A Study in Scale and Character: Contextual Effects on Environmental Preferences

Because about 80% of the cities in the United States have some sort of controls on architectural aesthetics it is important to find out if those controls are scientifically valid. Over 75% of those controls assume that contextual relationships are important aesthetic determinants. This study investigated the preference effects of three contextual relationships (replication, diversity and degree of development) for blocks of buildings with two specific building attributes (scale and character). Nine hypotheses relating to contextual design principles were tested and eight of those hypothesis were supported by the scientific data.