Hanna, Sean; (2023) Intelligibility and the structures of freedom. In: Peponis, John, (ed.) Museum Configurations: An Inquiry Into The Design Of Spatial Syntaxes. (pp. 80-100). Routledge: Abingdon, UK.

Text (Chapter 4) Hanna(2023)Chapter4_MuseumConfigurations_images.pdf - Accepted Version Access restricted to UCL open access staff until 20 June 2025. Download (3MB)

Abstract

Our experience of a museum is one of unconstrained exploration and a focus on the exhibited works, rather than on the space, yet evidence suggests our movement is strongly influenced by spatial configuration. The observations seem in conflict with our perceived freedom. This conflict is examined through the property of intelligibility, which has two very different meanings: informally it refers to the ease in which overall spatial structure can be understood and grasped ‘in the head’; but it is also a technical term within Space Syntax referring to the degree to which long-range structure is made evident locally ‘in the environment’ itself. Intelligibility of the latter sort makes some routes statistically more likely than others but allows visitors to navigate easily through a complex space based only on local visual information, which minimises the cognitive effort of focusing on the space itself. Rather than requiring a sense of overall structure as a prerequisite for navigation, the visitor can thus build their understanding of the space, over time, as a result of this exploratory movement. This allows attention to focus not on route planning but on the collection itself, which consists of local viewing choices independent of long-range navigation. It is this that forms our experience of the museum and permits the subjective sense of freedom of exploration.

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