Architecture and Why We Love It (2015)
Undergraduate: Luke McGinty
Faculty Advisor: Courtney Rivard
Department: Political Science
In this study the effects of different factors (strength, tranquility, emotionality, complexity, regularity) on the overall attractiveness of architecture were examined in order to determine if there was an aesthetic bias in the general population towards buildings which exhibited median values in these categories. Fifteen skyscrapers, purposefully chosen to be culturally ambiguous and unimportant in order to decrease the effects of societal biases on the data, were rated on a 1 to 10 scale in each of six categories (strength, tranquility, emotionality, complexity, regularity, as well as overall attractiveness) by over six hundred voluntary online survey takers. Previous research has shown that a general preference for buildings exhibiting median amounts of complexity and regularity exists due to a theorized human predisposition for more natural forms; the present study aimed to corroborate past findings as well as to better understand the effects that more abstract values such as strength and emotionality have on determining overall attractiveness. Regression modeling showed that strength, tranquility, emotionality, and complexity were highly correlated with overall attractiveness, but that the relationships were direct as opposed to quadratic as previous research would have suggested. Regularity however showed the expected quadratic relationship with overall attractiveness, demonstrating a preference in the general population for buildings of median regularity.