TALL BUILDINGS AND THE URBAN SKYLINE The Effect of Visual Complexity on Preferences

Tall buildings are a significant feature of many urban skylines. The visual complexity of the tall buildings that make up the urban skyline can vary according to the degree of silhouette complexity and the extent to which the façade is articulated. This article reports a study in which 60 undergraduate psychology students ranked a set of 9 synthetic skylines according to either the perceived complexity of the skyline or their preference. The pleasure and arousal associated with each skyline was also measured using the Affect Grid. The strongest influence on preference, arousal, and pleasure was the degree of silhouette complexity, with higher silhouette complexity associated with higher levels of perceived complexity and preference and higher 541 AUTHORS’ NOTE: This research was supported by a grant from the Australian Research Council. ENVIRONMENT AND BEHAVIOR, Vol. 32 No. 4, July 2000 541-556 © 2000 Sage Publications, Inc. © 2000 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on April 16, 2008 http://eab.sagepub.com Downloaded from 542 ENVIRONMENT AND BEHAVIOR / July 2000 arousal and pleasure. Façade articulation only influenced the evaluations of skyline complexity, although this isolated finding may be due to the pretask training. Tall buildings have a significant impact on urban infrastructure and environmental quality. In the area of environmental quality, their effect on the appearance of the city is a major one. Aesthetic quality is often thought by “‘hardnosed’ professionals and the sociologically oriented” to be a trivial issue (Appleyard & Fishman, 1977). However, there is strong evidence that aesthetic issues are the most important evaluators of environmental quality for city residents and workers (Dornbusch & Gelb, 1977). Furthermore, all cities today are much concerned about their “image” as a potential tourist destination. A study of tourist literature, postcards produced for sale to tourists, and the use of establishing shots in television suggests that the form of the urban skyline is an extremely important component of this image. In most cases, tall buildings are the most striking component of the urban skyline. With growing recognition of the impact of tall buildings on the aesthetic quality of the urban environment, there has been a corresponding tendency to make regulations that have aesthetic effect as their primary or sole objective (Delafons, 1990; Habe, 1989; Preiser & Rohane, 1988). Such regulations often impose costs on owners of buildings, which are then passed on to the community at large by way of rents. However, despite calls for a systematic research program (Appleyard & Fishman, 1977), there has until recently been little empirical study of this issue. The scope of research in environmental aesthetics is well indicated by Nasar’s (1988) anthology. In general, there has been very little work on the urban skyline or on tall buildings. Research on urban aesthetics has focused on the street level, and many studies relate to small cities and cities with few or no tall buildings. Appleyard’s (1969) work on how and why buildings become landmarks was for many years the only empirical study of larger scale issues. Other writers have attempted to quantify the complexity and associated preference for buildings. For example, Stamps (1991) investigated the influence of height, complexity, and style on preference for individual buildings. Lim and Heath (1993) developed a mathematical model that permits the construction of synthetic skylines with characteristics reflecting those of actual cities. Using this model, Smith, Heath, and Lim (1995) investigated the interaction of the proportion and spacing of tall buildings in influencing preferences. The research described here draws on the methods and techniques developed in earlier research by Lim and Heath (1993) and Smith et al. (1995) to investigate the effect of silhouette and façade complexity of tall buildings on preferences for skylines. The hypothesis was that because skylines © 2000 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on April 16, 2008 http://eab.sagepub.com Downloaded from Heath et al. / TALL BUILDINGS AND VISUAL COMPLEXITY 543 dominated by tall buildings are inherently highly ordered, increasing the perceptual complexity of the buildings would increase preference. This would appear to follow from Berlyne’s (1960, 1971) work on the aesthetic effects of complexity in general and Stamps’s (1991) finding that relative complexity is a predictor of preference for individual high-rise buildings. An early decision was to treat the visual complexity of buildings as having two aspects or dimensions. One dimension is concerned with the complexity of the building silhouette, the other with the complexity of the subdivision or articulation of the building surface. It is recognized that these aspects are not wholly independent: Changes in silhouette are often associated with subdivisions of the façade. Even where this is not the case, a symmetrical change in silhouette tends to produce virtual subdivisions of the façade in accordance with the Gestalt law of Prägnanz (Koffka, 1935). Nevertheless, silhouette can, under certain lighting conditions, be perceived independently of façade articulation. As it turned out, the decision to consider façade subdivision and silhouette as independent dimensions was both correct and illuminating. In summary, it was hypothesized that increasing the quantifiable complexity of the silhouette and façade of buildings should increase the perception of complexity and preferences.