Impact of organization patterns in landscape elements on visitor legibilty : a study with reference to Sigiriya

Abstract

Pattern recognition is important to understand and narrate the world around us. It is possible to develop a language, to communicate relation-ships between different patterns in surrounding environment to the user which could be used in reading the “legibility” of the space consisting of organization patterns of element. This study focuses on the impact of organizational landscape elements on aesthetic readability of the visitor. Kaplan’s, information processing theory is used to study the legibility and the Bells’ principles on the organization of elements are used to identify basic organizational patterns as; (1) the Spatial, (2) Structural, (3) the Order. Effects of each of these patterns on legibility are studied on Sigiriya, a UNESCO heritage site in Sri Lanka and is carried out on two selected spaces where the users’ readability is high on the main path. Space A, canter environment of char-bar in water garden, Space B: entry environment of Boulder garden. The results concluded that the similar level of presence of spatial, structural and order arrangements, with minimum variations in a space result in better readability of the visitor than in a space with higher deviation among organizations. And, people judged the space by giving least priority to the structural arrangement of elements.