There has always been a tension between those who study the city and those who practice its planning and design. This has led to a divorce between theory and practice. The difficulty of understanding the urban space is because the city encompasses the interaction of spatial, economic, social, cultural and cognitive. Therefore it is not entirely predictable. And in the past, no planning model existed to integrate these complex interactions. Complex theories of cities begins recently to fill this gap. The urban phenomenon is approached as a system of relationships, connections and interactions. In this context, space syntax theory approaches the city as system of relationships between space and society. Advocated by Bill Hillier and Julliene Hanson from the 70s, is now a consistent theory that provides clear evidence of how humans perceive the urban environment. Consequently, it allows us to qualify and quantify how architecture affects people's lives. The method consists on identifying patterns of spatial relationships which drive the co-presence and movement of persons. These patterns are then translated by a quantitative and mathematical manner which represents a virtual community. These representations correspond to how people perceive and use the space or how it can potentially be used. Following some streets and squares of Lisbon as case studies, the aim of this paper is to explore the nature of the relationship between spatial patterns, spatial life and social life. It seeks to find regularities of public embodied space that can be qualified and quantified in an analytical and systematic way. The results suggest how designers can manipulate space in order to contribute to the urban life and socialization of the city.

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embodied space, spatial configuration, environmental perception