Development and Evaluation of an Intelligent Colour Planning Support System for Townscapes

Aesthetics of townscapes have been a main factor in urban development. This paper introduces IroKage, an intelligent colour planning support system. The system offers improved colour schemes for existing townscapes based on three elements: colour harmony, impressions of the townscape, and cost for the change of colours. The system is constructed using an evolutionary algorithm and the Kansei engineering approach. After the construction, system evaluation is conducted. The subjects evaluate fifteen colour schemes output from the system in terms of colour harmony and the ideal impressions for the townscapes using the semantic differential method introduced by Osgood et al. The results of the evaluation demonstrate that the system has sufficient ability to propose appropriate colour schemes for the ideal town impressions.