Tim Stonor

Category: Architecture

  • The art of modelling

    This film was a pleasure to make: sitting with Kayvan Karimi, chatting with Anna Rose and creating an ‘old-school’ #spacesyntax model by hand with pen, ruler and trace. 

    The film explores the pros and cons of digital versus analogue methods of analysis and design. The potentials of immersive digital experiences are enormous and, as I say in film, the capabilities of digital tools outstrip what we did previously without them.

    Nevertheless, concerns are often raised about the loss of hand skills in architecture (such as sketching and model-making) witthe implication being that the digital designprocess is less natural than the analogue. 

    Having worked in an ‘electronic environment’ for over 40 years, I no longer see the difference between drawing on paper, tablet or screen. But I prefer to work digitally for ease of creation, editing, storage and sharing. 

    I don’t see anything diminishing or dehumanising about the digital world. For me it’s akin to thinking and to dreaming: seeing images and places without tangible form. And then it adds something else: the ability to bring other people into those places, wherever they happen to be. 

    However, I know that many people over my age (58) have worked largely, if not entirely, in analogue. The digital world is less familiar and it’s possible to imagine why it can appear alien or inferior. 

    The same is not so true of people younger than me. And increasingly so. In the next decade, as the current generation of analogue leaders gives way to digital natives, the production, development and dissemination of design ideas will, I believe, be greatly enhanced. Each part of the design process will benefit from the digital input of, for example, an immersive projection or AI algorithm. 

    But whether it’s in sketching, engagement or critical review, the design process relies on human judgment – not least because the combined effects of cultures, climates and contexts mean that no two buildings and no two places are ever truly the same. 

    Will it take another decade for the machines to figure those out? We seem to be close with climate and context. Or will the unpredictability of cultural change be the elusive phenomenon that sustains the relevance of the imaginative brain and the creative hand?

  • The urban cortex

    The urban cortex

    A talk given at Lombardini22 architects in Milan on 13th May 2025.

    The idea I’d like to explore this evening is that cities serve a higher purpose than we typically credit them with, and this idea is that cities are natural extensions of the human brain. Far from being artificial, alien objects, cities work with us, their users, to help us solve the problems of our times. Cities are extensions of our brains and, just like our brains, cities are sophisticated computers.

    At least they are, if we design them well. 

    Great cities are not just beautiful to look at and stimulating to be in. They are also highly efficient human transactions machines: bringing people together to form relationships and generate outcomes. Cities are the outermost layer of our common existence. Hence the title of this talk: the ‘urban cortex’.  

    One challenge when discussing cities is that urban commentators often begin by describing cities as chaotic, that their street networks are ‘labyrinthine’. This is a lazy approach to urbanism – and not one that we share at Space Syntax. Instead, we’ve spent the last 50 years studying the apparent chaos of cities and discovering regularities within them – of spatial layout, of land use distribution, of density, mobility and the distribution of inequalities. 

    These discoveries help us both to understand cities and to better design them. 

    Cities are not chaotic. We don’t build them by chance. Within their apparently labyrinthine randomness there are structures that organise the ways we move through cities – and interact with each other within them.

    There are regularities that allow us to understand cities – not just as urban scientists might pick them apart but as every day users make sense of the places they’re in:

    • how they feel comfortable in them
    • feel like they want to visit and explore them
    • meet people in them
    • go to work in them
    • invest their time and their money 
    • have fun
    • feel excitement. 

    This is the ‘urban buzz’ that draws people to cities.  

    (more…)
  • Space Syntax: selected papers by Bill Hillier

    Space Syntax: selected papers by Bill Hillier

    It is wonderful that a new book of Bill Hillier’s work on ‘space syntax’ has been published, including a FREE, downloadable .pdf:

    https://lnkd.in/eeQbrAkh

    Bill and his colleagues were so far ahead of the curve, writing in the 1970s about design coding, algorithms and generative design long before the technology existed to test their thinking for real.

    Yet, in paper after paper, what matters is not speculation for the sake of it but instead a strong sense of social purpose and community-focused design. It is this spirit that inspired the academic research group in all its pioneering work.

    Above all (and I would say this, wouldn’t I) the theme that this book keeps coming back to is the importance of professional design practice. Bill and colleagues had the practising architect in mind, not just the research selection committee. The objective of space syntax theory was always to be highly practical in helping architects and urban designers make design decisions. This is something that current space syntax researchers will be reminded of throughout the book.

    For those of us not/no longer steeped in academia, the book is also a great read. Although Bill’s writing can be hard going, it’s worth it. There isn’t an unnecessary word in there – just a lot of them!

    My recommendation is to start with Ricky Burdett‘s essay in Chapter 7, which introduces the 16-page article on space syntax published by the Architects’ Journal in 1983 (yes, 16 pages!).

    And then take it from there…

    Congratulations and thanks to co-editors Laura Vaughan, John Peponis & Ruth Conroy Dalton for making this possible.

  • The Debate: Should London bid for the 2040 Olympic Games?

    Published in CityAM on 30th April 2025

    No: Passing the baton to another UK city would be a more worthy legacy

    2012 was spectacular – indeed the Games were so positive for London that their transformational impacts are still being felt and will be for some time. The Olympics and Paralympics inspired people to be better and to do more, creating places that are clean and lush where once they were polluted and sterile. Who wouldn’t want more?

    Yet one of the key questions for a future London Games is whether there is another fissure like the Lea Valley that needs bridging with streets, parks, stadia and real estate development. Or that has existing, box-fresh transport infrastructure such as the likes of Stratford International handed to the designers of 2012.

    No, London doesn’t need another Olympics and Paralympics for some time to come. Certainly not before another UK city has received that honour. Instead, the lessons of 2012 need to be passed to one of the nation’s other great cities where, like London, there are inequalities between west and east, or north and south. Where development needs to be undertaken on a scale that only the Games can deliver. A New York to Los Angeles or a Sydney to Melbourne.

    But let’s not leave London out entirely. After all, this city remains the repository for much of the knowledge, passion and guile that delivered that summer of love. Let London’s contribution be in offering the people that made 2012 possible. A collective memory of Olympics wisdom resides here in the capital, with a tome of tips and tricks to make things happen faster, cheaper and better. Let’s offer a different kind of Games volunteers. That would be an extraordinary legacy. 

    Link to published article in CityAM

  • Design to prioritise well-being and sustainability

    Notes from a talk given at the Roca Gallery, Barcelona on 10th December 2024, organised by Noumena

    In this urban century, cities face unprecedented challenges. How can we design to prioritise well-being and sustainability? This was the question at the heart of yesterday’s Urban Futures discussion in Barcelona.

    In thinking about the future we need to address the great global challenges that define our age:

    First, the challenge of climate change. Indeed the emergency of carbon reduction. This is obviously an environmental challenge but equally it is a challenge that threatens our economies and therefore our societies.

    Second, the public health challenges of obesity and loneliness. The former a physical health challenge and the latter a mental health challenge. Of course they’re interconnected: one begets the other. And they’re exacerbated by car-dependence.

    Third, the socio-cultural, indeed existential challenge of shelter. The number of displaced people in the world is higher than it has ever been. The UN calculate that we need to build 96,000 homes a day to eliminate this indignity.

    These challenges are unprecedented and cities must play a central role in addressing them.

    But how? Iconic architecture is not the answer. It is a distraction. What cities need is not architects and engineers who can design buildings that are 2km tall but great streets that are 2km or even 20km long. Rethinking urban mobility is possibly the most difficult design challenge of the day.

    So, in rethinking cities, where do you begin? Here are some ideas…

    (more…)
  • 15-minute cities or 15-minute ‘bubbles’?

    15-minute cities or 15-minute ‘bubbles’?

    The motion at today’s Cityscape conference in Riyadh was: The 15-Minute City model will improve quality of life for all communities and can be easily scaled globally. 

    Who would choose to argue against the principles of the 15-Minute City? Walkable. Sociable. Low carbon. 

    Who wouldn’t want any of that?

    But, if not the principles of the 15-Minute City, what we should be deeply concerned about is the experience of translating those principles into practice. 

    My colleague Katya and I are going to argue against the motion from our experience of what many developers and designers are naively promoting in the name of the 15-Minute City. 

    Because what we are seeing in cities all over the world are individualistic, inward-looking, over-localised, gated developments calling themselves 15-Minute Cities. 

    Why do their proponents claim that these are 15-Minute Cities? Well, because they are relatively small, they have a mix of land uses and there’s a varying degree of infrastructure for walking and cycling. 

    But there’s typically very little, if any, public transport and the connections to other so-called 15-Minute Cities usually require the pedestrian or cyclist to cross the major roads and even highways that separate them. So these would-be walkers and cyclists usually end up jumping in a car and driving. 

    We know a lot about this in the UK because the 15-Minute City concept was at the heart of disastrous 20th Century New Town planning, even if we didn’t call them 15-Minute Cities back then.

    Communities – especially women – found themselves unable to walk easily between neighbourhoods because they felt unsafe next to fast cars or having to move through the tunnels that had been built under the highways or up, over and down the bridges that are the visible symbols of civic failure. 

    (more…)
  • Design buildings like sandwich boxes?

    Design buildings like sandwich boxes?

    This post is taken from my reply to Peter Madden’s LinkedIn thinkpiece: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/professor-peter-madden-obe-b5684020_futuresthinking-fridayfuturesinsight-activity-6900394364888322048-CIrf

    The silver lining of COVID is that it’s exposing the links between where we live and how we live, whether that’s the exercise we get/or don’t get from the ways we now travel to work or the windows we open once we get there. It’s making us think.

    So if we take notice of whether what we eat is grass fed or free range or plant based then why shouldn’t we equally be interested that the air in a theatre is fresh-filtered? Why shouldn’t we think what it would mean for building facades to be like bean tins or sandwich boxes? Carrying information on their environmental and health performances. Not simply ‘as designed’ but also ‘as used’.

    Perhaps not plastered across the windows and rooftops (like the Shandwick packet in my photo) but embedded in QR codes and augmented reality overlays. Or just tastefully (pun intended) done as in Peter Madden’s photo.

  • Streets first, buildings second

    Streets first, buildings second

    I’ve been invited to lecture to the Harvard GSD ‘Unterbau’ options studio this Thursday. They’ve been offered the concepts of the Continuous City (ie buildings aligned into street-fronting blocks) versus the Discontinuous City (ie modernist standalone architecture). This makes me think about a second pair of types: the Continuous Street Network (simple, linear, grid-like) and the Discontinuous Street Network (convoluted, labyrinth-like). 

    These two categorisations can be combined, I think positively, as:

    CC:CSN (the most traditional form of #urbanism, found for millennia)

    DC:CSN (street-based but ‘gappy’)

    or negatively as:

    CC:DSN (trying to be like a city but overly convoluted in layout – I see a lot of this in contemporary urbanism)

    DC:DSN (the worst of the worst – complex and incoherent).

    In other words, what matters most is the geometry of the street network, then the continuity/discontinuity of the buildings. Streets first, buildings second. Sometimes/often/always hard for architects to accept.

    I might weave this into my talk…

  • World Cities Summit: leveraging the science of cities

    World Cities Summit: leveraging the science of cities

    As an architect & urban planner my principal concern is to make cities work for people. This means understanding how their streets connect to either encourage low carbon transport such as walking and public transport. Or, if they’re disconnected, do they lock in car dependence and its carbon impacts?

    (more…)
  • “7Ls” of urban planning & design

    “7Ls” of urban planning & design

    Location – where is the site and what’s around it

    Linkage – where are the principal ways into the site (can any new ones be established?)

    Layout – the pattern & hierarchy of streets

    Land use – more than housing?

    Landscape – the look and feel of the place (covers a lot eg materials, blue/green)

    Lining – how the buildings meet the street (active or blank frontages)

    Longevity – quality construction & operational expectations

  • Is physical distancing possible on city streets?

    Is physical distancing possible on city streets?

    Until a vaccine is found for COVID-19, and perhaps beyond, it will be important to practise physical distancing in towns and cities.

    Whether this is possible will come down to the “carrying capacity” of the urban infrastructure: in particular, the relationship between Pedestrian Supply in the form of sufficiently wide footways and Pedestrian Demand in terms of the need for people to walk, whether that is to work, home, school, the shops or for leisure and pleasure.

    Both supply and demand are calculable using tools from tape measures to multi-variable modelling algorithms.

    Screenshot 2020-04-28 at 17.40.49

    Much well-deserved attention has been paid to the Sidewalk Widths NYC project, a digital map that “is intended to give an impression of how sidewalk widths impact the ability of pedestrians to practice social distancing.” By measuring the available width of footways, the map indicates which footways may or may not be suitable for physical distancing.

    Sidewalk width provides an important piece of the “Pedestrian Supply” equation. However, it is not on its own capable of answering the central question: is physical distancing possible?

    First because it is a one-dimensional measure and physical distancing is at least two-dimensional: it may be possible to keep 6 feet to the side of someone else, but is it possible to keep 6 feet in front and 6 feet behind? Given the length of many streets in New York City it may seem apparent that there is plenty of space to go around but the generously wide sidewalks of Times Square demonstrate that, under normal circumstances it is possible for these to be swamped with human activity and, as a result unsuitable for physical distancing under the new normal. Furthermore, it may be possible to observe distancing while walking mid-block but what happens at street intersections? Is there space to queue? Are the street lights synchronised to let one “platoon” of users cross before the next arrives behind them? Is flow predominantly one-directional (which it may often, but not always, be in the rush hour) or two-directional (as it can be at lunchtime)? One-way flows may have less of the “ordered chaos”, the urban ballet of two-way flows and so one-way flows may be more efficient.  (more…)

  • No board rooms, no desks. The office of the future…

    No board rooms, no desks. The office of the future…

    Images of future offices, with physically distanced workstations to separate desk-bound workers, seem to miss the point. Offices aren’t for staying apart – they’re for coming together. But how can that be organised in a post-COVID world?

    Offices have desks because we’ve long thought that people couldn’t or shouldn’t work from home. Attitudes were changing slowly, with progressively greater levels of home working in recent years. Now, enforced lockdown has shown, in a short space of time, that for many of us it’s entirely possible to do much of our work from the place we live.

    This is especially so when we’ve got the right kit and the right applications, and when we’ve moved sufficiently well along the learning curve to use our tech properly. And home working is likely to be even easier when, for many, the kids are back at school and home is an emptier, quieter and less disruptive place to be.

    To continue to be relevant, to be attractive to people who are used to the comforts of home working, offices should no longer be boxes where people sit further apart from each other. Instead, they need to be places for doing what can’t be as easily done at home:

    ⁃ serendipitous encounter outside of planned meetings

    ⁃ overheard conversations that prompt interruptions, discussions and, as a result, new ideas

    ⁃ introductions between the person you’re with and the person you bump into. (more…)

  • Silver linings: how design can exploit the virus

    Silver linings: how design can exploit the virus

    A “to do” list for urban planners, architects & interior designers, in response to the coronavirus.

    In towns & cities:

    • reduce traffic speeds to 20mph/30kph to discourage speeding on empty streets during lockdown & to keep the air clean, the sound low & the accidents down after the “return”.

    On wide streets:

    • broaden footways to improve physical distancing in the short term & encourage pedestrian flow in the long
    • then narrow roadways further with cycle lanes to support physical activity during lockdown & active commuting on the return.

    In public spaces:

    • provide more shade, more seats, more WiFi
    • place more seats on broadened footways so calls can be answered & people can convert from moving to sitting down…
    • …and so “I’ll call you back” becomes “Just give me a second to sit down.”

    (more…)

  • Reflecting ourselves in the city

    Reflecting ourselves in the city

    What can the form of cities tell us about the structure of the brain? And what can the structure of the brain tell us about the form of cities? These are questions that I’d like to address in this talk. In summary, I believe we can learn a good deal about the interaction between the mind and the urban places in which the global majority of people now lives.

    After all, the city is the largest intentional product of the human species. We’ve had them for millennia and, in them, we’ve manifested our societies, created our industries and developed our cultures. They are the product of our imaginations, the places where we take decisions – and they are the inspiration for new thought. The link, I want to suggest though, is not just contextual. It’s much deeper than that. (more…)

  • We, robots

    We, robots

    The subject of robotics is multi-dimensional, disruptive & urgent.

    In my summing up at the Public Debate of the Robotics Atelier at the Norman Foster Foundation, I identified three types of robot:

    Type 1_The robot of repetitive tasks

    – this kind of robot will end many kinds of manual jobs that people currently have in factories.

    Type 2_The robot of super-human activity

    – doing jobs that no human can do: because they are, for example, in outer space, under water, in hazardous places; or because they require such precision that they are beyond human ability.

    Type 3_The robot of provocative imagination

    – this robot engages most intimately with human existence, suggesting ideas, suggesting shapes, suggesting behaviours that were previously unknown. Another word for this could be the “design robot”.

    Or even the “life support robot” – a machine, an entity that lives with us, whether it is attached to us, inside us or walking beside us. It cares for us.

    Whereas the first kind of robot – the robot of repetitive tasks – is the most straightforward, it isn’t at all the least important because it may have the most profound impacts on current industrial practices and, as a consequence, on social and economic structures.

    But the life support robot is the most intriguing/challenging. It conjures up images of an animal on the shoulder, the daemon in The Golden Compass – enhancing/extending our quality of life and provoking thoughts/actions we might otherwise not have made.

    My takeaway from the Robotics Atelier at the Norman Foster Foundation is that we need to be more nuanced in our discourse. Robotics means different things to different people and we must acknowledge these differences in order to have meaningful debate.

  • Cities from scratch – Astana Economic Forum

    Cities from scratch – Astana Economic Forum

    Good afternoon. I’m delighted to be a member of this panel today.

    Let me start by describing my organisation’s approach to the creation of cities from scratch.

    Space Syntax is an international urban planning and design studio and has been involved in plans for new cities and new city extensions throughout the world, including here in Kazakhstan.

    Our approach is built on three key ingredients: (more…)

  • The return of the impossible – Astana Economic Forum

    The return of the impossible – Astana Economic Forum

    Good afternoon. It’s an honour and a pleasure to be here in Astana today with this distinguished panel.

    In speaking about the cities of the future I’d like to speak about three technologies that I think are not only exciting but are also capable of genuinely addressing the “Global Challenges” theme of this Forum.

    The first is a mobility technology. The second is a physical transaction technology. The third is a digital technology.

    As an architect involved in the design of everything from new buildings and public spaces to entirely new cities, these are three technologies that I’m particularly invested in. (more…)

  • Intense relationships: measuring urban intensity

    Enriching design practice by the mapping of human behaviour patterns could transform urban space

    An article published in the Architectural Review on 30th April 2018.

    There’s much debate about how to measure density – dwellings per hectare, bedrooms per hectare or people per hectare; including or excluding major highways, parks and open spaces; the permanent population only or the transient one too? 

    While this gives urban planners something to disagree about, it risks missing the point: great urban places are not created by density; they’re created by intensity. The difference matters. When people describe the buzz of a market they don’t say, ‘Wow – it was so dense’. They’re much more likely to say how intense it was. Density is a word used by planners. Intensity is a word that real people use, and perhaps because it describes the outcomes that people experience rather than the inputs that have gone into creating them. It’s the outcomes that are ultimately more important.

    But planning professionals like density. Even though density doesn’t capture the essence of what it feels like to be somewhere, the term appeals to professional instincts. It describes the raw ingredients that planners have to handle and, once you choose which version of the formula to use, density is easy to measure. It involves a simple calculation of straightforward urban quantities such as the number of people, of houses or of bedrooms, all divided by the geographic area over which those ingredients occur. Easy.

    By contrast, intensity seems more difficult to pin down, not least because it appears to have a subjectively emotional dimension; it speaks of feelings, responses, stimuli; raising problems about how it can be measured. But intensity is also a response to context, to place and above all to people – and here we find clues to its measurement.

    (more…)

  • http://ecosystemsknowledge.net/events/building-prosperous-cities/blog/Tim_Stonor

  • Growth. Are you old school or new school?

    Growth. Are you old school or new school?

    There are two different schools of thought about how to accommodate urban growth. The first says that cities should build more road capacity to handle private vehicle traffic. The second says that less space should be provided for private vehicles and more investment should be made in public transport and “active travel” i.e. walking and cycling. The first approach is generally more costly than the second.

    The old school of thought has prevailed for around a century. The new school is relatively more recent, responding to the frequent failure of the former, where more road space has created more road traffic, which has created more congestion.

    Cities all over the world are now removing expensive car-oriented infrastructure and introducing space for walking, cycling and public transport. Ring roads and bypasses are being unpicked and cities are thriving as a result. Look at Copenhagen, Paris, London, Birmingham, Boston, Poynton or any number of places that have employed the new school approach.

    On Poynton…”This was the busiest junction in Cheshire, with 25,000 vehicle movements per day and the fourth worst performing retail centre in Cheshire East. It now accommodates a similar volume of traffic, but since average speeds have fallen to below 20mph, drive times through the centre are significantly reduced. Anecdotally people feel safer crossing the carriageway and cars will stop for them, make eye-contact and usually elicit a wave of thanks from the pedestrian.” The Academy of Urbanism

    Road speeds are being reduced, from 40 or 50mph to 20 or 30mph. Not only on residential streets but at the intersections of major roads too. Why? Because when you slow traffic down it flows more freely. Why? Because at lower speeds, more vehicles can fit into the same space. This isn’t rocket science. It’s simply a different school of thought.

    When a city pursues “old school thinking” of road capacity increases and banned turns then not only is this going to generate more road traffic it is also going to make it ever harder for people to do anything other than drive. In these circumstances, walking and cycling become harder. “Walking and cycling facilities” might be put in but these are often token gestures because they are fitted in around the needs of traffic. Desire lines – the paths that people prefer to take – are severed and people are encouraged to walk or cycle on unnaturally twisted journeys. What happens as a result? They don’t use these “facilities” and they take risky alternatives, dashing across road lanes or cycling among fast-moving traffic.

    Old school thinking is voracious – once started it is hard to stop. Nevertheless, evidence, analysis and creative thinking can help. If there is a willingness to listen.

    I speak from the perspective of practice – of having observed the behaviour of people on foot, on bikes and in vehicles in a scientific manner for over 25 years. Of having presented evidence of fact to local authorities and of overturning poorly thought-through, old school proposals. Of having designed alternatives that don’t put anyone in particular first but instead balance the needs of all. This isn’t about being pro-bike and anti-car. It’s about being pro-place and pro-cities.

    And let’s be clear, new school thinking is fundamentally about being pro-growth. But pro a form of growth that is smart and sustainable: growth that doesn’t sacrifice the profound benefits of local places for the expedience of cross-city commuting, but growth that promotes alternative ways of traveling and enhances the attractiveness of cities as places to live in and invest in.