The Monthly Scientific Journal of Bagh-e Nazar

Perceptual Metageometry: A Relational Framework for the Formulation and Analysis of Spatial Experience

https://doi.org/10.22034/bagh.2026.582541.6048
Volume 23, Issue 161
November 2026
Pages 5-18
The Monthly Scientific Journal of Bagh-e Nazar

Document Type : Original Research Article

Authors

Zohreh Shaeri 1
Maryam Majidi 2
Hamidreza Ebrahimi 3

1 Department of Architecture, Kish International Campus, University of Tehran, Iran

2 Department of Landscape Architecture, Nazar Research Center for Art, Architecture, and Urbanism, Tehran, Iran

3 Department of Landscape Architecture, College of Fine Arts, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

Abstract
Problem statement: Spatial experience in architecture is a multidimensional and dynamic phenomenon contingent upon human–environment interaction, and its explanation cannot be reduced to the physical or geometric attributes of space. Despite the development of numerous theories in the fields of phenomenology, spatial perception, place memory, and spatial structure analysis, the explanatory capacities of these approaches have largely been formulated independently and at different levels, while the manner in which they relate to one another remains subject to a theoretical gap.
Research objective: This study aims to formulate the conceptual framework of “Perceptual Metageometry” by addressing the question of how the explanatory capacities of existing theories can be reorganized within a relational logic to understand spatial experience.
Research method: This is a fundamental study employing a qualitative approach and a critical theoretical synthesis strategy. It was conducted through interpretive analysis, conceptual comparison, and theoretical abstraction of the selected theoretical strands.
Conclusion: The findings indicate that phenomenology, theories of perception, studies of memory and identity, and configurational analysis explain, respectively, the lived, perceptual, temporal–semantic, and structural levels of spatial experience. However, none of these approaches alone explains how the structural conditions of space are transformed into an experience that is perceived, lived, and endowed with temporal and semantic continuity. The synthesis of these levels demonstrates that the quality of spatial experience does not reside in the components themselves; rather, it emerges from the organization of the relationships among them through the mechanisms of emergence, affordance, and feedback. Accordingly, the innovation of Perceptual Metageometry lies not in introducing an alternative theory, but in shifting the unit of explanation from the “component” to the “relation” and in formulating an interdisciplinary level of spatial experience that cannot be derived from the independent examination of any of its constituent domains.

Keywords

Environmental Phenomenology
Spatial Perception
Lived Experience
Place Memory
Spatial Configuration
Space Syntax
Subjects
Assmann, J., & Czaplicka, J. (1995). Collective memory and cultural identity. New German Critique, 65, 125–133. https://doi.org/10.2307/488538 
Assmann, J. (2011). Cultural memory and early civilization: Writing, remembrance, and political imagination. Cambridge University Press.
Batty, M. (2005). Cities and complexity: Understanding cities with cellular automata, agent-based models, and fractals. MIT Press.
Batty, M. (2009). Cities as complex systems: Scaling, interaction, networks, dynamics and urban morphologies. In R. A. Meyers (Ed.), Encyclopedia of complexity and systems science (pp. 1041–1071). Springer. https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/15183/1/15183.pdf 
Batty, M. (2013). The new science of cities. MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9399.001.0001   
Böhme, G. (2017). Atmospheric architectures: The aesthetics of felt spaces (A.-C. Engels-Schwarzpaul, Ed. & Trans.). Bloomsbury Academic.
Canter, D. (1977). The psychology of place. Architectural Press.
Coburn, A., Vartanian, O., & Chatterjee, A. (2017). Buildings, beauty, and the brain: A neuroscience of architectural experience. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 29(9), 1521-1531. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_01146 
Eberhard, J. P. (2009). Applying neuroscience to architecture. Neuron, 62(6), 753–756. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2009.06.001 
Gallese, V., & Lakoff, G. (2005). The brain’s concepts: The role of the sensory-motor system in conceptual knowledge. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 22(3–4), 455–479. https://doi.org/10.1080/02643290442000310 
Gibson, J. J. (1979). The ecological approach to visual perception. Houghton Mifflin.
Gifford, R. (2014). Environmental psychology: Principles and practice (5th ed.). Optimal Books.
Golledge, R. G. (Ed.). (1999). Wayfinding behavior: Cognitive mapping and other spatial processes. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Groat, L. N., & Wang, D. (2013). Architectural research methods (2nd ed.). Wiley.
Halbwachs, M. (1992). On collective memory (L. A. Coser, Ed. & Trans.). University of Chicago Press.
Heidegger, M. (1971). Poetry, language, thought (A. Hofstadter, trans.). Harper & Row.
Hillier, B. (1996). Space is the machine: A configurational theory of architecture. Cambridge University Press.
Hillier, B., & Hanson, J. (1984). The social logic of space. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511597237  
Husserl, E. (1970). The crisis of European sciences and transcendental phenomenology: An introduction to phenomenological philosophy (D. Carr, Trans.). Northwestern University Press.
Husserl, E. (1982). Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy: First book (F. Kersten, Trans.). Martinus Nijhoff.
Krippendorff, K. (2018). Content analysis: An introduction to its methodology (4th ed.). SAGE.
Lewicka, M. (2011). Place attachment: How far have we come in the last 40 years? Journal of Environmental Psychology, 31(3), 207–230. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2010.10.001 
Low, S. M., & Lawrence-Zúñiga, D. (Eds.). (2003). The anthropology of space and place: Locating culture. Blackwell.
Lynch, K. (1960). The image of the city. MIT Press.
Mallgrave, H. F. (2013). Architecture and embodiment: The implications of the new sciences and humanities for design. Routledge.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of perception (C. Smith, Trans.). Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Montello, D. R. (2007). The contribution of space syntax to a comprehensive theory of environmental psychology. In A. S. Kubat, Ö. Ertekin, Y. İ. Güney, & E. Eyüboğlu (Eds.), Proceedings of the 6th International Space Syntax Symposium (Paper iv-02). Istanbul Technical University.
Montello, D. R. (2017). Cognition and spatial behavior. In D. Richardson, N. Castree, M. F. Goodchild, A. Kobayashi, W. Liu, & R. A. Marston (Eds.), The international encyclopedia of geography: People, the Earth, environment and technology. Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118786352.wbieg0498 
Nasar, J. L. (Ed.). (1992). Environmental aesthetics: Theory, research, and applications. Cambridge University Press. 
Norberg-Schulz, C. (1980). Genius loci: Towards a phenomenology of architecture. Rizzoli.
Norman, D. A. (2013). The design of everyday things (Revised and expanded Ed.). Basic Books.
Pallasmaa, J. (2012). The eyes of the skin: Architecture and the senses (3rd ed.). Wiley.
Till, J. (2009). Architecture depends. MIT Press.
Tuan, Y.-F. (1977). Space and place: The perspective of experience. University of Minnesota Press. 
Turner, A. (2007). To move through space: Lines of vision and movement. In Proceedings of the 6th International Space Syntax Symposium (pp. 037.01–037.12). Istanbul Technical University. 
Turner, A., Doxa, M., O’Sullivan, D., & Penn, A. (2001). From isovists to visibility graphs: A methodology for the analysis of architectural space. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 28(1), 103–121. https://doi.org/10.1068/b2684 
Zumthor, P. (2006). Atmospheres: Architectural environments, surrounding objects. Birkhäuser. 

Home

Submit Manuscript

Contact Us