Visibility Analysis, Similarity and Dissimilarity in General Trends of Building Layouts and their Functions

• Visibility analysis is one of the key methods in space syntax theory that discusses visual information conveyed to observers from any location in space that is potentially directly visible for the observer without any obstruction. Visibility – simply defined as what we can see – not only affects the spatial function of buildings, but also has visual relation to the perception of buildings by inhabitants and visitors. In this paper we intend to present the result of visibility analysis applied on a sample of building layouts of different sizes and functions from a variety of places of periods. The main aim of this paper is to statistically explore the general trends of building layouts and show if and how visibility properties such as connectivity, clustering coefficient, mean depth, entropy, and integration values can make distinctions among different functions of buildings. Our findings reveal that there are significant correlation coefficients among global properties of visibility in which we consider the mean value of properties, a similarity suggesting that they are not intensively manipulated by architecture. On the other hand, there are correlations although less so than the previous, still significant among local properties of visibility in which we consider the (max-min) value of properties, suggesting that social, cultural or other physical parameters distinguish buildings individually. We also show that functions such as ‘museum’ and ‘veterinary’ are relatively well-clustered, while functions such as ‘ancient’ and ‘shopping’ show high diversity. In addition, using a decision tree model we show that, in our sample, functions such as ‘museum’ and ‘library’ are more predictable rather than functions such as ‘hospital’ and ‘shopping.’ All of these mean that – at least in our sample – the usability and applicability of well-clustered and well-predicted functions have been predominant in shaping their interior spaces; vice versa, in well-diverse and unpredicted functions, the pragmatic solutions of people’s daily life developed in material culture affect the visual properties of their interior spaces.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Konst -- Arkitektur (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Arts -- Architecture (hsv//eng)

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Samhällsbyggnadsteknik -- Geoteknik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Civil Engineering -- Geotechnical Engineering (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Annan samhällsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Other Social Sciences (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

visibility analysis

building layouts and functions

statistical analysis

similarity and dissimilarity

socio-cultural factor

Geomatik

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