Musical Preferences Correlate Architectural Tastes: An Initial Investigation of the Correlations Between the Preferred Attributes

Abstract

Despite a large number of discussions on the analogical and technical interrelations between architecture and music, very few studies have looked at the interrelations between the appreciations of the attributes among them. This study investigates the correlations between the preferences of architectural and musical attributes to reflect how they generally interrelate with each other. The considered visual qualities related to architectural forms are symmetricity, complexity, rhythm, pattern, and stress; and the considered musical attributes are related to the main four categories of Genres, perceived psychological attributes, five factors of music, and 3-Factors (arousal, valence, and depth). To discover the correlations, at first, a survey was designed to gather individual appreciations of the attributes. The responses were then filtered to remove the invalid ones before Pearson’s correlation coefficient analysis unveils the relationships between every single considered attribute. In total, 5,184 correlations have been thoroughly explored, and a number of strong correlations were discovered and discussed in a classified manner; for instance, rap-followers showed higher satisfaction to asymmetrical building façade. This study also confirms some musical attributes are stronger reflectors of architectural taste, like rap, jazz, sophisticated, poetic music. Lastly, this paper confirms the significant effects of demographic attributes on the discovered correlations.