Architects predict lay evaluations of large contemporary buildings: Whose conceptual properties?

Evidence suggests that architects as a group cannot predict the public's aesthetic evaluations of architecture. In this study, practicing architects predicted laypersons' responses to large contemporary building, and again these predictions were poorly correlated with ratings by laypersons, although some architects' predictions were better than others, and architects were able to predict accurately that lay ratings in general would be more favourable than their own. To understand why most, architects are unable to predict reactions to particular buildings, the architects' predictions were analysed in relation to their own and lay ratings of the buildings' conceptual properties. The results suggest that architects are unable to exchange their own criteria for conceptual properties for those of laypersons when they predict public evaluations, which leads to self-anchored, inaccurate predictions. This was supported by showing that the best-predicting architects related their evaluations to buildings' conceptual properties in a manner similar to that of the laypersons. Implications for design are suggested. (C) 2001 Academic Press.