Dynamic experience of architectural forms affects arousal and valence perception in virtual environments

Abstract

The built environment represents the stage surrounding our everyday life activities. To investigate the impact that architectural features have on individuals’ affective states, we measured their judgments of perceived valence (pleasant and unpleasant) and arousal after the dynamic experience of a progressive change of the environment within virtual decontextualized spaces. To this aim, we developed a parametric model which allowed to create 54 virtual architectural spaces characterized by a progressive change of side walls distance, ceiling and windows height as well as colour of the environment. Decreasing side walls distance, ceiling height variation as well as increasing windows height significantly affected the emotional state of the participants within virtual environments. Indeed, such architectural spaces generated high arousing and unpleasant states according to subjective judgement. Overall, we observed that valence and arousal scores are affected by all the dynamic form factors which modulated the spaciousness of the surrounding. Showing that virtual reality enables the possibility to measure the emotional impact of pure and decontextualized architectural features, we contribute to foster a human-centered approach to design where mental state of people is fundamental for the creation of novel spaces promoting wellbeing.

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