If you asked someone on the street to name Australia’s favourite building, there's a good chance it would be the Sydney Opera House.

But this iconic structure hasn't always been considered one of the country's most beautiful buildings. In the 1960s, it was described as an ugly “monstrosity” that looked like a “disintegrating circus tent”.

This dramatic shift in attitude raises two questions about our experience of the built environment.

• How do we make decisions about what is beautiful?
• And why do we then change our minds?

Answers to these questions can be found in psychology and neuroscience.

The science of attraction

This is what we'd call a standard suburban home. Notice where your eyes drift first.

In the late 19th century, scientists realised there are patterns in the ways people respond, emotionally and intuitively, to what they see.

More recently, studies have identified several qualities of objects that attract the eye and hold its gaze, triggering pleasurable spikes in brain activity, making the heart beat faster and the skin tingle.

Here, we tracked the eye movements of people looking at that standard suburban home. The eye is drawn to the complex features like the balcony and arched windows, or the centre like the door and steps.

One of the simplest models for explaining this aesthetic attraction was developed in the 1960s by psychologist Daniel Berlyne.

In the 1960s, viewing the Sydney Opera house for the first time may have triggered the 'shock of the new'.

The building would have seemed both complex and alien.

But as the shock subsided, the Opera House's underlying geometric properties like symmetry and repetition at different scales would have cemented its present day, more central location on the curve.

Is there a remedy for ugliness?

If you asked someone on the street to name Australia’s ugliest building, they might single out the ‘McMansions’ multiplying at the edges of suburbia.

These project homes, almost never designed by architects, would be found to the left of centre in Berlyn’s curve. They are slightly dull and predictable, but not entirely in the ugly zone.

Here's the problem with suburbia: imagine if we took the world’s most beautiful house and then placed almost identical copies side by side on a street.

Next, push them so close together that there's only room for a dark concrete strip between them, no trees or shrubs.

Is the house still beautiful?

In isolation, it may be, especially for the euphoric homeowner who's simply happy to have a roof over their head. But the collective ugliness of the street, its monotonous and oppressive character, overwhelms any beauty that may exist.

The problem with suburban ugliness is that people who build and buy McMansions tend to prioritise the interior (marble benchtops, tick; butler's pantry, tick; ducted air conditioning, tick) and ignore the qualities of the street it is located on.

The reverse occurs in many parts of Europe, where tree-lined boulevards shelter cafes on the ground level with apartments above. These buildings often have very simple repetitive shapes, but are finished with subtle variations in colour, texture and materials.

Here, beauty is found in the collective qualities of the street, not in the appearance of a single home.

Many of Melbourne’s and Sydney’s most sought-after suburbs were once regarded as ugly.

Perhaps when the owners of houses in the new suburban sprawls gradually repaint their homes, remodel their facades, replace old cladding, reject black roofs, plant trees and celebrate diversity in their neighbourhoods, suburbia may swing just slightly closer to the peak of Berlyne's curve.

Acknowledgements

Michael J. Ostwald co-leads the UNSW, Sydney, Advanced Architectural Analytics Lab (‘A3Lab’) with Associate Professor Ju Hyun Lee. Michael collaborated with Ju Hyun Lee and the Lab’s postdoctoral fellow, Dr Michael Dawes, on several research projects that contributed to the content of this article.

Building models use simplified massing and may not be exact.

Authors

Editorial production

Disclosures

Michael J. Ostwald does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.