Architect Lic MSc PhD EDAC
Int'l Assoc. AIA
ARB Registered
Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts


I am an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Bahrain, interested in gaining a better understanding of the implications of design on the use of buildings, institutions, and cities. I research the spatial behavior of people in the built environment. In 2010 I earned a Ph.D. in Architecture at the Bartlett School of Graduate Studies at University College London with supervisors Professor Ruth Conroy Dalton and Professor Alan Penn.


  • How is that the design of the built environment matter for its inhabitants?

  • How do the layouts of buildings and cities support institutions and organizations?

  • What can architects do to learn from evidence to develop increasingly responsive designs?

  • Recently, I resumed work on urban and building physics for energy efficiency, towards the sustainability and resilience of the built environment.


    • I follow an evidence-based approach. My research has lead me to develop practical software tools to assist with measuring and analyzing behavior within spatial frameworks. These tools facilitate and standardize the gathering of data in a way as to increase the base of evidence and make this process simpler, more efficient, and more affordable.



    Please check out my profiles on:

    LinkedIn

    Academia

    ORCID

    Scopus ID1

    Publications indexed on Scopus

    Book cover
    Book cover

    Journal Articles

  • Nature Communications (2017) Amir-Homayoun Javadi, Beatrix Emo, Lorelei R. Howard, Fiona E. Zisch, Yichao Yu, Rebecca Knight, Joao Pinelo Silva & Hugo J. Spiers; “Hippocampal and prefrontal processing of network topology to simulate the future”. Volume 8. (DOI: 10.1038/ncomms14652)
    • Link


  • Cogent Social Sciences (2018) Joao Pinelo Silva, Aamal Z. Akleh; “Investigating the relationships between the built environment, the climate, walkability and physical activity in the Arabic peninsula: The case of Bahrain”. Volume 4, Issue 1. (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/23311886.2018.1502907)
    • Link


    Book Chapters

  • Teresa heitor; Joao Pinelo Silva (2015); Space Syntax and the built Environment: Urban Morphology; in The Study of Urban Form in Portugal; ed. Oliveira, Vitor; Marat-Mendes, Teresa; Pinho, Paulo. Universidade do Porto; p.147-189. ISBN 978-989-746-064-7

    • Link

  • Teresa heitor; Joao Pinelo Silva (2015); Space Syntax and the built Environment: Urban Morphology; in The Study of Urban Form in Portugal; ed. Oliveira, Vitor; Marat-Mendes, Teresa; Pinho, Paulo. Universidade do Porto; p.147-189. ISBN 978-989-746-064-7

    • Link to Book Chapters


    Peer Reviewed

    Cogent Social Sciences (2018) Joao Pinelo Silva, Aamal Z. Akleh; “Investigating the relationships between the built environment, the climate, walkability and physical activity in the Arabic peninsula: The case of Bahrain”. Volume 4, Issue 1. (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/23311886.2018.1502907)

    Joao Pinelo Silva (2017); The Syntactic Signature of Starbucks' Locations: A machine learning approach to location decision-making. In: Heitor, T and Serra, M and Pinelo Silva, J and Bacharel, M and Cannas da Silva, L, (eds.) Proceedings of the 11th International Space Syntax Symposium. (pp. 171.1-171.8). Instituto Superior Técnico: Portugal

    Joao Pinelo Silva (2017); Towards Statistical Significance of Configuration Models: New evidence of variance and bootstrapping. In: Heitor, T and Serra, M and Pinelo Silva, J and Bacharel, M and Cannas da Silva, L, (eds.) Proceedings of the 11th International Space Syntax Symposium. (pp. 170.1-170.16). Instituto Superior Técnico: Portugal

    Joao Pinelo Silva, AbdulMajeed AbdulKarim, Shaker Haji, Motaz Mestarehi, Sonia Lamela, (2018); Preliminary Quantification of the Passive Role of Solar Rooftop Shading in Bahrain: Towards energy reduction for cooling and energy resilience; Presented at conference Energy Resilience and Security, Bahrain, 14-15 October 2018.

    Gustavo Cantuária, Bruno Marques, Joao Pinelo Silva, Manuel Correia Guedes (2017); Low Energy, Low-Tech Building Design for the Extreme Cold of Antarctica. PLEA 2017 Edinburgh

    Nature Communications (2017) Amir-Homayoun Javadi, Beatrix Emo, Lorelei R. Howard, Fiona E. Zisch, Yichao Yu, Rebecca Knight, Joao Pinelo Silva & Hugo J. Spiers; “Hippocampal and prefrontal processing of network topology to simulate the future”. Volume 8. (DOI: 10.1038/ncomms14652).

    Joao Pinelo Silva (2016); Solar radiation and street temperature as function of street orientation: An analysis of the status quo and simulation of future scenarios towards sustainability in Bahrain; World Renewable Energy Conference 17 (WREC), 4-6 Dec. 2016 Bahrain.

    Amir-Homayoun Javadi, Beatrix Emo, Fiona Zisch, Lorelei R. Howard, Yichao Yu, Rebecca, Knight; Joao Pinelo Silva; Hugo Spiers (2015); Boundary Transitions Drive Hippocampal Retrieval of Geospatial Topology; Memory Disorders Research Society (MDRS) 2015, Pembroke College, University of Cambridge (UK), 8-11 September 2015.

    Amir-Homayoun Javadi, Beatrix Emo, Fiona Zisch, Lorelei R. Howard, Yichao Yu, Rebecca, Knight; Joao Pinelo Silva; Hugo Spiers (2015); The human hippocampus represents the topological structure of the environment during path planning and entering new fragments of space; Poster at the British Neuroscience Association (BNA) 2015 Festival of Neuroscience, 12-15 April 2015 Edinburgh.

    Beatrix Emo; Joao Pinelo Silva, Amir H. javadi, Lorelei R. Howard, Yichao Yu, Ravi Mill, Laura Morrison, Rebecca Knight, Hugo Spiers; How spatial Properties of a city street network influence brain activity during navigation(2014); Poster at International Conference on Spatial Cognition, Bremen, Germany; 15-19 Sep. 2014.

    Joao Pinelo Silva (2006); Land Use Location and Urban Topology: Exploring this relationship's relevance and an approach methodology; 8th International Conference Design & Decision and Support Systems in Architecture and Urban Planning, 4-6 July 2006, The Netherlands.

    Teresa Heitor; Joao Pinelo Silva (2005); The spatial Congruence Effect: Exploring the relationship between spatial variables and functional vitality on Lisbon's prime office location. 5th International Space Syntax Symposium, Delft, Holland. 13-17 June 2004.

    Link to Papers

    Book Reviews

    Joao Pinelo Silva (2010); Frederico de Holanda's; Brasilia: modern city, eternal city; The Journal of Space Syntax; Ed.1, Vol 1.; p249-250.

    Link to Book Reviews

    Workshops

    Joao Pinelo Silva, Drew Dara-Abrams, Alasdair Turner (2011); Environmental Modeling, Including Social and Cognitive Factors in Design using Space Syntax; Workshop at International Conference The Death and Life of Social Factors; University of California, Berkeley, USA, 30 April 2011.

    Joao Pinelo Silva, Alasdair Turner (2010); Environmental Modeling: Using Space Syntax in Spatial Cognition Research. Introduction to Depthmap 10. Workshop at International Conference on Spatial Cognition, 15-19 August 2010.

    Joao Pinelo Silva (2007); What About People, do they matter?; Paper at Workshop at Conference on Spatial Information Theory (COSIT'07); Melbourne, Australia, 19-23 September 2007.

    Link to Workshops

    Media (Non-peer reviewed)

    Article on specialized magazine: Joao Manuel Carvalho; Joao Pinelo Silva; Urban Morphology and Prime Real Estate: The merit of the congruence between accessibility and urban design. Arquitectura e Vida, 55, December 2005.


    Ph.D. Architecture, University College London - Towards a Spatial Congruence Theory : how spatial cognition can inform urban planning and design. (non-published)

    M.Sc. Built Environment Evaluation for Sustainability , Salford University - Building Assessment Methods: A study of implementation within the Portuguese context. (non-published)

    Applications

    Bahrain Parks

    OptiQuant


    Extreme Lodge main website
    Extreme Lodge Web App

    This web application was created as part of the research project Polar Lodge.


    Bahrain Parks
    Bahrain Parks Web Appplication
    Bahrain Parks Pro
    Bahrain Parks Rate
    Bahrain Parks Dashboard (best on 4k, 55"+ screen, under development)

    Theese web applications have been created as part of the research project Bahrain Parks.

    Motivation

    The project reflects my interest on the built environment of the Kingdom of Bahrain.

    Aims

  • Publicly divulge the urban parks as rich architectural patrimony;

  • Promote and facilitate the use of urban parks as a source of wellbeing;

  • Stimulate and support the development of urban parks in Bahrain;

    • Objectives

  • Produce a comprehensive inventory of public parks in Bahrain;

  • Keep the inventory up to date;

  • Share the data;

  • Serve different user groups, including the general public and researchers;

  • Provide the user with the ability to interact with the inventory in a tailored fashion;

  • Promote an evidence-bsed approach to the planning and design of the built environment.

    • bahrainparks.org is developed in R-Shiny, and is hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS)

    Bahrain Parks Link

    OptiQuant

    As a collaboration and mobile tool to carry out pedestrian counts, OptiQuant wouldn't make sense as desktop software, therefore it is available as software-as-a-service (SAAS)(cloud service). This means that it runs on a server and has two front ends: one for desktop and one for mobile platforms.

    OptiQuant was created and funded by myself and developed with the technical support of Kevin Woolley.

    Update Jan 2017: OptiQuant served well between 2012 and the end of 2016, but it has been decommissioned.

    Optiquant Link

    OptiQuantR

    OptiQuantR is an R package built from scratch to make it easier for users of OptiQuant to analyze and report log data. While OptiQuant allows for quick data exploration through mapping and charting, it also allows for the download of counting data for further analysis on your elected statistical package or GIS. This package, OptiQuantR, extends this functionality even further by: a) allowing an inexperienced R user to create comprehensive reports, automatically; b) to do (some) data manipulation to customize those reports; c) by easing the log data into the R environment, the package removes all boundaries on the the possibilities for statistical analysis of the data (for the expert user).

    R and R packages are officially held by CRAN (The Comprehensive R Archive Network). OptiQuantR is availbale from CRAN.

    Update Jan 2017: With the decommisioning of Optiquant, OptiquantR has been archived on CRAN.


    PedPlus

    The first effort towards a tool for automatizing manual pedestrian counts in which I was involved was PedPlus/PedCount, which was developed within startup Strategic Spatial Solutions Inc, co-founded with Drew Dara-Abrams and Vitor Schinazi. This was released under GPLv3 license. PedPlus is available on Github.

    Research Projects
    Antarctica - Polar Lodge (v1)

    Book cover

    Book cover

    The lodge is a high-performance building for extreme low and high temperatures and is able to withstand hurricane-force winds. The lodge is a high-tech & low emmissions building for extreme climates which can be assembled by two persons.

    .
    Infrared camera images
    .
    Project Coordinator

  • Professor Manuel Correia Guedes, University of Lisbon, Instituto Superior Técnico

    • Team

  • Emeritus Professor Sue Roaf, Heriot Watt University

  • Post-doctoral Research Fellow Gustavo Cantuária, Brasília University

  • Assistant Professor Joao Pinelo Silva, University of Bahrain


    • Scientific Intitutions
    Logistical Support
    Technical partners / Sponsors


    See more at www.ExtremeLodge.org And at www.ExtremeLodge.org/home/app/

    Research Project Bahrain Parks (2016 - ongoing)
    Funding

  • National Initiative for Agricultural Development

    • Outcomes
    Web Applications

  • Development of web application bahrainparks.org/home/app/

  • Development of web application bahrainparks.org/home/rate/

  • Development of other web applications (bahrainparks.org), for the exclusive use by the municiaplities and by the Ministry of Works.

  • Development of other live dashboards (web applications for the exclusive use by the municiaplities and by the Ministry of Works).

    • Publications / Conference Presentations

  • Joao Pinelo Silva (2018); Assessing the impact of the introduction of fees and women-only days in parks in Bahrain. Presented at Elsevier conference Urban Transitions, Sitges-Barcelona, 25-27 November 2018.

  • Joao Pinelo Silva, Sonia Lamela, Motaz Mestarehi (2018); Towards a comprehensive description of the public parks of Bahrain. Presented at IEREK conference Green Urbanism, Rome, 5-7 December 2018.

  • Joao Pinelo Silva, Motaz Mestarehi (2018), Bahrain parks Cloud Platform, Live Suit of Tools for Planning, Designing, and Managing Public Parks; Presented at IEEE conference ICT 2018, 15-16 November, Bahrain.

  • Joao Pinelo Silva, Motaz Mestarehi, Sonia Lamela (2017); Cloud Platform Bahrain Parks: Real-time Participatory Tool for Planning, Designing, and Managing Public Parks, IET Smart Cities Symposium 2018, Bahrain.

  • Joao Pinelo Silva (2017); Bahrain Parks: A Cloud Platform for Planning, Designing, and Managing Public Parks; Conference World Association for Sustainable Development, Bahrain.

  • Public Lecture at University of Bahrain - 2016 - Introduction to the project Public Parks of Bahrain.

    • Research Project 12/2014 (2014/17) Characterizing Pedestrian and Vehicular Patterns of Movement on Traditional and Contemporary Bahraini Urban Structures
    Funding

  • Deanship for Scientific Research, the University of Bahrain

    • Outcomes

  • Published paper: Joao Pinelo Silva (2016); Solar radiation and street temperature as function of street orientation: An analysis of the status quo and simulation of future scenarios towards sustainability in Bahrain; World Renewable Energy Conference 17 (WREC), 4-6 Dec. 2016 Bahrain.

    • Research Ph.D. 2006/10 University College London (internship at Space Syntax Ltd.)
    Funding

  • Grant from Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, Ministério da Ciência Tecnologia e Ensino Superior, Portugal, and Fundo Social Europeu

    • Outcomes

  • Ph.D.

    • Research M.Sc. 2002/3 Salford University
    Outcomes

  • M.Sc.


  • I made the illustration maps for the book Theme Tours of Lisbon: Places with a history; by Gabriela Carvalho, Published by Media Texto - Medialivros, Edifies Inapa, 2004, ISBN 972-797-080-X

  • Research Project - Under the leadership of Professor José Lamas, I coordinated the planning and executed the survey stage as well as the preparation of final materials of the research project, which culminated with the publication of the book: Squares in Portugal, An Inventory of Public Space - Azores; DROTRH and Faculty of Architecture Lisbon; San Miguel, Azores, 2005.



  • Lecture Notes

  • Quizzes

  • Workshops

  • Manuals