Heat maps from theHapi study. Left: U.S. Courthouse in Toledo, Ohio. Right: Hansen Federal Building in Ogden, Utah.
In 2020 the National Civic Art Society conducted a survey by the Harris Poll of Americans’ preferred architecture for federal buildings and U.S. courthouses. We carefully paired photos of existing government buildings—a Modernist one versus a traditional one in each pair—and asked participants which building they preferred.
Recently, NCAS funded a scientific study by the Human Architecture + Planning Institute (theHapi) that used eye-tracking technology to study how participants experienced the photos used in our survey. Data was collected and aggregated to form "heat maps" that glow reddest where people look most, and fade to yellow, then green, and finally, no color at all, in areas ignored. Such heat maps indicate viewers' conscious and subconscious interest.
TheHapi published the study’s results, which demonstrated the public’s preference for classical and traditional designs: “the remarkable, and remarkably consistent, finding this eye-tracking pilot-study revealed: no matter where the buildings were in the U.S., traditional civic architecture consistently drew viewer attention and focus while modern-style counterparts did not.”
For the full study results, click HERE.