Towards the Measurement of Perceived Architectural Qualities

“Architectural quality” is a property of the built environment that, even though often quoted, is hard to define in rigorous terms. In our work, we take a step into that direction, based on recent results in cognitive sciences: We have conducted a survey in which our participants were asked to mark the occurrence of five qualities (monumental; progressive; structured; conservative; puristic) in photographs showing buildings (taken consecutively in an urban area). Combining the marked occurrences of multiple participants gives a density distribution on facades for every term. We may then correlate and compare the so-found qualities on the facade, in an effort to characterize and contrast them.