This paper proposes two methods for identifying images which contain a particular architectural component from a database of architectural images. Applying the techniques of pattern recognition and image retrieval, the first method does this task by using the overall color distribution and the layout. Measuring the similarity between a target image and those whose classes are already known, the method determines the class which a target image belongs to, and it can be applied to classification for many types of architectural components. The second initially selects characteristic elements which will be supposed to play an important role in identifying a particular component, and constructs a model for recognizing such an architectural component by using those characteristic elements. Thus, this method requires us to construct a recognition model from scratch separately for each distinct architectural component, but it attains a higher recognition ability than the first one. The paper then carried out computational experiments by applying the methods to the identification of "tatami" and "lattice" (koshi in Japanese). It was observed that the proposed methods attains a certain level of accuracy and thus are useful for identifying architectural components.
