Tim Stonor

Category: Design

  • Spaceship City

    Spaceship City

    Notes from a talk given at the Lombardini22 Event on ‘Extreme Spaces’ in Milan, 7th May 2026.

    In preparing for this talk I set myself the challenge of designing a spaceship that could carry humans away from Earth to other parts of space where they might settle. What would this spacecraft look like? What would be its key design features?

    First, it would need to be mechanically and operationally competent. But that’s just the beginning.

    Spaceflight is undoubtedly an extreme undertaking, with the structural integrity of the spacecraft being only one of many extreme hazards. Other profound risks include the reliability of propulsion, energy and communications systems.

    It was a failure in structural integrity that led to the loss of the space shuttle Columbia. A failure in the energy system that led to the Apollo 13 crisis. And a failure in the propulsion system that led to the Challenger disaster.

    Failures in communication also happen. The final descent to the moon of Apollo 11 was blighted by difficulties in finding a signal between mission control, the command module and the lunar module. Then, moments later, problems in the software system with an overloaded computer needing to shut off less-essential processes in order to preserve processing power for the systems that mattered more at the time. Difficulties that were ultimately resolved.

    The challenge I’d like to consider in this talk is of a different order – it’s not a mechanical challenge but a social one. We can see its origins in the near mutiny that occurred during the Apollo 7 mission when an argument broke out between the crew and Mission Control about the intense schedule and its demands on the astronauts.

    Spaceflight is highly programmed. Aside from rest periods, there’s hardly a second never mind a minute that isn’t programmed. Getting the balance wrong between rest and activity between focus and relaxation – can have an impact on physical and mental wellbeing. But a demanding schedule is understandable for one simple reason: missions are short. Even a flight to the moon and back is a matter of days.

    The International Space Station is different. Crew are generally there much longer. But it’s still only a matter of months, a year at most. What we do know though is that, with these longer space flights, crew need to readjust physically and mentally to being back on Earth. Physically because they’ve existed without gravity and so their musculoskeletal systems need to be rebuilt.

    And, mentally because they have also been confined in what amounts to nothing bigger than a small prison.

    Not only this but the cognitive load of being surrounded by task-oriented equipment, without the relief of social spaces dedicated to relaxation

    We can say that these are some of the most restrictive and cognitively demanding spatial layouts in the history of our species.

    In spatial terminology they are ‘trees’: the trunk of the main section with branches leading off it.

    Now we know from our experience here on Earth that trees have become the prevalent form of low-density suburban social housing.

    Not only is this form of settlement car-dependent, it is also prone to burglary. To obesity. And, most profoundly, to loneliness.

    This is what I’d like us to think about because when the human species eventually leaves Earth for colonies elsewhere, the physical and spatial challenges of travel need to be solved.

    (more…)

  • 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…)
  • 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…)
  • All ravens are crows but not all crows are ravens_Reflections on Transit Oriented Developments & Walkable Urban Centres

    All ravens are crows but not all crows are ravens_Reflections on Transit Oriented Developments & Walkable Urban Centres

    Sometimes confused for being the same thing, Transit Oriented Developments (TODs) and Walkable Urban Centres (WUCs) are two distinctly different urban creatures. TODs create efficiencies of urban movement, reducing car-dependency by providing proximity for residents and office workers to public transport infrastructure. WUCs sit at the heart of communities, providing mixed-use environments that foster social, economic and cultural productivity.

    In the same way that all ravens are crows but not all crows are ravens, so it is that all WUCs are TODs but not all TODs are WUCs. Why should this be?…

    (more…)
  • 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

  • What are the physical & spatial characteristics of sustainable towns & cities?

    What are the physical & spatial characteristics of sustainable towns & cities?

    First, the ability to walk to the place you buy your food.

    Second, the ability to walk to see friends, go to school, visit a doctor or dentist or catch public transport.

    ‘Walkability’ requires fine-grained spatial connectivity: simple radial routes from edge to centre to get people to the shops from every direction and then orbitals to let friends get to other friends, to work, school, public transport and so on. Combine radials and orbitals and you get a latticework, or a grid. More regular grids, or less.

    To be economic, both food shopping & public transport require sufficient density.

    Combine 1) a fine-grained spatial latticework with 2) sufficient density and you have the building blocks of sustainable #urbanism.

    If you can only have one then start with the connectivity: the radials feeding a centre and the orbitals helping people move around. Then add the density over time, intensifying the grid with more closely spaced and taller buildings as well as an increasingly finer network of routes towards the centre, where there is more pedestrian activity and an increasingly coarser ‘grain’ towards the edge, where there is less.

    ‪Cycling & public transport follow on.

    This is how sustainable – ie walkable – towns and cities can grow.

  • Ten top tips for community campaigning

    Ten top tips for community campaigning

    1) expect it to be a long run

    2) celebrate small victories

    3) gather the opinions of local people (local people are local experts)

    4) gather the opinions of non-local experts

    5) don’t accept “no” as an answer (“no” is an excuse, not an answer)

    6) keep a record of everything (because people will come and go and they won’t otherwise know what has gone before)

    7) expect setbacks (because nothing is linear and you’ll go in circles from time to time)

    8) be patient with the naysayers since they can sometimes become your firmest advocates

    9) be active online to promote and rebut

    and…finally

    10) hang on to the fact that, however unlikely it may sometimes seem, common sense will prevail!

  • Good things take time…

    Good things take time…

    Urbanism is a long game. The kids grow up for a start.

    This morning I met with local town council members & county council officers to discuss a new pedestrian crossing in #Faversham. Only later did I realise this is on exactly the same location as the photo taken 12 years ago for an article by Katie Puckett for Building Magazine!

    Here’s the article:
    https://lnkd.in/dRfm9Cb

    “This junction has been designed for the benefit of cars. At 8.30am it is teeming with kids trying to get to school but there’s nowhere to cross the road.”

    This small but significant intervention would build on the recently approved 20mph speed limit in Faversham, something that’s been a long time in coming. Let’s see what happens in the next few months.

    We can’t wait another decade.

  • What will cities look like 30 years from now?

    What will cities look like 30 years from now?

    I joined a carbon reduction event yesterday where, by way of introducing ourselves, we were each asked to predict the future: what did we think we would see more of in 2050 – in terms of objects, experiences and services. A neat little ice-breaker if ever there was one.

    Here are my top-of-the-head responses:

    1. Object

    Green, shaded main streets

    ⁃ fronted by shops at ground level with people living above them

    ⁃ lined by trees that provide shade, lower air temperatures, disperse strong winds and encourage walking

    ⁃ forming the centres of local neighbourhoods that are built relatively densely but that are also intensely green (green walls, green roofs, green verges

    ⁃ connected into a secondary network of slow streets that people can walk, cycle and drive along.

    2. Experience

    Conviviality: the “Urban Buzz”

    – people standing, sitting, talking and generally being present with one another, forming local communities.

    3. Service

    Data-driven urban planning & design

    – harnessing machine learning and AI-driven algorithms to create future plans and predict their impacts.

    The first two will help address the Climate Emergency by reducing transport emissions. The third will threaten the established authority of the architectural and urban planning professions, which will need to adapt to survive by accelerating their uptake of digital tools.

  • Office or home – where’s the best place to work from in the New Normal?

    Office or home – where’s the best place to work from in the New Normal?

    Screenshot 2020-05-04 at 16.53.58

    The question about when we return to work is also a question about how we return to work. For many, remote working has been a revelation. Perhaps not ideal in every respect but certainly helpful in many: the convenience of not commuting, the realisation that Zoom, Teams, Miro, Skype, Whatsapp and other platforms mean it’s possible to stay in touch in ways we hadn’t realised.

    So there’s a fair amount of “unlock inertia” going around and a good set of very reasonable questions being asked:

    • will anyone want to work 9-5 anymore?
    • and on every day of the week?
    • can we carry on having those online meetings because they seem, at least for some purposes, to be more efficient than round-table events?
    • and how do we stop ourselves drifting back to the Old Normal?

    We’ve been discussing the future of work at Space Syntax, both for ourselves and for our clients who we help create workplaces that foster interaction, encourage serendipitous encounters and nurture creativity. I wrote recently about what the office of the future might look like, with no desks and board rooms – a little provocatively for some as it turned out, but deliberately done to stimulate our thinking about why we need offices. (more…)

  • 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…)

  • Beyond placemaking: 7 dimensions of “Place Performance”

    Beyond placemaking: 7 dimensions of “Place Performance”

    Notes from a talk at the Bartlett Real Estate Institute, University College London, 24th April 2019.

     

    Placemaking is the art and science of planning and designing spaces for human activity, however that is done: ‬

    – by a single hand (usually not a good approach) or by multiple hands (usually a good approach)

    – by academics, professionals and non-professionals. ‬‬

    ‪But beyond placemaking is “place working”, or “place functioning”, or “place performance”: when the planning, design and construction work is finished and the place becomes operational. When it fills with the mysterious liquid called human behaviour. ‬‬‬

    And key to which is human transaction: the everyday social and economic exchanges that take place between people – these transactions not only sustain lives but bring about inventions that shape cultures.

    Place Performance has many dimensions. Here are seven that I have seen work in practice: (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…)