Are assessment and emotions connected with a building conditioned by its external appearance? 93
broad. What should, in fact, โa building in my townโ
look like? The majority of people will certainly answer:
โit depends what kind of buildingโ. Hence, each object
can be โequally goodโ or โequally badโ, as an example of
a category which for various reasons is not easily acces-
sible cognitively. In other words, the subjects do not have
easily accessible and concretized mental categories of
a typical building โ workplace, so it is hard for them to
DVVHVV ZKLFK RI WKH SUHVHQWHG REMHFWV ยตยฟWVยถ LQ WKLV FDW-
egory better and which worse. Therefore, all of them are
statistically evaluated by them in the same way.
When the subjects are asked to evaluate the buildings
which were not ascribed any meaning (even the simplest
function), then, like in the case of the questions about
emotions and cognitive evaluations, each building is as-
sessed rather positively, regardless of what it looks like.
Summary
The aforementioned research results indicate that aes-
thetic features such as colour, shape or diversity are
probably not independent and basic criteria which
we use when evaluating architectural objects. Each
colour scheme and shape of a building is basically equal-
ly โgoodโ until these features are combined with other
non-formal attributes of an object.
According to our own research, the attribute that
can decisively change the reception of a given build-
ing is its function๎ 7KH DSSHDUDQFH FDQ EH VLJQLยฟFDQW
two ways. Firstly, for example, particular, smoothly
shaped buildings in orange-black or pistachio-violet co-
lour scheme are less preferred as dwelling places than
a simply shaped salmon-sand building. Secondly, for
example, a smoothly shaped diverse building in orange-
black colour scheme can be accepted and preferred as
a potential shopping mall and at the same time rejected
DVDSRWHQWLDOEORFNRIรDWV๎7KHUHIRUH๎ยฟUVWO\๎LWLVSRV-
sible that a particularly looking building is more pre-
ferred in a given function than other buildings; secondly,
a particularly looking building in some functions can be
visibly accepted by people and at the same time in other
functions it can be decisively unaccepted.
In the research conducted by the CBOS [7], Poles indi-
cated that the appearance is important, but there are fac-
tors even more important such as safety and the price of
a potential dwelling place. This seems quite probable. Ac-
cording to our own research, the appearance is important,
but only when we combine it with other features and even
then it does not constitute a decisive criterion of the object
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signers that ought to be taken into account.
Of course, we must bear in mind that the results of the
aforementioned research cannot be representative for the
whole Polish population although they show some prob-
able tendencies in relations man-architecture.
Our research results indicate that probably it would be
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are universal as far as meaning is concerned and are (psy-
chologically) understood inter-subjectively. We must ad-
mit that there are many limitlessly formulated colloquial
hypotheses that are aimed just at this direction, for ex-
ample, โyellow colour raises your spiritsโ, โblue calms
you downโ, โgreen is smoothingโ, โblack means nega-
tive thingsโ (however, luxury goods are very often black,
which adds to their elegance though!). These hypotheses
enjoy constant popularity and are gladly promoted in
various mass-media. Thus, we must remember that an
attitude towards a colour or shape as features is probably
inextricably linked with an object itself as well as with
the semantic, physical and psychological context. It is
similar in the case of attitudes towards objects that are
diverse and non-diverse formally. To put it simply, we
can conclude that the appearance itself is not important
for us; what is really important is the appearance in
a particular context.
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Translated by
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