Urban building façades are more than just structures, they also communicate. Typography on façades helps people find their way, delivers information, or contributes to the identity of a place. Yet architecture and typography are usually studied separately. Reading Façades introduces a new approach: treating typography and architectural elements as part of one visual system that shapes how we see and experience cities.
This talk introduces an interdisciplinary research project that bridges typography, architecture, and cognitive science, exploring how viewers distribute attention between typographic and architectural features in real-world environments. Drawing on theories of visual hierarchy, spatial legibility, and cognitive load, the project argues for a need to reconsider how typography functions, not only as text to be read but also as an architectural component embedded in form, material, and scale.
The presentation outlines the conceptual basis for analyzing building façades as “readable structures,” discusses how eye-tracking methodology will be used to empirically test attention patterns, and explores preliminary hypotheses: When does typography enhance architectural clarity? When does it compete or distract?
Rather than presenting experimental findings, this talk shares the research design and theoretical grounding of the project.It also considers the future implications of this work for VR/AR systems, urban planning, and the evolving role of typography in digitally mediated cities.
Reading Façades
