Architecture involves designing spaces that are intelligible: discerning the purpose of a structure, being able to find the entrance, knowing how to get around. Courses in architecture aim to impart the theory and practice of designing intelligible spaces.
3D simulation software is commonly used to construct building models, and can be used to test whether people moving through them can, in fact, make sense of them.
Rather than just test the building for intelligibility, one can test the underlying theories by creating virtual spaces that instantiate them, with a “volume control”: an experimenter can adjust the degree to which a rule is implemented to find the point at which a user can now longer make sense of a building.
Think of it as usability testing meets architectural theory (feng shui, Christopher Alexander, New Urbanism, and on and on).
By the “if I can think of it, someone’s already built it” rule, it’s certain that this has already been done. If you know of examples, Dear Reader, please let me know.
The expensive way would be to use commercial architecture design packages; a quick and dirty approach could use Second Life. The challenges include (1) extracting variable-based rules from architectural design principles, and (2) building the volume control functionality.