Recent a apartment houses tend to focus on creating a variety of landscaped and recreational areas with pedestrian-friendly above-ground spaces. Particularly, to ensure the safety of children and the elderly, the construction of above-ground parking l...
Recent a apartment houses tend to focus on creating a variety of landscaped and recreational areas with pedestrian-friendly above-ground spaces. Particularly, to ensure the safety of children and the elderly, the construction of above-ground parking lots is discouraged, and most parking spaces are installed underground. However, the modular nature of underground parking spaces often makes it difficult to locate exits, and the limitation of natural light can make these spaces psychologically unsettling. Consequently, underground parking areas tend to have a higher rate of serious crimes, and recently, there has been an increasing trend in fire incidents, particularly in areas designated for electric vehicle charging. This has led to a growing importance in designing underground parking spaces that prioritize safety and evacuation, in addition to aesthetic design.
This study aims to initially classify colors that are advantageous for aesthetics, crime prevention, and evacuation through the assessment of current color status and color model evaluation. It then seeks to identify the range of accent colors with a high rate of recognizable improvement through color matching assessment. The goal is to propose color design guidelines using the derived range of colors. The temporal scope of this study targets complexes completed within the last 5 years in new towns. The spatial scope is limited to underground parking spaces that secure illuminance with artificial lighting, excluding piloti parking spaces with natural light. The content scope is limited to apartment entrances and vehicle ramp entrances in underground parking spaces, which are conducive to evaluating aesthetics, crime prevention, and evacuation functions.
The method of this research includes first, identifying safety color design elements in underground parking spaces through current status evaluation and setting the direction for color model evaluation by analyzing the color status in terms of design and safety. Second, classifying colors advantageous for aesthetics, crime prevention, and evacuation through single-color model evaluation. Third, deriving the range of accent colors that improve perceptibility through color matching assessment. Fourth, proposing color design guidelines using the derived color range.
The results revealed that, among the ten types of safety color designs classified through current evaluation, an average of 5.8 elements are actually applied, indicating low interest and field application for safety color design in underground parking spaces. Despite the application of urban landscape concept images and crime prevention architectural standards, current underground parking space color planning has been found to be deficient in aesthetic image, psychological safety, and recognizability.
In the single-color model evaluation of the NCS color system, colors were classified according to ‘aesthetic image’ for design use in underground parking spaces, and the characteristics of colors advantageous for ‘psychological safety’ and ‘recognizability’ in terms of safety were analyzed. First, the ‘aesthetic image’ factor analysis resulted in four factors: ‘vibrant and dynamic’, ‘solemn and luxurious’, ‘clean and cute’, and ‘cool and advanced’. Secondly, it was evaluated that colors in the high brightness and low chroma range are considered the safest psychologically. Thirdly, in terms of Recognizability, with high brightness and chroma were evaluated as having high recognizability.
In the color model color matching evaluation, the improvement rate of recognizability with the use of accent colors was analyzed. The accent colors for improving the recognizability of apartment entrances should have a lower psychological safety with higher chroma or lower brightness. Therefore, a difference in chroma and brightness of NCS 4 stages compared to the main color was identified as the most appropriate. For vehicle ramp entrances, pillar accent colors were found to be the most effective as a single type, confirming that pillar colors should be prioritized in accent color planning.
This study is significant in that it analyzed and derived a range of colors that can be used in underground parking spaces considering design and safety, based on the emotional evaluation of color models using 32 standard colors and nuances of the NCS color system. However, this study excluded the evaluation of colors other than the selected 32 NCS standard colors, and the accent color was applied based on the same harmony of chroma and brightness contrast color matching evaluation.
The color design guidelines for underground parking spaces should be reconsidered from a design perspective, based on safety, and in accordance with the increasing demand for design by users. Future research should utilize more standard colors and apply various color matching and patterns through empirical studies to further refine the color design guidelines for practical field application.
Keywords : Underground Parking Spaces, Safety, CPTED(Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design), Color Design Guidelines, Emotional Evaluation.