preference

 The concept of taste’ is one of the prominent concepts in art and architecture. This concept is widely used in various fields, such as interior architecture: from deciding on the quality and overall quality of the interior space to determining the materials of the place, choosing furniture and arranging the elements of the interior space, we can trace the presence of ‘taste decision’. On the one hand, it seems like a simple and obvious concept that is present in our daily product selection experience. On the other hand, due to its complexities and dependence on various factors, it seems that it is necessary to pay attention on this complex and complicated issue; With this question, ‘what meaning(s) of taste can be found in art and architecture-interior architecture? The purpose of this research is to understand the different semantic layers of taste to clarify its meaning and provide a way to enter into the discussion about it. For this purpose, the research started with the linguistic study of taste. Then, the origin of taste since it penetrated into art and architecture and the changes and transformations it has undergone until now, were explored. In other words, the way and process of the transformation of the concept of taste from long ago to the present day was followed in order to recognize different explanations and interpretations. So, this research is focused on reviewing the background of the concept of taste from the beginning of searchable moments to the fields of art and architecture-internal architecture; The three main fields of philosophy, social sciences, and psychological sciences provide the possibility of knowing the different layers of the concept of taste so that different dimensions and contexts can be explained. Studies show that almost two important milestones can be identified in the genealogy of taste in art and architecture: first, it is the moment of its emergence in the field of art and architecture, which is used instead of the word ‘judgment’. In this era, the concept of taste created a great change in understanding of subject-object relationship. The second one is the moment of its entry into the field of social sciences. This time, the concept of taste had become a means to understand consumer behavior. From the sum of these studies, it seems that five general concepts are hidden in different semantical layers of taste: beauty, distinction, lifestyle, fashion, and preference. Each of these layers, while being continuous, has a specific meaning range in a specific field; And they show us a certain aspect of taste, which will be briefly mentioned here. The concept of beauty is more theoretical and philosophical. In the philosophical discussions of taste, these two terms are mostly together. The other four terms are related to when taste comes together with choice and emerges. The concepts of distinction, lifestyle, and fashion have more social meaning and each of them shows how social conditions and status can affect taste. And finally, it should be said that when we use preference, the goal is mostly to understand the internal conditions and activities and developments in the brain.

Neighborhood parks play an important role in the relationship between people and the nature. In fact, vegetation and planting are the most important motivations for attendance of and recreations available in parks. For improvement of the quality of green spaces in neighborhood parks and enhancement of public participation, it is necessary to design the park landscape with respect to people’s preferences and their perceptions of the desired landscape, while there are some shortcomings in this regard. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to investigate people’s visual preferences in order to optimally design vegetation in neighborhood parks. A neighborhood park is a small green space (about two hectares large) with a penetration radius of about one kilometer, and it is readily accessible on foot from residential areas. The present research aimed to study these preferences in the field of spatial configuration of vegetation based on a visual scale. The visual scale is an important, effective feature in the creation of confinement and control of visual access. In this study, the underlying factors of age, gender, and socio-economic class differences were considered. Due to the difference in economic level in the northern and southern regions of Tehran, neighborhood parks in these two regions and their users were selected for evaluation. Five neighborhood parks in each region were considered purposefully.

The method adopted in the present research was a combination of the qualitative and quantitative approaches. First, the spatial configuration of vegetation in the creation of different types of visual scale was investigated, and five categories of visual scale were identified. Images were provided of the vegetation compositions of neighborhood parks with high income levels (region 1) and low income levels (region 18). After consultation with the elite, the images were categorized based on a variety of visual scales. The visual questionnaire consisted of two images for each visual scale, where landscape desirability was examined with a Likert scale. Using random sampling, 363 people who visited neighborhood parks in the two areas of Tehran (District 1 and District 18) completed the questionnaire. The data were analyzed using the Bonferroni post hoc test in SPSS. After their collection, the homogeneity of variance was first examined through the Levin variance homogeneity test for comparison of the user preferences in terms of the type of landscape, and the results demonstrated that there was no significant difference between the variances of the variables in the groups (PS ˂ 0.05). Therefore, one-way analysis of variance was used to compare the studied variables between the groups, and the Bonferroni post hoc test was used to control Type I error if there was a significant difference between the opinions.

The results of the present research indicated that there were different visual preferences for the images. Thus, the closed visual scale and open visual scale between all the groups were undesirable, as well as the semi-open visual scale and open visibility under canopy landscape between all the participating groups. Among the studied underlying factors (difference in the income levels in the regions, age, and gender), gender exhibited little effect on the formation of the landscape preferences, and women preferred more enclosed landscapes.

The results of this research demonstrated given the desirability of semi-open images that the spatial configuration of vegetation formed through planting and pruning should not allow for any visual barrier in the foreground layer while planting at the observer’s line of vision is obstructed in the background layer and sporadically in the middle layer. Moreover, it is desirable for plant height to be less than the observer’s line of vision and for tree canopies to be placed at heights greater than the observer’s visibility in the background layer. Due to the desirability of open visibility under canopy images, it is possible to provide favorable climatic conditions through selection of a combination of canopy umbrella trees of two types, fallow and non-fallow, which also allows for wide visual access. Due to the unfavorable landscape of the closed view, it is not appropriate to practice such planting at the observer’s line of vision in the foreground layer of the view. It is also necessary to avoid open visual scale design, where the coating exhibits low density in all the three layers. Regarding the influence of underlying factors, it can be stated that the landscape preferences for optimal visual access were almost the same for the different groups, but the women were more inclined to prefer semi-open visual-scale images due to the need for privacy and security, and images with closed vision were less favorable for them. Thus, the proposed species could be proposed given their heights for all the three layers of foreground, middle ground and background, according to the obtained patterns. The present study took the first steps in landscape planning based on awareness of public preferences, and these findings provide practical solutions for landscape planting design.

This article has been taken from a doctoral dissertation entitled Promoting Cultural Services of Urban Green Spaces Based on the Visual Assessment of Landscape: A Case Study of Urban Parks in Tehran, developed by the first author under the supervision of the second author and the advisory of the third author in the Faculty of Art of Tarbiat Modares University. The dissertation has enjoyed financial and spiritual support from the Tehran Urban Research and Planning Center as a research project.

Living in crowded urban areas and minimal houses, and exposure to pressure and environmental stress, threatening the physical and psychological health of citizens in the long run. In this regard, an environment that facilitates the relaxation of the mind from everyday life conditions is a preferred environment. The reason for the preference of such environments is the ability to "restoration." Such as "Restorative environments" by repairing the resources and depleted capacity of the individual, enables them to meet their needs and demands. The studies of restoration environment are concentrated on the benefits of communication with nature, and during thirty years of its existence, so far in its different socio-cultural platforms, this theory has been frequently used and tasted. According to the position of nature in Iranian culture, attention to this theory is relevant in the socio-cultural context of Iranian, especially in today's conditions that tangible communication with nature, especially in metropolitan, has been weakened. Due to the presence of long hours of special classes such as disabled, elderly, children and women in the home, new working conditions such as teleworking and attention to the home as a place to escape from work outdoors, it is necessary to contemplate the possibility of clearing of mind and relaxation in the home context. Since this approach, like other approaches to environmental psychology, is valuable when it leads to the improvement of users' health by leading experts to planning and design, it is necessary to identify the types of restoration environments and their characteristics. The present study attempts to explore the physical and social components of the restoration in the context of daily life to recreate the restoration environment. in this regard, two questions arise: "How individuals seek refuge after dealing with the pressures and limitations of everyday life?" and "What is the specification of a restoration environment?". In this study, a semi-structured interview with 100 inhabitants of two residential complexes in Tehran, in the framework of theoretical studies, is taken to test the restoration theory in the socio-cultural context of Iran and to extract the vocabulary and phrases refer to restoration and to clarify this concept. The present study shows that it can be found restoration in residential environments on a different scale ranging from micro to macro. Despite all the benefits that are associated with the surrounding nature such as communal spaces between structural blocks and neighborhood park, the limitation of such collective spaces in many minimal residential complexes and also the necessity of frequent experience of nature and the importance of ease of access to it, the "balcony" in the housing arena as a semi-open space in and outside, in case of having some spatial qualities and the possibility of carrying out different activities in it, can be very restorative. The results of this research, while introducing the architects and the designers of the environment with the topic of restoration, make them sensitive to the experience of nature by assigning appropriate levels to the balcony in residential buildings.