Cognitive Complexity in Architectural Layouts Integrating spatial analysis, eye-tracking, and surveys

With a growing number of large mixed-use buildings globally, a better understanding of the complexity posed by these buildings is essential. While we have established frameworks of describing the formal and programmatic complexity of these buildings, less is known about the experiential and cognitive complexity they pose to the users. In this exploratory study, we examined what makes these buildings cognitively complex and the role spatial configuration plays in this. Moreover, we examined effects of such complexity on people’s ‘sense of place’, hypothesizing that high cognitive complexity precludes the potentials of the layout eliciting a ‘sense of place’. We looked at five shopping malls as case-studies, located in Osaka, Singapore, Hong Kong, Beijing and Minnesota. We employed a Visibility Graph Analysis (VGA), using DepthmapX and Isovists_app to calculate the visual integration and Entropy. We conducted a screen-based eye- tracking experiment with 20 participants, recording their visual attention behaviour in response to walkthrough videos of 3D models of these five buildings. Participants then responded to a survey assessing the complexity and sense of place experienced with each of the five layouts. The hypotheses are tested and affirmed (with some caveats) by performing a correlation test among the three sets of data.

ARCHITECTURAL INFORMATICS, Proceedings of the 30th International Conference of the Association for Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia (CAADRIA) 2025, Volume 4, 489-498