Abstract

More cities have tended to demonstrate their cultural values in their public environments and facilities in recent years. Among all kinds of facilities in public environments, street furniture play a crucial role. Researchers and practicing designers have considered how different emotions relate to the production and reception of designs of street furniture. Besides its basic physical function, a lot of street furniture is also designed to catch the attention of people, and illustrate and present different cultural meanings. This paper explores feelings and emotional experiences induced by cultural elements. By using empirical findings of a survey, this paper then compares the effect of different cultures on the emotional experience towards the same street furniture. Taking Hong Kong and Beijing as case studies, several kinds of typical street furniture are analysed and the relevant emotion feedback (e.g. feeling) aroused by street furniture of people from different cultural backgrounds are examined. This paper advocates that different cultural factors can arouse users’ different emotions even when the users use the same street furniture.