Abstract
This study aims to clarify the role and the function of the icon in architecture through an examination of role, character and meaning of form as the icon which determine the outward appearance of architecture. The subject of our study is an opinion-survey which we called [Image Research of Architecture] performed in order to observe various architectural images. This report deals with a particular aspect of the opinion-survey in which the respondents were asked to evaluate the impressions of 76 exterior photographs of detatched houses using 9 bi-polar perceptual scales. First, as the result of the factor analysis of the 9 perceptual scales using the average scores of the data, 3 major factors were extracted. And the scales which have the highest factor-loading in each of these 3 factors were set as 3 typical scales. The first is [good-bad] , the second is [easy to build-difficult to build], and the third is [new-old fashioned]. Next, the phenomena of 76 buildings on 3 typical scales were examined by the factor-analysis method using individual data. Consequently, all 3 analyses showed similar results. According to these results, 6 types of architecture, with consideration given to individual differences, were obtained. And then, an examination of the position of the elements of the 6 types in relation to the 3-dimensional coordinate system derived from the former analysis using average scores clarified that the elements of each type are not uniformly dispersed within the system but are clustered together according to the type.
