An isovist ‘rose’ diagram is a little like a weather map wind diagram. It segments the total isovist view at any given point into sub-division ‘bins’ and displays the relative quanta of isovist metric that originates from that sub division. The latter produces a diagrammatic representation of space that is very different from the actual isovist itself, essentially showing where the weighting of a particular experiential quality comes from at any given point.

Above: An area isovist rose in Mies’ Barcelona Pavilion

To generate isovist rose diagrams:

• Set up a drawing and open the isovist analysis menu as normal.
• Select an isovist space type to display on screen, and then toggle on the ‘show measure rose’ option that appears in the isovist analysis menu. A magenta diagram should appear at the cursor position, on top of the usual isovist geometry.
• The metric that the isovist rose displays can chosen from the drop down menu provided.
• To vary the parameters of the isovist rose, the options of ‘F.O. View’, ‘Increment’ and ‘Scale’ can be used to change the bin overlap angles, bin angular size, and the scale of the rose diagram.