Locating Spatial Anomalies

Stretching Space

Just as Portmeirion warps time, it stretches space.  A journey through the picturesque village seems twice as long as an equal-length walk through a city.  Such is the surprising finding of the Manchester University School of Environment and Development, which tested pedestrians in Portmeirion in 2006.  Before we explore the results of that test, make your own estimate of the following route, from the arched entrance to the dock at the lighthouse.  How many miles is it? Researchers Andrew Crompton and Frank Brown compared estimates of first year architecture students walking 500 meters down a straight road in the city of Manchester with estimates of a route of the same distance in Portmeirion.  Estimates at Portmeirion were, on average, double those of the same distance in Manchester.

Portmeirion’s secret?  Cues in the environment influence our perception of space, and Portmeirion “fulfills all the known requirements for appearing large.”¹  Whereas pedestrians in Manchester walk purposefully, with their eyes forward or down, tourists at Portmeirion wander around looking every which way.  “The more turns, slopes, intersections, and features a walk has, the longer it appears. . . . [T]he more information there is to be observed about a journey, the longer it will seem.”²

One of the ways we orient ourselves to an urban space is judging the distances of objects in plain view.  Researchers have shown that the human visual system has evolved to make reasonable statistical guesses about distances within a visual scene.  When our expectations are upset, however, we become susceptible to “illusions of perception.”  One way Portmeirion upsets expectations is through scale.  Crompton and Brown explain that the village

is built to a smaller than normal scale, with many little places to pause and sit or to look at the view.  Most of its buildings are reputed to be approximately seven-eighths normal size. . . . Parts of old buildings have been imported and recycled in unusual ways, giving an appearance of picturesque sham antiquity.  On high ground, a romantic tower and domed building seem imposing from below but become rather small when approached.  There is no traffic in the narrow lanes.  Buildings are laid out informally in a garden setting surrounded by mature woodland dotted with follies, with paths and vista connecting places in unexpected ways.  Throughout the village, outcrops of finely fissured slate give a peculiar impression of being miniaturized.  Portmeirion has a mix of differently sized spaces, from the intimate to the huge open space of the bay across which distant hills are visible.  This complexity makes it a good place to play hide-and-seek. . . . The lack of familiar street furniture, signs, or other objects in common with more ordinary places deprives the visitor of references for scale and contributes to Portmeirion’s otherworldly atmosphere.³

Unicorn Cottage appears to be a grand two-story building but in fact has only one floor.

The actual distance to be estimated in the study was 0.31 miles.  The average estimate in Manchester was one-half mile.  The average estimate in Portmeirion was 0.93 miles—three times the actual distance.  All but one of the 69 Portmeirion participants overestimated the distance.⁴

Interestingly, travel time is not a factor in distance perception.  Walking through an area slowly doesn’t make it seem bigger.  However, distances do seem to increase if the number of turns and intersections goes up.  Similarly, “boundary height, ground texture, and the presence of isolated elements” are factors that enlarge one’s subjective perception of an environment.  The more interesting and complicated an area, the more “places to stop, sit and look,” and “all the things that give Portmeirion its charm and human scale will therefore make it seem larger than places where one keeps moving, where there are few places to linger, and scale is determined by cars.”⁵

next chapter » “How to Look at a Trompe l’oeil Window”