Qualitative impressions in urban spaces at night through immersive virtual environments

Abstract

Research in the lighting field usually has focused on the quantitative and physical aspects of light and its performance for the user-environment relationship. Despite the growing research on subjective aspects of lighting and its influence on the perception of the built environment, experiments evaluating the impressions of nocturnal environments are still few. This article consisted in the mapping of projected environmental qualities of urban spaces in the city of João Pessoa-PB based on the concept of perceived atmosphere, which proposes words that qualitatively describe an environment. The experiment employed virtual reality to support the creation of virtual night scenes, simulating lighting projects, such as the existing night situation as the first scene and a new lighting intervention as a second alternative, in order to generate comparative evaluations. The results showed that there are different qualities in both spaces, mainly related to safety and sociability issues, reflecting the importance of adequate assessments of urban perceptions as well as virtual reality as an innovative tool. The contributions of this article include the possibility of replication of the methodology in new contexts where public lighting plays a key role, such as public spaces in housing developments and collective participation in the design process.

Keywords:
Lighting design; Environmental perception; Virtual reality