Townscape Color Planning System Using an Evolutionary Algorithm and Kansei Evaluations

Townscape colours have been a main issue in urban-development. For townscape colours, keeping colour harmony within the environment is a common goal. Expressing characteristics and impressions of the town in townscape colours are other meaningful goals. This paper describes the colour planning support system intended to improve town-scapes. The system offers some colour combination proposals based on three elements: colour harmony, impressions of the townscape, and cost for the change of colours. First, we develop evaluation models to quantify colour harmony and impression of the townscape from the approach of Kansei engineering. Next, the system is constructed using an evolutionary algorithm and the two evaluation models. After the construction, performance tests are conducted. The results show that our system achieved sufficient ability to propose appropriate colour combinations with minimum colour changes.