The second image doesn't have anything else in the image to look at, whereas the first has multiple buildings and plenty of sky space. This article is bollocks. They've worked backwards from a conclusion to find (bad) evidence.
This is because your brain needs to do more legwork to figure out the underlying shape when you look at reflective suefaces that are mostly flat and show you parts of a sky that you may or may not see at that point.
Reflectivity can also work in your favour, to highlight shapes, especially when the paint additionally has a diffuse color (think of cars) and they are in eye level (less confusing sky reflections), but highly reflective glass buildings with nothing else to gisually hold on will most of the time just reflect a random patch of the sky.
What visual readability is, is the answer to the question how fast and effortless a image can be read. A certain degree of unreadability may be interesting even, but I am not sure if architects are that aware of the reflective part of their buildings.
E.g. I happen to have the luck to have a second sun in the end of the day despite my east-facing windows, because one of the glas buildings opposite. I am sure they didn’t simulate that. I am also sure this increases the temperature in the city.
Most architects I met just think glas looks rad and all their collegues use it and so they do too.
But the article presented here seems unscientific and misleading to me. They say "the brain avoids looking at" and then the "evidence" that they produce is an AI prediction generated by a closed-source (meaning unverifiable) software. It would be correct if they say "3M's prediction ignores glass skyscrapers", but that might just as well be a bug in their algorithm.
As a counter-example, the Keppler skyscrapers in harborfront Singapore are mostly made from glass to fight off the heat, yet they are pleasing to look at and have very interesting reflection patterns. And they are certainly remembered by locals as a great navigation landmark.
The thing I find most interesting is how strongly people want to defend boring glass facades.
They actually might, after arc-shaped reflective buildings started almost literally melting cars that happened to be parked in the focus of the reflected sunlight, and some constructs had to be built in the line of that sunlight to protect the cars.
https://www.nbcnews.com/sciencemain/london-skyscraper-can-me...
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-23930675
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2786723/London-skys...
https://www.businessinsider.com/the-vdara-death-ray-hotel-is...
If people’s eyes aren’t being drawn to it, then it seems like it’s succeeded at that aim.
>Mother Nature, the architect of our perception, with a good 3.8 billion years of design experience, won’t allow it. We simply will not connect to a place she informs us isn’t there or worth looking at!
And I'd tend to agree. If the purpose of the design is to act as if there is not a building, act as if it's a non-place - then what should I remember about it? Why should I want to be there, if there's "nothing"?
/e: words