An exploratory assessment of visual attention, wind exposure and spatial visibility in village and resort entrance designs in Yunnan, China

Abstract Entrance design involves visual prominence, wind exposure, and spatial visibility, which are complementary but non-interchangeable attributes. This exploratory study examines five rendered alternatives for Wolong Ancient Fishing Village and Vanke Fuxian Lake Resort Town in Yunnan, China. Image composition and archived heatmap intensity ratings are compared with reported computational fluid dynamics and visibility-graph outputs. Eleven archived rating records per scheme support descriptive summaries without participant-level inference. Walls or facilities receive median ratings of 3–5 on a five-point scale, whereas sky receives medians of 1–2 despite occupying 37.41–49.69% of the images. Reported pedestrian-level wind speeds range from 0.35 to 3.65 m/s across sampled location categories; a consistently applied, illustrative wind-shelter transformation replaces the irreproducible calibrated comfort scores. The resort configuration has higher reported Visual Integration [HH] at sampled nodes, but a smaller entrance isovist area than the village configurations. An overall ranking is not reported because image regions, wind locations, and spatial nodes are not registered as corresponding observations. The findings support parallel assessment of distinct design attributes, rather than cultural-memory effects or typological superiority. Further validation requires verified participant linkage, complete final solver records, spatially matched observations, and field evaluation.