Abstract

Historic city cores in many countries either fell into neglect or suffered from harmful developments. Due to a variety of reasons, conservation projects failed to preserve socio–cultural assets of historic environments. One of these reasons is that experts who involve in the development of historical context completely disregard the communities in such historic areas or their inhabitants. This paper looks into residents' preferences on infill design projects as part of urban development in historical contexts. It aims to investigate preference ratings of those residents who live in urban historical context in terms of the quality of new infill design and its relationship to the historical surroundings. This research attempts to evaluate the best design strategies from the point view of the residents as well as the effects of cognitive properties on their preferences. Methodologically, a case study approach was adopted with 204 residents as participants in this survey. The contributive elements that are essential to the quality of fitness are identified through quantitative analysis. The findings of this research indicate that the most preferred design strategies are “Literal Replication” and “Invention within Style” from the perspective of the residents, who prefer, to a greater degree, new buildings in historical context replicating something from their surroundings. These findings are useful to experts and major organisations to conduct successful infill development, with consideration of the perceptions of the residents on the changes in their historical context.

Abstract

If we attend to the way TV programmes are designed, produced and broadcasted, we realize that their design, in many cases, is intended not to the neccessities and expectations of those to whom is aimed, namely, the televison viewers, but to the artistic taste of the proprer designer. In addition, we suspect that, too often, the transition from the Idea to the Product is carried out intuitively and without any methodology. If motor industry designed cars and sold them in the same manner we do TV programmes, it would fall into a deep crisis a long time ago. In general terms, any industry can afford to design its products by the trial and error method; far from it, they start from the study of the neccessities of potential customers in order to reach, by a logical proccess, the final design. In the audiovisual industry, the product is designed, more often than recommendable, before it is known to whom it will be sold, what time it will be broadcasted, which is the viewer sociodemographic profile and what he or she expects from TV. Applying Value Analysis techniques, which are well-established industrywide, would help to recover from this rift between viewers and designers, and to achieve the ideal balance between the customer neccessities and expectations and the TV programme conceptual design, as well as all the production factors. This way, it would guarantee at the same time the two aspects of quality: Conformity Quality and Design Quality.