Life Science Journal 2013;10(3) http://www.lifesciencesite.com http://www.lifesciencesite.com lifesciencej@gmail.com 2056 A Comparative Study on Designers and Non-Designers Emotion of Urban Sculptures Using Affect Grid Fahimeh Malekinezhad 1 , Hassan Chizari 2 and Hasanuddin bin Lamit 1 , Muhamad Solehin Fitry bin Rosley 1 1. Faculty of Built Environment, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Malaysia 2. Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Computing, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Malaysia mfahimeh2@live.utm.my Abstract: Public art as an element of urban project is created, selected and located in public spaces by designers. Being in a public domain, another group, which has an interest for public art, is the lay-public or the non-designers. The differences, which do exist between the aesthetic appraisal of designers and non-designers, have created a disparity of affinity for art projects. This study compared the similarities and dissimilarities of emotional responses of designers and non-designers for 24 color photographs of urban sculptures as public art in Tehran. Affect Grid as a single-item instrument was used to measure the emotional expressions of the respondents with two dimensions of ‘Pleasure’ and ‘Arousal’. To find the two groups agreement or disagreement the Circumplex based analysis methods as circular profile and circular plot have been used. The study confirms that there are significant dissimilarities between the emotions of both groups. Nevertheless, the divergences of the two groups were not derived only from the designers’ homogeneity. The two groups have had similar emotions while their attitudes were different for selected urban sculptures. [Malekinezhad F, Chizari H, Lamit H, Rosley M. S. F. A Comparative Study on Designers and Non-Designers Emotion of Urban Sculptures Using Affect Grid. Life Sci J 2013;10(3):2056-2063] (ISSN:1097-8135). http://www.lifesciencesite.com . 303 Keywords: Affect Grid; Art In Public Open Spaces; Circumplex; Designers And Non-Designers; Emotion; Urban Sculpture 1. Introduction The large cities are filled of repetitive activities, urban perturbations, chaos of visual design elements, and the like where many citizens are fatigued from these disarrays (Pormand & Mosevand, 2011). Tehran is also faced with problems like excessive population, pollution, dirt, traffic, and the like which decreased the city’s environment quality (Seifollahi & Faryadi, 2011). To offset the visual turbulence of urban spaces, art incorporated with other alleviation strategies into architectural design projects in the name of public art. Urban sculpture, street furniture, billboards, fountains and other artistic elements in urban landscape and architecture fruitfully enhances the aesthetic quality of cities and softs the urban area in which people behave more relaxed. Recently, the urban sculpture especially has been one of the most appropriate solutions to beautify environment and reduce the visual fatigues in Tehran (Pormand & Mosevand, 2011). Various types of sculptures have been used in the city such as statues, free sculpture, and celebrity sculptures. Symbols of successful events and people are the supreme icon in this city and have always been tools to improve the area. Although art installations positively contribute in the built environment, dissatisfaction of public has been mentioned as a main factor of its failure. According to McClellan & Senie (2008), most public arts slip into the urban scape without a ripple, often ignored by its immediate audience or used according to their everyday needs. Therefore, the success of a public art project is related to satisfaction of its users, which live and employ within the place. In this regard, a substantial research has been developed concerning the alerting of designers to favorites of public. The designers have appeared to be unaware of the observers’ pleasure on what a delightful architecture looks like (Gifford, Hine, Muller-Clemm, & Shaw, 2002). Mostly, it has been shown that instead of thinking of public’s responses, they evaluated architectural design projects with their own criteria. This result has been supported by findings from research undertaken about prediction of non-designers by designers in ratings of conceptual properties of modern buildings (Brown & Gifford, 2001). There is evidence of what designers have preferred while have received the negative reactions of non-designers. For instance, the Clock Tower building in San Francisco, which from the viewpoint of architects is ‘fresh and innovative’, public perceived it as ‘abomination’ stimuli (Brown & Gifford, 2001). In the field of public art, also there are some examples of differences between designers and non-designers. For example, the monumental sculpture of Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc in New York (Chang, 2008) or unsatisfactory role of public art in mitigation of the Phoenix freeway problems (Blair, Pijawka, & Steiner, 1998). Such situations have