Journal | Building Research & Information

So glad to share that a new article has been published online in Building Research & Information. The paper is authored by Mirna Zordan, Petrus Jacobus Hermanus Maree, Zixian Lei, Tianze Xie, and Seungwoo Je.

This work, a collaboration between our group Future Spaces Vision Lab and Immersive Design Research Group led by Seungwoo Je, continues our ongoing interest in intangible human–environment interactions and in understanding how spatial and environmental conditions can be studied through design research and evidence-based analysis. It also reflects the lab’s broader effort to connect architecture, perception, and wellbeing through interdisciplinary work.

The study investigates how different building typologies shape the visual structure of streetscapes and, in turn, influence physiological stress responses. To achieve this, we developed an integrative framework combining amplitude spectrum slope (-α) analysis, immersive Virtual Reality (VR), and Heart Rate Variability (HRV), measured through SDNN, in order to examine how scene-level spatial frequency (SF) structure relates to stress. Using immersive 360° VR streetscape scenes reconstructed from three representative Hong Kong building typologies—cantilevered buildings, super high-rise podium-tower buildings, and podium-tower buildings—the study compares both their visual properties and their physiological effects on participants.

It contributes to a growing body of work that moves beyond intuition-only approaches to environmental design, and instead asks how architectural and urban decisions might be informed by measurable relationships between visual structure, perception, and wellbeing. 

We’re very happy to see this article out in the world and look forward to the conversations it may open across design🖋️, architecture🏢, and built-environment🌁 research.

Welcome to check our work 💁: https://doi.org/10.1080/09613218.2026.2691250