2021 Faculty Courses School of Environment and Society Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Graduate major in Urban Design and Built Environment
Basics of Design Theory of Visual Environment
- Academic unit or major
- Graduate major in Urban Design and Built Environment
- Instructor(s)
- Yoshiki Nakamura
- Class Format
- Lecture
- Media-enhanced courses
- -
- Day of week/Period
(Classrooms) - 5-6 Mon
- Class
- -
- Course Code
- UDE.E401
- Number of credits
- 100
- Course offered
- 2021
- Offered quarter
- 1Q
- Syllabus updated
- Jul 10, 2025
- Language
- Japanese
Syllabus
Course overview and goals
Students will obtain basic knowledge on realizing intended appearance by manipulating light and color. Especially they will understand the relationship between psychophysical values of light or color and their perceptional experience, and they will understand tools for estimating appearance from psychophysical measures of light and color, and will obtain how to use them.
Course description and aims
Obtaining basic design skills for light and color in urban environmental engineering, Architecture, environment engineering of Architecture and Building service engineering.
Keywords
Light, color, Architecture, landscape
Competencies
- Specialist skills
- Intercultural skills
- Communication skills
- Critical thinking skills
- Practical and/or problem-solving skills
Class flow
The instructor will provide report theme in every lesson, and some of students assigned by the instructor will have presentation in the next lesson.
Course schedule/Objectives
| Course schedule | Objectives | |
|---|---|---|
| Class 1 | What is visual environment design? | Obtaining general knowledge of visual environment design. |
| Class 2 | Visual stimuli and sensation (referring to Newton and Goethe) | Obtaining previous researches on visual environment. |
| Class 3 | Psychophysical measures of light and color | Understanding psychophysical measures of light and color. |
| Class 4 | Object color representation system (Color constancy) | Understanding object color |
| Class 5 | Characteristics of distribution of light and color | Understanding decisive impact of light and color distribution on visual environment |
| Class 6 | Relation between appearance and light and color (Contrast profile method) | Understanding estimation method of appearance |
| Class 7 | Appearance estimation tool on wavelet transform | Understand appearance estimation tools based on image transformation. |
| Class 8 | Examples of application design tools. | Understanding concrete procedure for visual environment design. |
Study advice (preparation and review)
To enhance effective learning, students are encouraged to spend approximately 100 minutes preparing for class and another 100 minutes reviewing class content afterwards (including assignments) for each class.
They should do so by referring to textbooks and other course material.
Textbook(s)
Not decided.
Reference books, course materials, etc.
Not specified.
Evaluation methods and criteria
Evaluated on all reports submitted in every lesson.
Related courses
- ARC.E424 ： Design Theory of Architectural Visual Environment
- UDE.E503 ： Design Theory of Urban Visual Environment
Prerequisites
Not specified