The complexity of tall building facades

Complexity is widely regarded as an important variable influencing people's response to settings and artifacts. This paper describes an attempt to ope rationalize and quantify the concept of complexity in a limited context, th at of the tall building seen at a distance. A theoretical framework is deve loped, from which formulae for estimating complexity in this context are de rived. Qualitative and quantitative tests on synthetic designs based on the formulae give support to the theory.