Visual Quality Assessment in Cultural Landscape: Case Study of Lop Buri

Abstract

           Lop Buri has been a historic city since the 13^th century. Each era reflected the cultures, identities, and arts which emerged into the form of architectures and various valued antiques. With these resources, Lop Buri is still a historic city. Lop Buri Is expanding rapidly resulting in damage to the beauty of landscape and scenery. Considering the beauty of the city is important so that people will realize and appreciate the value of the historic city. The objective of the visual quality assessment was to study the current problems and made it possible to understand the elements of the city which affected the aesthetics. The study results of these elements would lead to a way to preserve the cultural landscape. Moreover, it would deal with the landscape problems to reduce the impact of the area development and lead to city aesthetics. The visual quality assessment would start with a review of the literature related to the concept and aesthetics assessment theory together with creating the questionnaires for collecting data from samples. There were 200 samples divided into 100 residents in Lop Buri and 100 tourists. This study aimed to find the current aesthetics of the city and to analyze the factors that lead to aesthetics and visual pollutions.

            The study revealed that residents in Lop Buri were less aware of the city aesthetics than the tourists and wanted to change the scenery of the city due to the landscape problems. As for the tourists, there was a high perception of the current aesthetics of the city, with the view that the old city and the new city coexist, creating a beautiful blend of past and present. The factors that affected the beauty of the landscape depended on the composition and positioning of the architectures. When the eye target was centered together with the straight point of view, it would make the area more prominent. If there were more shade and comfort to the eyes, it would increase aesthetics to the city environment as well. On the other hand, too many hardscapes would decrease the aesthetics. The contrast between colors of the building and the floor created a strong feeling and made the scenery stand out. To improve the city scenery, there should be more green color area and the height and color controlled around the historic site. There should be the city expansion control not to encroach on the historic site.