Changes in the perception of a presbytery with a different nave length. Funnel church in eye tracking research

Marta Rusnak, Piotr Chmielewski, Joanna Szewczyk

doi:10.5277/arc190206

Abstract

This paper constitutes the second part of a three-part report considering an eyetracking survey that took place in 2017 at the Department of History of Architecture, Art and Technique at the Wrocław University of Science and Technology. The study focused on how people perceive historic buildings. The first part of the report discussed the way people perceive the depth of the nave of a Gothic church. In the second part the researchers were interested in how the length of the nave affects the perception of the entire layout of the church and in what circumstances the observers are most willing to pay attention to the area of the presbytery. The survey included the testing of the so-called tunnel church effect theory, according to which the longer the nave, the more attention is paid to the presbytery.