The Concept of Scale in Architecture—Three Empirical Studies

Several studies at the Institute for Spatial Design at Dresden University have aimed at a clarification of commonly used notions of scale in architecture and urban design. This article describes three such studies. University students of architecture and those studying other fields were shown images of facades of buildings in isolation from their surrounding contexts, as stimuli. In the first experiment, participants estimated the heights of the buildings; in the second experiment the buildings were ranked according to estimated heights, and in the third experiment images of buildings used in the second experiment were variously manipulated and participants had to rank the sizes of the buildings comparatively (in “pair wise comparison”). The results suggested that estimated (as compared to actual) sizes of buildings shown in isolation from their contexts depend particularly on the geometric features of their facades, such as their horizontal divisions and/or degree of further subdivision, or on their use of individual elements, for example, windows, doors or steps, whose assumed sizes are familiar from everyday experience.