The Exploration Of Visual Properties Within Exhibition Space

The achievement of the research can be used as a tool of comparing different layouts of museums and controlling the possible behavior of visitors by the designers and curators.The thesis attempts to make an understanding of the connection between the spatial qualities of architecture and the patterns of visitors'movements. And the Capital Museum is analyzed to discuss the spatial environment and visitors'behavior in the museum space. Time, exhibits where visitors stop most and the path choices during the visit are key resources to describe the visitors'behavior. And a method of observation is introduced to analyse the behavior - especially, non-verbal behavior of the visitors– in case of interrupting the visitors.The Isovist Analyst (IA) extension is used to compute 2D isovists in the Capital Museum, which is wrote by a professor of UCL named Sanjay Rana and freely available for ArcView GIS 3.x. The measure can indicate the area directly visible from a point by parameters within the exhibition hall of the museum, such as isoarea, averadial, circularity, occlusion and so on. Using the parameters, we can describe the spatial environment in terms of comparing the conditions of different points within the same space or the conditions of different spaces. And finally we draw a conclusion that isovist can be used as a powerful tool for describe the spatial configuration, and the exhibition layouts may affect the patterns of visitors'movements.