Space Syntax Analysis of Colonial Houses in India

Abstract

The influence of colonial (British) rule on native (Indian) culture and vice versa has resulted in the development of ‘hybrid’ architectural styles, which are seen in the external ‘form’ of the buildings. The development of a hybrid style is an important phase in the evolution of domestic architecture in India. In this paper we explore whether such hybrid nature is also reflected in the spatial organizations of some colonial houses of eastern India. For this, a suitable methodology was evolved to analyze the spatial organizations. The compositional rules in the generation of spatial layout in these houses are analyzed through the use of space syntax analysis, with some modifications, in order to type them spatially. Typically, space syntax analysis deciphers the spatial organization by the formation of ‘inequality genotypes’, which describe only the integration (and segregation) of spaces as per the access relations. To understand more about the Indian social and cultural norms that might have influenced the spatial organizations of the houses, the accessibility, adjacency, and orientation of the spaces also need to be studied. In this paper we explain the methodology used to generate ‘genotype strings’, incorporate the aforementioned information, and help to understand and document the ingrained social and cultural factors in spatial organizations of the houses more explicitly.

The poet Neruda’s environment: The Isla Negra house

“…10 Since then, a substantial amount of research on domestic space has been carried out in different parts of the world using this analytical framework. Valuable examples of this are the study of houses of Chaco Canyon in New Mexico (Bustard, 1999), the evolution of domestic architecture in India through the analysis of houses with English influence (Bandyopadhyay and Merchant, 2006), the modern houses in Recife (Amorim, 1999), or the apartment buildings in Brasília (França and Holanda, 2009) in Brazil. The focus of all of these studies was a search for genotypes.…”

An evaluation of the functional performance of research and academic laboratories using the space syntax approach

“…Also, Dursun and Saglamer (2003) used Space Syntax techniques to study the various spatial patterns in terms of the similarities and differences between different home environments which have been formed through the history of Trabzon, Turkey. Bandyopadhyay and Merchant (2006) studied the influence of British-Indian hybrid architectural styles on the spatial organization of houses in Eastern India. The study suggested that a consistent pattern was observed in the RRA values.…”

“…Furthermore, the space syntax theory has been used as a viable tool to study the functional performance of a variety of building layouts such as worship centers (Mustafa and Hassan, 2013), historical sites and buildings (Li et al, 2016), shopping malls (Al-Juboori and Mustafa, 2014), home environments (Dursun and Saglamer, 2003;Bandyopadhyay and Merchant, 2006;Mustafa et al, 2010), snow houses (Dawson, 2002), and urban traffic network (Chen et al, 2005). However, no study exists in the application of the space syntax theory to assess the functional performance of interior spaces such as laboratory facilities.…”

Perception and Conceptualization of House Floor Plans: An Experimental Analysis

“…House floor plans have also been studied in terms of their structures, with an application of graph theory or space syntax. Bandyopadhyay and Merchant (2006) analyzed colonial houses in India and showed that guest rooms tended to be located near an integrated part of the house, whereas sitting rooms located toward a segregated part for secured privacy. Hanazato, Hirano, and Sasaki (2005) analyzed Japanese condominiums and found that a larger dwelling unit had a larger variety of floor plans and its living room tended to be separated from bedrooms, thereby strengthening the independence of bedrooms.…”