A study on the urban form of landmark buildings in Shanghai based on visual preference evaluation

The urban form dominated by landmark is of great significance to the cityscape, and also affects people's environmental psychology. With the rapid development of urban construction in China, the large number of high-rise buildings makes the urban form dominated by landmark change greatly in a short time. In order to research the people's visual preference evaluation for this rapidly changing in terms of urban morphology, this study conducted two experiments on the Lujiazui Financial District of Shanghai, China, which is dominated by the two landmarks, the Oriental Pearl TV Tower and the Shanghai Tower. One of the experiments was to study people's evaluation of the changes in the spatial form of the new and old landmarks by using pictures from multiple viewpoints at the similar time as experimental materials; another experiment was to study people's evaluation of the change of urban form dominated by landmark by taking the pictures of 23 years from the same viewpoint as the experimental materials. In this study, the height ratio, volume ratio, density and relative distance ratio of the buildings were taken as physical properties, and photo stimulation experiments were conducted with participants of different demographic characteristics. The analysis of the experimental results indicate that some physical properties are the main factors that affect people's visual preference evaluation of the landmark spatial form, when the physical properties are in certain numerical ranges, higher visual preference evaluation results can be obtained; people with different demographic characteristics have different evaluation on the rapid changes of landmarks and their environment. The results would provide a reference value range for the physical properties of urban form from some specific perspectives, help planners and architects to understand people's varied views on the rapid development of urban construction in terms of urban morphology.