Free Standing Billboards in a Road Landscape: Their Visual Impact and Its Regulation Possibilities (Lithuanian Case)

Abstract

Free standing billboards have a significant negative visual impact on the landscape. In the majority of foreign countries construction of free standing billboards is regulated by various legal instruments, guidelines and control manuals. In Lithuania the construction of free standing billboards considering their visual impact is poorly regulated by juridical and spatial planning means. Taking this situation into account the paper aims to review main problems of regulating free standing billboards construction in Lithuania, to assess their impact on the landscape, to present foreign experience in solving these problems and to provide methodological guidelines for regulation of free standing billboards construction considering their visual impact. The proposed stages of the assessment of free standing billboards visual impact are the following: analysis of the landscape spatial structure designating visual spaces perceived from separate road sections, analysis of the possibilities of free standing billboards layout designating visual spaces protected from free standing billboards construction and visual spaces as free standing billboards construction areas, establishment of the possible visual contrast level of free standing billboards and establishment of free standing billboards location in a visual space and a visual contrast character according to the SID theory and results of the visual space evaluation according to the criteria of vitality, complexity, compositional harmony, expressivity, uniqueness, functionality and meaningfulness.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.erem.66.4.5320