Factors influencing audio-visual comfort evaluation in the metro commercial space

Metro commercial spaces have a potential audio-visual problem because of lack of outside openings. China has built plenty metro commercial entities with its rapid urban development, in which the audio-visual comfort has been concerned as current situation is not good. In order to improve space quality and then enhance staying willing in the metro commercial space, this paper illustrates a study of influencing factors on aural and visual comfort in the metro commercial space. The study takes three metropolises (Shenzhen, Hong Kong and Guangzhou) into account and investigated 103 metro commercial cases. In the study, the spatial differences on aural and visual comfort were firstly examined, and then physical factors of the acoustic and visual environments were considered. It is found that correlations of various acoustic and visual environmental factors on aural and visual comfort were not significant as the correlation value is rather low. If taking spatial differences into account, closer relations could be found. It discovered that visual environmental factors could influence aural comfort, and the vice versa. The factors of saturation, brightness, illuminance and roughness from the visual environment, and sound level and sources from the acoustic environment, are significantly influence aural and visual comfort especially to a typical spatial type of the metro commercial space.