The visual qualities of liveable streets

The visual character of buildings is often associated with the style of its construction - a set of visual characteristics that a group of buildings might share. These characteristics include the relationship of the parts of the building to each other and to the building as a whole, the use of ornament and visible textures , and the scale of elements within the composition. Alexander (Alexander, 2002) and Rapoport (Rapoport, 1990) have discussed how these visual features affect urban coherence, and the way that people behave in public spaces. Using algorithms developed within robotic research that enable a computer to interpret a visual environment (similar to those who used the medicine and facial recognition for instance), this paper outlines how algorithms can be used to study the visual properties of the built environment. the paper discussed how the urban texture of houses within the streetscape, at the scale of the individual, relates to the urban visual character of precincts within the city. The architectural drawings of a house designed by Le Corbusier and the street frontages of post war and federation houses are visually analysed using Archimage, software developed by the authors for this type of analysis.