A calibrated visual reading of Sino–Western stylistic fusion in Chengdu’s eclectic heritage façades

Sino–Western eclectic architectural heritage often combines local and Western stylistic vocabularies, but calibrated visual readings of such fusion remain limited. We present a calibrated, reference-relative Style Fusion Index (SFI) for Sino–Western stylistic fusion in principal-façade visual evidence. Using 2406 Chengdu façade images and Chinese ( n = 1708) and Western ( n = 5794) reference sets, we evaluate each façade with eight metrics spanning texture, structure, colour, perceptual, and semantic dimensions, then aggregate and calibrate at sub-style and city levels. Chengdu’s city-level SFI is 0.670, with Chinese Art Deco contributing the largest share. The calibrated profile also points to Republican-period mansion and elite-residential façades as major carriers of façade-level evidence for Sino–Western stylistic fusion within Chengdu’s inland setting. Validation indicates construct alignment, robustness under prespecified perturbations, and convergence with blind expert ratings. The framework supports structured comparison when reference sets and taxonomies are reconstructed and revalidated.