Visitors' perception of high-rise building effect on the scenery of traditional gardens: A case study in hama-rikyu gardens, tokyo

Abstract

This study was carried out in a traditional Japanese garden namely Hama-rikyu Gardens which is one of the important heritage sites in Tokyo city. Hama-rikyu Gardens is a stroll type garden (kaiyu-shiki teien) which was originally designed to have borrowed sceneries (Shakkei) of nature elements in its surroundings. However, with the urbanization phenomena in the last decades, modern high-rise buildings have surrounded the garden and entered the garden’s scenery which became a problem from the viewpoint of heritage garden preservation. Thereby, this study aimed to investigate the visual effect of external high-rise building views on the garden’s scenery in visitors’ perception. To achieve this aim, an in-situ survey was conducted among the visitors of Hama-rikyu Gardens by using a questionnaire with a range of questions to assess the external building sceneries. The results indicated that evaluation of the garden scenery as a whole was highly positive while the buildings in the garden sceneries were not liked, and they were perceived as disturbing. Furthermore, the negative effect of the buildings increased in the observation points where Shakkei (borrowed scenery) experience could be expected.