Components of Aesthetic Experience and Reading the Role of Identity in the Preferences of Architectural Works

Whenever the architecture moves from the objective bases of the building to the intangible environment of human perception and experience, the experimental perception of the aesthetics becomes difficult since its intangible, transient, and emotional nature makes its internal evaluation by self-consciousness or external evaluation by observation and instruments difficult. Therefore, one of the possible ways to better understand this perception is to pay attention to the subject of identity in architectural works and its role in intensifying the human’s aesthetic experience of the space. Thus, the current study aims to recognize the aesthetic capabilities in Iranian architecture to respond to the users' needs, explore the relationship between their preferences, and adapt them to the identity subjects related to the emotional evaluations caused by the experience of space pleasantness. In this regard, the relationship arises between the determining components of space’s emotional evaluation and the sense of identity and adapting it to the user’s aesthetic preferences based on how the architectural works are experienced? Based on the components and their relevant criteria extracted from the theoretical literature, and using a statistical population including 40 female participants and a researcher-made questionnaire when visiting three select cultural buildings, the data obtained from the scores (Likert’s 5-scale) were analyzed by the regression analysis. The results indicated that the component determining the user’s emotional evaluation is first divided into two main dimensions: 1) emotional states and 2) emotional exchange. An emotional state includes the user's emotional and sensual experience, is determined by the perceptual, cognitive, and motivational components, and is most related to the sense of identity of the architectural works. The emotional exchange is also based on the user’s interaction with his/her spatial experience, which determines the role of sensory-motor and behavioral components as an effective factor in emotional interaction and evaluation resulting from it. This interaction is also indirectly effective on the intensity of space aesthetic preferences under the influence of cognitive components (identity symbol, rooted in tradition, cultural sign, etc.).