In many developed countries the recent increase in tourist and farm buildings in the countryside has seriously jeopardized the attractiveness of natural and traditional views; such is the case of inland Spain. Visual and aesthetic aspects of any object are defined by their colour, form, line, texture, scale and spatial character. This paper investigates lines and forms and tries to develop design criteria that could offer a high probability of achieving a building integration class as good or very good. The main aim of this research is to develop guidelines for future municipal planning laws, which could help professional designers and town council planners to select lines and forms that harmonize architectural design and environmental location. The proposed approach studies the relationship between buildings and their background. A method is developed to assess these visual relationships among building characteristics of lines and forms and the landscape ones. Also, this research includes public survey methods to assess building integration preferences and a summary table for systematic application of the suggested methodological process. Relevant correlations have been obtained, for example, whereas a type of relationship (visual continuity) provides a probability of 72% of achieving an integration class as good or very good other one (poorly compatible contrast) provides 0%. These relationships between different types of visual characteristics are satisfactory for the study of integration quality. Objective design guidelines are obtained and it is possible to make an evaluation of the different alternatives available and to select the most suitable according to the type of integration sought.
A test for quantifying the contribution of colour and scale to the visual impact of buildings in the rural setting was developed and validated by means of a public opinion survey. The method was based on some psychological aspects of visual perception and on a simple image treatment performed by a well known and easily available computer program. Results were provided as numerical values, enabling the quantification of the impact for the two individual elements studied and for their potential interactions (aggregate impact, AI). Validation involved 44 images and 1,046 participants arranged into two groups, and the method proved to behave with consistency in predicting the AI of these elements, since the ratings assigned by the observers to the visual proposals examined displayed a high correlation with the predictions obtained from the application of the test. A general threshold for AI was drawn from the results, and such threshold could be transferred without major difficulties to authorities performing the planning and regulation of the rural landscape, since the test is simple and requires just a minimal training. Extending the application of the method to testing elements other than scale and colour and their AIs might assist the searching of a global indicator of impact that may satisfy the needs of landscape planning and regulation in the future better than the current tools.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.