Isovist Analysis

Isovist analysis describes the experience of space by computing, for any vantage point, the exact region that is visible from it — the isovist, or visibility polygon. Introduced by Michael Benedikt in 1979, the method turns intuitive notions of openness, enclosure and prospect into measurable quantities such as the area, perimeter and compactness of the visible field. By repeating the construction across a grid of points one obtains an isovist field that maps how visibility varies throughout a building or urban space, making it a core analytic tool in space syntax, architecture and environmental psychology.