Simulation - How Does it Shape the Message?

Abstract

Environmental psychologists specializing in architectural psychology offer user needs’ assessments and post occupancy evaluations to facilitate communication between users and experts. To compare the efficiency of building descriptions, building walkthroughs, regular plans, simulation, and direct, long-time exposition, evaluation has to be evaluated. Architectural simulation techniques - CAD, video montage, endoscopy, full-scale or smaller models, stereoscopy, holography etc. - are common visualizations in planning. A subjective theory of planners says “experts are able to distinguish between pure design in their heads and visualized design details and contexts like color, texture, material, brightness, eye level or perspective.“ If this is right, simulation details should be compensated mentally by trained people, but act as distractors to the lay mind. Computer visualizations and virtual realities grow more important, but studies on the effects of simulation techniques upon experts and users are rare. As a contribution to the field of architectural simulation, an expert - user comparison of CAD versus endoscopy/model simulations of a Vienna city project was realized in 1995. The experiment showed that -counter-intuitive to expert opinions- framing and distraction were prominent both for experts and lay people (=general framing hypothesis). A position effect (assessment interaction of CAD and endoscopy) was present with experts and non-experts, too. With empirical evidence for “the medium is the message“, a more cautious attitude has to be adopted towards simulation products as powerful framing (i.e. perception- and opinion-shaping) devices.