A study on visual impact assessment of the external form of unified houses in rural China

Abstract

ABSTRACT Under the background of promoting rural revitalization in China, the construction of unified houses has become an important trend of rural development. However, controversy has never ceased over its results. This research set the external form of unified houses as its research object and surveyed forty-two rural unified housing programs distributed in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shandong provinces. Five physical features (namely, building stories, roof type, courtyard area, window-wall ratio, and residential landscape area) were taken as the research dimensions to evaluate the influence of these features on respondents’ visual impact assessment by means of photo stimulation. Through analyzing the data obtained from experiments, the difference of rural families with different demographic characteristics in their visual impact assessment has been explored. The results show that all the five physical features would influence rural residents’ visual impact assessment of the external form of unified house; families with different demographic characteristics also differ in their visual impact assessment. This research provides constructive reference for the better development of unified housing program in rural China.