A city is a combination of humans and environments. It offers a comprehensive artificial environment equipped with a variety of formative elements such as buildings, roads, and squares. And it's an essential place for living working to keep various ki...
A city is a combination of humans and environments. It offers a comprehensive artificial environment equipped with a variety of formative elements such as buildings, roads, and squares. And it's an essential place for living working to keep various kinds of everyday activities going.
Today a city's higher quality and differentiation partially decide the competitive edge of a nation. The reckless development of a city spurred by informatization and industrialization, however, gave birth to a uniform landscape and artificial structures that were gray and isolated from nature. They contribute to the blurred image of a local area and the psychological instability of the residents. Thus it's important to analyze and study local colors that represent the history and cultural features of an area in order to establish the city image. This study set out to easure and make a quantitative analysis of colors, which were the core elements to perceive an urban environment, for Samcheong-dong full of modern and traditional characteristics, as well as to gather objective data of environmental colors, thus offering color guidelines that could contribute to the quality increase of the urban image.
The study consists of total five chapters and follows the following progression:
Chapter 1 examined the values of city image color guidelines through local color analysis, the background, goals, scope and methodology of the study, and the trends in the previous study.
Chapter 2 examined the urban environment and concept of image and the meanings and cases of local colors and reviewed the Munsell and CIEL*a*b* that were the standard colorimetric systems and the theories regarding color measuring methods.
Chapter 3 analyzed the general state of Samcheong-dong that was the subject area of the study and considered possible investigation approaches. Especially color measurements were based on objective standards by using a spectrophotometer to examine the environmental
colors of the area. The data were presented in the IEL*a*b* and Munsell values to examine and analyze the color distribution in natural and man-made environments.
On the basis of the analysis results of Chapter 3, Chapter 4 looked into the current state of the colors of Samcheong-dong and conducted a survey about the city image. It also suggested color guidelines and coordination to help establish its city image.
And Chapter 5 made an overall evaluation of the methodology, carried out a final assessment of the research findings, and offered a conclusion.
The research findings indicate that Samcheong-dong was well equipped with the traditional, cultural, and artistic infrastructure and had a strong sense of place. The analysis results of its local colors suggest that the natural elements such as trees and mountains were usually the GY colors and that the sky was mostly the PB colors. The main colors of the artificial environment included the YR, Y, and N colors, and the sub and accent colors were the R, GY, and PB colors. Widely varying in the color difference between adjacent buildings from 5 to 77, the area failed to maintain continuity in the landscape. The overall balance was disrupted by the outdoor signs of high saturation and the materials and colors that felt different from those of the surrounding buildings, which accordingly failed to highlight the cultural and artistic image of Samcheong-dong. The results clearly suggest a need for improvements to make its landscape more harmonious in future.
Since there was no previous study on Samcheong-dong, which had differentiated features as a place, from the perspective of environmental colors, this study can serve as previous study on the subject area in future. The study measured colors with a spectrophotometer to examine the environmental colors and presented objective and quantified data in CIEL*a*b* values, which differentiates the study from others and bestows it with the implications as data of environmental colors. The color guidelines excluded the colors of high saturation to cause visual stimulations and coordinated colors to strike harmony with the natural environment and seem unified within the scope of reflecting the "traditional," "sophisticated" and "natural" images, which were the color concept images identified by the investigation of the environmental colors and the survey. The color coordinations of each image were suggested based on the color guidelines and will be hopefully put to diverse uses. There should be follow-up researches and reviews on the study since there was partially verification of the color guidelines suggested based on the investigation results of colors.
The traditional buildings of Korea maintain the continuity of colors and strike harmony with the surrounding nature. It's important to set such color guidelines as will keep the local colors alive in order to highlight the distinctive and beautiful landscape. When regulations and applications remain within the scope, the urban landscape will be able to keep the order and uniformity, which will contribute to the quality increase of the urban image.