This study looks at how appearance of public facilities and surrounding context influence people’s preference in landscape. The background was the pedestrian on Zhongshan North Road. A computer software was used to simulate and manipulate the appearance of the transformer boxes and their surrounding environments. Six colors (sea green, pale green, light gray, sepia, ivory, colored pattern) and three contexts (original environment, greening with plants, wooden grate) were simulated, generating 18 landscape images.
The test was conducted in a computer room with a controlled environment. The images were presented on a screen in random order to the participants, who were randomly sampled from the students of the Chinese Culture University. They were provided with a questionnaire to make assessments for their preference in these images. In total, 378 questionnaires (out of 400) were returned. Two-way repeated measures ANOVAs and Mann-Whitney U tests were conducted.
The results showed an interaction between the appearance of public facilities and their surrounding contexts, i.e. the influence of the appearance of public facilities on landscape preference depends on the surrounding context and the influence of the surrounding context on landscape preference also depends on the appearance of public facilities. Besides, it was also found that whether or not a participant had followed courses on structure, space design and aesthetics influenced their preferences in landscape. This study may serve as a reference for future design criteria.
