I shall be driving that way this afternoon if any of you
young ladies care to come with me in the dog-cart? I am
going on to Little Bexton, but if you don’t care to come so
far, I could drop you about Romary, and you could walk
back. The country is not pretty after that. Would you like to
come, Frances? Cecilia has a cold, I hear.”
“Yes,” said Cecilia, “but not a very bad one. But I don’t think
either of us can go, Mr Greville, for Miss Bentley is coming
to see us this afternoon, and we must not be out.”
“Mary, then?” said Mr Greville.
Mary’s heart was beating fast, and she was almost afraid
that the tremble in her voice was perceptible as she replied
that she would enjoy the drive very much, she was sure.
“But I will not go all the way to Little Bexton, I think, if you
don’t mind dropping me on the road. I should like the walk
home,” she said to Mr Greville, and so it was decided. And
for a wonder nothing came in the way.
It was years and years since Mary had been at Romary.
When Mr Greville “dropped her” on the road, at a point
about half a mile beyond the lodge gates, all about her

seemed so strange and unfamiliar that she could scarcely
believe she had ever been there before. Strange and
unfamiliar, even though she was not more than ten miles
from her own home, and though the general features of the
landscape were the same. For to a real dweller in the
country, differences and variations, which by a casual visitor
are unobservable, are extraordinarily obtrusive. Mary had
lived all her life at Hathercourt, and knew its fields and its
trees, its cottages and lanes, as accurately as the furniture
of her mother’s drawing-room. It was strange to her to
meet even a dog on the road whose ownership she was
unacquainted with, and when a countryman or two passed
her with half a stare of curiosity instead of the familiar
“Good-day to you, Miss Mary,” she felt herself “very far
west” indeed, and instinctively hastened her steps.
“It is a good thing no one does know me about here,” she
said to herself; “but how strange it seems! What a different
life we have led from most people nowadays! I dare say it
would never occur to Miss Cheviott, for instance, to think it
at all strange to meet people on the road whose names and
histories she knew nothing of. Young as she is, I dare say
she has more friends and acquaintances than she can
remember. How different from Lilias and me—ah, yes, it is
that that makes what her brother has done so awfully
wrong—so mean—but will he understand? Shall I be able to
show it him?”
Mary stopped short—she was close to the lodge gates now.
She stood still for a moment in a sort of silence of
excitement and determination—then resolutely walked on
again and hesitated no more. These Romary lodge gates
had become to her a Rubicon.
It was a quarter of a mile at least from the gates to the
house, but to Mary it seemed scarcely half a dozen yards.

As in a dream she walked on steadily, heedless of the scene
around her, that at another time would have roused her
keen admiration—the beautiful old trees, beautiful even in
leafless February; the wide stretching park with its gentle
ups and downs and far-off boundary of forestland; the
wistful-eyed deer, too tame to be scared by her approach;
the sudden vision of a rabbit scuttering across her path—
Mary saw none of them. Only once as she stood still for an
instant to unlatch a gate in the wire fence inclosing the
grounds close to the house, she looked round her and her
gaze rested on a cluster of oaks at a little distance.
“When I see that clump of trees next,” she said to herself,
“it will be over, and I shall know Lilias’s fate.”
Then she walked on again.
The bell clanged loudly as she pulled it at the hall door—to
Mary, at least, it sounded so, and the interval was very
short between its tones fading away into silence and the
door’s being flung open by a footman, who gave a little
start of astonishment when Mary’s unfamiliar voice caught
his ear.
“I thought it was Miss Cheviott; I beg your pardon, ma’am,”
he said, civilly enough, and the civility was a relief to Mary.
“Is it Miss Cheviott you wish to see?”
“No, thank you,” said Mary, quietly. “I want to see Mr
Cheviott, if he is at home—on a matter of business, perhaps
you will be good enough to say.”
The man looked puzzled, and, for a moment, hesitated.
“If it is anything I could say, perhaps,” he began. “Unless it
was anything very particular. My master is very busy to-day,
and gave orders not to be disturbed.”

“It is something particular—that is to say, I wish to see Mr
Cheviott himself. Perhaps you will inquire if he is to be
seen,” said Mary, more coldly.
The man looked at her again, and Mary felt glad she had
not her old waterproof cloak on. As it was, she was prettily,
at least not unbecomingly, dressed in a thick, rough tweed
and small, close-fitting felt hat. Her boots were neat, and
her gloves—the only new pair she had had this winter—
fitted well. There was nothing about her attire plainer or
poorer than what would be worn by many a girl of her age,
“regardless of expense,” for a country ramble. And Mr
Cheviott’s servant was not to know it was all her Sunday
best! Then she was tall! An immense advantage, now and
then, in life.
“Certainly, ma’am, I will inquire at once,” said the man. He
was a new-comer who had served a town apprenticeship to
the dangers of indiscriminate admittance, and felt, despite
appearances, he must be on his guard against a young
woman who so resolutely demanded a personal interview
with a gentleman. A man in disguise—what might she not
be? But something in Mary’s low-toned “thank you” re-
assured him.
“Will you step into the library while I ask?” he said, amiably,
and Mary judged it best to do as he proposed.
There was no one in the library, and one of Mary’s but half-
acknowledged wild hopes faded away as she entered the
empty room. She had had a dream of perhaps meeting with
Alys in the first place—the girl with the beautiful face and
bewitching smile—of her guessing her errand, and pleading
on her side.

“She looked so sympathisingly at me that night at
Brocklehurst,” thought Mary—“almost as if she suspected
my anxiety. Oh! if only I could talk to her, instead of that
proud, cold brother of hers!”
But there was no Alys in the library, and an instant’s
thought reminded Mary that of course she, a stranger
calling on “business,” would not have been ushered except
by mistake into Miss Cheviott’s presence, and she gave a
little sigh as she mechanically crossed the room and stood
gazing out of the window.
The servant’s voice recalled her thoughts.
“Your name, if you please, ma’am?” he was asking.
Mary was prepared for this.
“It would be no use giving my name,” she said quietly. “If
you will be so good as to say to Mr Cheviott that I am only
in this neighbourhood for a day or two, and have called to
see him purely on a matter of business, I shall be much
obliged to you.”
The man left the room. He went into Mr Cheviott’s Study by
another door than the one by which it communicated with
the library, but through this last, firmly closed though it
was, in a moment or two the murmur of voices caught
Mary’s quick ears, then some words, spoken loudly enough
for her to distinguish their Sense.
“Where, do you say—in the library? A lady! Nonsense, it
must be some mistake.”
Then the servant’s voice again in explanation. Mary moved
away from the vicinity of the treacherous door.

A minute or two passed. Then the man appeared again.
“I am sorry, ma’am,” he began, apologetically, “but
particularly obliged by your sending my master your name.
He is so much engaged to-day—would like to understand if
it is anything very particular, and—” He hesitated, not liking
to repeat his own suggestion to Mr Cheviott that very likely
the young lady was collecting for the foreign missions, or a
school treat, and might just as well as not send her
message by him.
“It is something particular,” said Mary, chafing inwardly not
a little at the difficulty of obtaining an audience of Mr
Cheviott—“as if he were a royal personage almost,” she said
to herself. “You can tell Mr Cheviott that the business on
which I wish to see him is something particular; and my
name is Miss Western.”
Again the envoy disappeared. Again the murmuring voices
through the door, then a hasty sound as of some one
pushing back a chair in impatience, and in another moment
the door between the rooms opened, and some one came
into the library. Not the man-servant this time, nor did he,
lingering behind his master in the study in hopes of
quenching his curiosity, obtain much satisfaction, for Mr
Cheviott, advancing but one step into the library, and
catching sight of its occupant, turned sharply and closed the
door in the man’s face before giving any sign of recognition
of his visitor—before, in fact, seeming to have perceived her
at all. Then he came forward slowly.
Mary was still standing; as Mr Cheviott came nearer her,
she bowed slightly, and began at once to speak.
“I can hardly expect you to recognise me,” she said, calmly.
“I am Miss Western, the second Miss Western, from

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