How do High-Rise Buildings Affect the Mental Image of Users? Case Study: Seljuk Tower in Konya

Abstract Due to their physical and identity features, high-rise buildings play a key role in influencing the citizens’ mental image. This study aims to investigate the bilateral link between the environment and people based on user evaluations of the formal and physical features of high-rise buildings. By emphasizing the impacts of formal, functional, and semantic aspects of high-rise buildings on users’ preferences, the study identifies perceptual components and physical features that shape mental image. To this end, using the library research method, the perceptual components of high-rise buildings are introduced as the conceptual model of the study. Then, the relevant components are evaluated using a survey of 217 users of the Seljuk Tower in Konya. The results show that the ‘sense of pleasure when facing the tower’ has the most significant correlation with the users’ perception. The “degree of innovation of the form” and the “materials used in the building” are the other priorities that influence the users” perception. The results also show that affective and cognitive perceptual dimensions influence users’ mental image significantly more than evaluative and interpretative dimensions.