A Quantitative Study on the Colour of City Landmark Landscape Architectures

Abstract

City landmark landscape architecture is a production of urban development to a certain historical stage, delivering dual functions: identification and sightseeing, which is a significant component of urban construction. Colour is the main media for the landscape architecture to identify itself and is often subjectively experienced by the public and designers. However, the subjective perception cannot lead to a more scientific, quantitative, and repetitive research showing its limitations. In this paper, a quantitative study on the colour of landmark landscape architecture is undertaken and demonstrated via a case study: Sacred Heart Cathedral Jinan. The colour data of five representative components (circle window, apex window, wall decorative symbol, decorative stone carving, and decorative stone beam column) on the main façade of the cathedral are quantitatively collected including HSB, RGB, CMYK and CIELab in which the HSB data that responds to human eyes are used to explore the colour patterns at different time. With different identification degrees, it objectively shows whether a component can be explicitly viewed and whether a specific time is good for sightseeing. The methods in this paper are scientific-based, quantitative, and repetitive, thus providing the methodological support for designing and experiencing the future city landmark landscapearchitecture.