ABSTRACT
The legibility of an environment is dominated by two dimensions. The first, identified by Lynch (1960), concerns the clarity of spatial representations of one’s surroundings and focuses on both physical characteristics and spatial relations. In this view, one’s representation of an external environment is structured to be as isomorphic as possible vis-à-vis the surrounding physical world – a view emphasized by Kosslyn (1975). This approach argues that environments are examined for coherent structure. A legible environment is one where the spatial structure is relatively obvious. In these cases, legibility depends on an ability to organize the complexity of the surrounding environment, the ease of differentiating its particular components, and its visual perceptual form. Thus, legible environments allow for object clustering and feature characterization as well as hierarchical ordering of phenomena. Legibility becomes the degree of distinctiveness that enables viewers to comprehend their surroundings.
