A protocol for evaluating contextual design principles.

This paper explains how scientific data can be incorporated into urban design decisions, such as evaluating contextual design principles. The recommended protocols are based on the Cochrane Reviews that have been widely used in medical research. The major concepts of a Cochrane Review are explained, as well as the underlying mathematics.

Surf & turf: effects of ground substrate on perceived threat, enclosure, and perceived walkability.

Permeability theory suggests that perceived enclosure should be mitigated by the walkability of the surface underneath a person. This prediction was tested by obtaining ratings of perceived threat, perceived walkability, and perceived enclosure for five types of surfaces: pavement, grass, sand, water, and rocks. There were three experiments, 20 stimuli, and 112 participants.

Permeability theory and Palace Athena.

Permeability theory suggests that safety in environments depends on how far and how easily one can perceive or move through environments. Parts of environments that limit perception or retard locomotion elicit impressions of being enclosed, so properties of environments that influence perceived enclosure are important in permeability theory. One prediction of permeability theory is that the more permeable the boundary, the less enclosed the region within that boundary will seem to be.

How distance mitigates perceived threat at 30-90 m.

It has previously been shown that distance mitigates the extent to which non-verbal cues such as direction of eye gaze, facial expression, sex, and posture communicate threat. However, the range of distances investigated has been limited to 45m or less. Theory predicts that there should be effects at distances up to 100 m.

A walk down the block: spatial and temporal parameters of aesthetic judgments about ordinary streetscapes.

An experiment is reported based on 12 streetscapes and 25 participants on how five spatial/temporal factors influenced aesthetic judgments about ordinary streets. Overall, aesthetic judgments were more strongly related to the temporal variables of total time, stationary time, and decision time rather than the spatial variables of path length or number of turns made to obtain different views. It is suggested that fancy simulations or detailed scrutiny are probably not needed to evaluate streetscapes as seen by people in the street.

Effects of boundary height and horizontal size within boundary on perceived enclosure.

The permeability theory of environmental design predicts that perceived enclosure will be more strongly related to boundary properties such as height as opposed to the size of a horizontal area within a boundary. An experiment on perceived enclosure, provided by 24 participants on 12 spaces in a park, indicated that enclosure correlated at .85 with boundary height and -.

Distance mitigates perceived threat.

It has previously been shown that distance mitigates the extent to which visual cues convey perceived threat. It was hypothesized that the visual cues of eye contact, sex, facial expression, and posture would all convey threat. It was further hypothesized that the effects of visual cues on the perception of threat would decrease with distance, but the extent of those decreases was unknown.

Validation of computer simulations for effects of eye gaze, sex, facial expression, and posture on perceived threat.

Two experiments were done to ascertain how well computer images of people communicated threat through the nonverbal cues of eye gaze, sex, facial expression, and posture. Results indicated the computer images produced valid and generalizable results. The strongest effects on threat were found for facial expression and posture.

Use of static and dynamic media to simulate environments: a meta-analysis.

This article is a review of studies on how strongly responses from static media (such as color slides) and dynamic media (such as virtual reality models) compared to onsite evaluations or to each other. Eighty-four empirical findings were found. 6,323 participants and 967 environments were included in the review.

Some findings on prospect and refuge theory: II.

This article presents four new studies on the efficacy of predictions based on prospect and refuge theory and summarizes the results over eight studies. New data covered 49 participants and 36 environments. The eight studies included in the summary covered 144 participants and 80 widely diverse environments (Japanese Tatami rooms, Western rooms, porch, meadow, neighborhood commercial, shopping mall, vacation landscapes).

Some findings on prospect and refuge: I.

Prospect and refuge theory suggests that preferences for environments are based on prospect (the unimpeded opportunity to see) and refuge (the opportunity to hide). This article reports two experiments on how well four factors derived from prospect and refuge theory predicted responses of comfort or liking. The factors were prospect (depth of view), refuge (presence of protective regions in front of the observer or occluding edges that might indicate possibilities of escape), direction of light (either front lighting or back lighting), and venue (natural or built environments).

Entropy and environmental mystery.

Two studies are reported regarding the effects of entropy, lighting, and occlusion on impressions of mystery in physical environments. The theoretical context of this study was the "informational theory" of environmental preference, which, among other claims, holds that mystery can be measured by the extent to which people perceive a promise of more information if they move deeper into an environment. Entropy, in the context of this article, is visual diversity as measured using information theory.

Interior prospect and refuge.

Prospect and refuge theory has usually been applied to landscapes but recent work suggests that it could also be applied to interiors. This article reports two experiments, covering 14 environments and 97 respondents, in which five hypotheses regarding prospect, refuge, and comfort were tested: H1: the transition from small, dark, and low to large, light, and high and vice-versa; H2: the transition from dark to light vs vice-versa; H3: the transition from low to high vs vice-versa; H4: the transition from small to big horizontally vs vice-versa; and H5: width. Results varied.

Surface location and enclosure.

This research addressed the issue of whether impressions of enclosure were more strongly influenced by amount of view covered by vertical boundaries (H1) or the presence of a boundary overhead (H2). There were three studies with totals of 48 stimuli and 142 respondents. Stimuli were balconies, swamps, and space stations.

Elongation and enclosure.

Previous work suggested that elongation, horizontal area, and the boundary material might influence impressions of enclosure. This article describes an experiment in which these three factors were crossed. Ratings of open/enclosed by 15 respondents on 16 plazas indicated that the elongation ratio (range: 1:1 up to 1:1.

In search of dominance: the case of the missing dimension.

Some previous researchers have found that affect can be described in terms of two dimensions (pleasure and arousal), while others have noted three dimensions are needed (pleasure, arousal, and dominance). The competing claims were tested by creating stimuli with factors previously demonstrated to elicit responses of arousal or dominance, asking respondents to rate the stimuli, and contrasting correlations between ratings and the stimulus factors. Under the two-dimensional theory, the planned contrasts should be zero, while under the three-dimensional theory, the planned contrasts should be nonzero.

Perceived enclosure of space, angle above observer, and distance to boundary.

Most previous research suggests that the horizontal size of a space has a strong effect on the perception of enclosure, but Hayward and Franklin reported in 1974 that the main determinant of perceived enclosure was the ratio of boundary height (H) over the distance to boundary (D) rather than just the boundary height per se or distance per se. We attempted replication of that finding. Students (41 male, mean age=24.

Perceived building density as a function of layout.

This paper addresses two issues in the subjective measurement of density, (a) whether perceived density is influenced by the sizes and spacing of buildings and (b) whether perceived density is influenced by surface details. Two experiments were conducted. Stimuli in Exp.

Permeability and environmental enclosure.

Theories by J. J. Gibson and H.

Entropy, visual diversity, and preference.

The author reports relationships between subjective impressions of visual diversity or pleasure with statistical entropies of stimuli. The stimuli were 34 rows of houses that varied in color, scale, and shape, or in shape and articulation. Entropies ranged from 0.