UCL Discovery

Abstract

This paper addresses itself to the question of how and why different societies produce different spatial orders through building forms and settlement patterns. It consists of three parts. Firstly, at a metatheoretical level, it is suggested that spatial organization should be seen as a member of a family of 'morphic languages' which are unlike both natural and mathematical languages but which borrow properties from each. In general, morphic languages are used to constitute rather than represent the social through their syntax (that is the systematic production of pattern). Secondly, a general syntactic theory of space organization is proposed. It is argued that spatial patterns in both complex buildings and settlements fall into eight major types, which are interrelated in structural ways. Finally, the syntactic theory is used to integrate a number of recent general propositions made in anthropology regarding human space organization.

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