Evaluations of altered single-family house facades through different education groups: Liking, complexity and impression

In this study, ?liking, complexity? and ?impression? states of singlefamily houses, which were altered by their users, are surveyed by a questionnaire over different respondent groups. In the scope of the study, 8 different suburban upper-middle income-housing sites have been selected from Ankara and from each housing site, 3 houses were chosen according to their state of alteration (low, intermediate and high). Although these 3 houses in the same housing site have the same appearance when they were first built, their facades have been altered during their life-time by their owners. A questionnaire was given to a totally 100 undergraduate students of Design and Engineering departments of Gazi University (41 from design and 59 from engineering). These students were asked to rate totally 24 photographs from 8 housing sites with the help of five-point semantic differential scales under three headings namely ?Liking?, ?Complexity?, and ?Impression?. (Liking: beautiful-ugly, warm-cold, qualified-lacking quality, Complexity: poor looking-imposing, plain? complicated, Impression: impressive?unimpressive) The main hypothesis of this study is to reveal that liking rates will be high for intermediately altered houses by showing the existence of inverse `U? shaped relation for both respondent groups. The other hypothesis of this study is to show that for highly altered houses, the clues of resemblance will disappear in the same housing site and consequently the houses will not be recognized. This situation is described as the loss of identity and examined in this study. The results have proved the existence of inversed `U? shaped relation between complexity and liking criteria. In other words, an intermediately complex façade is preferred rather than the high and low complex ones. In terms of the two basic hypotheses, it has been assumed that there will be a difference in the ratings of different respondent groups. According to the results, architects have replied in a more critical way than the non-architect group and they criticized what they saw in a negative way. Although the percentage of differentiating altered houses and grouping the houses according to their housing site is highly low for both groups, architecture students were slightly more successful in differentiating the houses and grouping them. Key Words : Liking, Complexity, Order, Familiarity, Architects, Laypersons, Mass Housing