Mapping preferences for the number of built elements

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between the number of design elements in the context of building facades in urban streetscapes and visual preferences of users to enable a more meaningful citizen participation in the design of local streetscapes. Design/methodology/approach This paper developed a web application, which manages experiments through programmatically creating scenes and displaying them online to participants using questionnaires. It collects preferences towards the number of design elements in the scenes and determines the statistical relationship between them. Findings The results offer an empirical description of a semi-convex relationship between the number of elements and preferences. They confirm that participants from a particular area inter-subjectively agree in their visual judgements towards the number of design elements, and justify the employment of a regression model fitted on the preferences of residents to assess design proposal in their area. Originality/value The paper offers an empirical description of the relationships between preferences and a wide range of values of the number of design elements and empirically supports that people from one area inter-subjectively agree in their judgements towards a visual aspect of the building facades. The study introduces a new analytical component, known as the vertex, which could alter future methods on the visual evaluation of the built environment.

Street edge subdivision: Structuring ground floor interfaces to stimulate pedestrian visual engagement

“…There is potential for these spaces to be materially arranged differently by those who have territorial influence over them, or provide opportunities for contrasting social activities (Thwaites et al, 2020). In line with this, previous studies have found that high-levels of small-scale street edge complexity, encompassing number of doorways and windows and the number and type of design elements on building facades, increases pedestrian engagement with street edges (Ewing and Clemente, 2013;Heffernan et al, 2014;Hussein et al, 2018). Similarly, studies on consumer behaviour within a retail context have highlighted the significance of small-scale shop front subdivision, with shop windows influencing engagement, purchasing decisions and judgements on whether to enter a shop or function (Oh and Petrie, 2012;Sen et al, 2002).…”

The Entity - Identity Relationships of Old Shop Houses in Perak Through Facade Design

“…In the realm of the built environment, there is a significant link found between certain ethnicities and their visual preferences. Historically, each era has shown particular adaptation of functional and aesthetical characteristics into their very design (Dheyaa, 2018). Such characteristics signify the impact of human creativity towards design, driven by cultural influence (Dobson, 2012;Wan Hashimah, 2015).…”