Colour in Architecture

This article explores the effects of using black on spatial experience by means of phenomenological analysis of its architectural examples with a special focus on Serpentine Gallery Pavilion designed by Peter Zumthor. Contrary to the growing interest in the color in contemporary architecture, black rarely found a place in architectural history and in studies on color design. Whereas, the distinct achromatic qualities of the color that appear highly self-contradictory swinging back and forth from absence to presence cover a wide range of potentials to be used in architectural design. Through insights delved into the spatial experience constructed around these qualities, this paper attempts to analyze how black is used as a design element in built environments. This analysis revolves around Zumthor’s pavilion, which stood as a uniform black box on the expanse of green grass of London Kensington Gardens for more than three months in 2011. Encompassing various oppositions, the box built to surround a hortus conclusus, an enclosed garden inside, provided its visitors with a unique spatial experience depending predominantly on the combination of its form, tectonics and the qualities of its color, black. The phenomenological analysis of these qualities manifests that the architect utilized the contradictory characteristics of the color intentionally in order to create a complex and manifold spatial experience for visitors in and out the box. In an interplay of absence and presence, momentary crystallizations of the vision of black provide architects with uncharted opportunities for creative use of color in the design of built environments.

This paper aims to study colour in architecture, based on texts that would have been written by a Syrian mystic of the fifth century who used to conceal his identity under the alias of Dionysius the Areopagite, a council member of the Athenian Areopagus law court and follower of the apostle Paul, as mentioned in the book of Acts in the Bible (Acts 17:34). Dionysius acquired a nearly apostolic authority which gave enormous credibility to his writings in the Middle Age and the Renaissance. This work deals with Dionysius's concepts of colour, regarding the writings of Goethe and Plato, particularly the ones found in Timaeus, Menon, and Socrates; aiming at applying them in a study of the chromatic perceptive processes of architecture. It intends to present concepts that can contribute to a better understanding of some historic approaches of those processes and the relation among harmony, chromatic diversity and completeness. It also intends to analyse aspects, regarding colours, which could have influenced Gothic constructions, particularly the abbey of Saint-Dennis in France, as well as the work of Abbot Suger.

To understand the value of colour in Venice in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance it is necessary to look more widely than just the history of painting. I argue that by inlcuding mosaic, building materials, glass and textiles, it is possible to comprehend the value-systems and discriminations operative in the mercantile Republic. Living on a lagoon necessitated the import of materials from afar and created special esteem for the precious rather than the monumental.  The preface and opening chapter of my book suggest how the environment of the lagoon city honed particular cognitive skills and gave rise to a special esteem for polychrome materials. Colour builds a world. This was the social and mercantile context in which the Venetian painters became masters of colour.

Abstract: This article explores the effects of using black on spatial experience by means of phenomenological analysis of its architectural examples with a special focus on Serpentine Gallery Pavilion designed by Peter Zumthor. Contrary to the growing interest in the color in contemporary architecture, black rarely found a place in architectural history and in studies on color design. Whereas, the distinct achromatic qualities of the color that appear highly self-contradictory swinging back and forth from absence to presence cover a wide range of potentials to be used in architectural design. Through insights delved into the spatial experience constructed around these qualities, this paper attempts to analyze how black is used as a design element in built environments. This analysis revolves around Zumthor s pavilion, which stood as a uniform black box on the expanse of green grass of London Kensington Gardens for more than three months in 2011. Encompassing various oppositions, the box built to surround a hortus conclusus, an enclosed garden inside, provided its visitors with a unique spatial experience depending predominantly on the combination of its form, tectonics and the qualities of its color, black. The phenomenological analysis of these qualities manifests that the architect utilized the contradictory characteristics of the color intentionally in order to create a complex and manifold spatial experience for visitors in and outside the box. In an interplay of absence and presence, momentary crystallizations of the vision of black provide architects with uncharted opportunities for creative use of color in the design of built environments. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 42, 378–387, 2017

durum ve kavramların niteleyi-cisidir. Bu anlam zenginliğine rağmen "beyaz" aslında hep karşıtıyla var. Geştalt algı kuramı, algılanan her şeyin çevresiyle anlamlandırıldığını ve her yeni durumla bu anlamın değiştiğini öğretti. "Işık", "karanlık"ın; "açık", "koyu"nun "beyaz" ise, yanyana veya değil, "siyah"ın karşıtı olarak çakılı zihinlere. Bu nedenle, "beyaz"ın tüm renkleri kapsadığı gerçeği kadar, karşıtı "siyah"ın simgeledikleri de "beyaz"a içkin. Sayının açılış notlarında Ahmet Soysal, bir felsefeci tavrıyla, "beyaz"ı arayışımızda bize yol gösterecek işaret fişeklerini yakıyor. İşaretlediği her noktaya bu sayıda gidememiş olsak da, mekân üretim ve söyle-minden plastik sanatlar, sinema, ses, fotoğraf ve edebiyat gibi farklı alanlara uzanan yazılarla "beyaz"ın anlamlarını tartışmaya açıyoruz. Deniz Güner, Erdem Erten ve Şebnem Yücel'in kapsamlı yazıları ortak üç iz üzerinden, farklı zaman ve coğ-rafyalardan örneklerle, kalıplaşmış söylemler ve onların üretilmiş imgelerini ele alıyor. Birinci iz, "beyaz"ın mimarlık tarihindeki yerleşmiş anlamının kaynağına iniyor ve Avrupa merkezci söylem üretimi ile imgenin üretimi arasında, yayın dünyasında başrol oynadığı halde etkisini iyi saklamayı beceren siyah-beyaz fo-toğrafın (ve tabii ki söylem üretiminin ana mecrası durumundaki yayıncılığın da) "beyaz"ın modernizmin önemli kıstaslarından biri hâline gelişindeki etkisini vurguluyor. Bir diğeri, hem tüketim kültürünün hem de kimlik söyleminin etkin seslerinin, "Akdeniz beyazı"na, "yerel ve otantik" olan ile "modern" olan arasında biçtikleri rolü ortaya koyuyor. Üçüncü iz ise her kimlik inşasında kullanılan kriterler gibi beyazın da öteki-leştirmenin bir aracı olabileceğine dikkatimizi çekiyor. Ayça Tunç Cox ve Hilmi Tezgör, benzer bir eleştirel mesafeyle, karanlığa karşı aydınlığın ve dolayısıyla ışığın sözcüsü kabul edilen "beyaz"ın, türlü sömürü ve şiddetin dayandırıldığı kaynak sembol olarak da kullanılmasının izlerini sinemada ve Türkçe edebiyatta sürüyorlar. Selim Velioğlu ve Günnur Özsoy, "beyaz"ın "aşkınlık" anlamını sahipleniyor. Kısmen modernizmin, Maleviç'te olduğu gibi, sonsuzluk çağrıştırmak için kullandığı "soyutbeyaz"ının anlamlarıyla çakışıyorsa da, Özsoy ve Velioğlu'nun zaman zaman pratiklerine kattıkları "beyaz"ı, aynı zamanda, mütevazılığı, vaz-geçebilmeyi ve sakinliği vurgulamak için kullanıldığını anlıyoruz. Pınar Kılıç, "beyaz"ın "nötr" bir renk olduğu varsayımıyla iç mekânlardaki kullanımını ve özellikle modern müzelerdeki hâkimiyetini tartışıyor ve yeni yaygın deneyim evrenimiz siber mekânlardaki "fon"larla karşı-laştırarak "nötr"ün gizli baskısına dikkat çekiyor. Onurcan Çakır ise, ses dünyasının çoğu zaman renklerle analoji yaparak ses isimlerini türettiğini hatırlatıyor ve "beyaz gürültü" denen sesin de aslında, modern kent yaşamındaki gürültüyle kıyaslandığında talihsiz bir isimlendirme olabileceğini düşündürüyor. "Beyaz", günümüz Türkçesine Arapçadan geçmiş bir kelime. Eski Türkçede "ak", "beyaz" anlamında kulla-nılmış; akça, hem gümüş para hem de "beyaz"a yakın demek. Hepimizin bildiği gibi "ağartmak", "beyaz"a yaklaştırmak ve rengini açmak anlamına geliyor. Bir nesneyi ya da imgeyi ağarttıkça aslında ışığını artırıyor ve biçimleri ortaya çıkaran gölgeleri azaltıyoruz. Karın da, her şeyin üstünü örten gücü, çukurları doldur-masından ziyade gölgeleri yok etmesinden... Ağaran saçlar da giderek onlara renk veren pigmentlerin azalmasının bir sonucu. Biri eklenen, diğeri azalanın sonucu olsa da nesnenin ışıkla ilişkisindeki etkileri aynı. Bu nedenle, parlaklığını yitirmek anlamında kullandığımız "solmak" ile tüm katmanların giderek eri-diği, tek bir katmana evrildiği anlamında kullandığımız "ağarmak" arasında fark var. İşte bu sayının son sayfalarında, Metehan Özcan'ın kişisel fotografik denemesinde de böyle bir ayrım hattında giderek ağaran belleğin hüznüne tanıklık ediyoruz. Ela Çil

In the Book of Genesis there is a dramatic change in the world when God says: Fiat Lux (Let there be light)! Chaos was ended. In our everyday life when we hear a noise while asleep at night, we are afraid because there is no light, and if there is no light we don’t see anything, i.e., we do not know. When we turn on the light, everything around us gets organized: light ends the chaos of darkness. In fact, we rely more than 80% on our sight sense to bring us what is happening around us. Light is the genesis of visual perception, and colour is its vehicle. We understand the world around us by the organization of colour stimuli received by our eyes, transmitted to our brain and interpreted there. We can say that colour is the form of space because it is through colour that we perceive the limits and the forms of our environment. Therefore, colour should be studied, together with light, its origin, as the main actor in space perception, and therefore in architecture. With these assumpti...

In recent years, the curriculum of the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at the University of São Paulo (FAUUSP) has undergone a process of change in its pedagogical project. Past methods saw an excessive compartmentalization of knowledge that proved incompatible with the new demands of the profession. The current tendency, however, is to concentrate on activities that focus on wide-ranging rather than specific themes. It is now recognized that the integration of other disciplines opens space for new approaches-including colour, even in a still uncertain manner-in the process of training the architect and urbanist. A deepened understanding of the themes is achieved by offering optional subjects to interested students. It is also important to highlight the proliferation of activities for postgraduate research aimed at training professionals, lecturers, and researchers capable of meeting the demands of the hundreds of courses distributed throughout the country. This text presents a summary of the reflections and experiences made in the undergraduate and postgraduate courses of the Faculty in recent years, aiming to add elements to the debate on the subject.

In the search for elements that can contribute to the renewal of urban spaces, colour is becoming a key component, especially in the intervention at historic centers. We developed a chromatic record from the observation and analysis of requalification projects in the cities of Almada and Fortaleza, in order to see how colour is being used in the intervention of urban spaces. The analysis showed that colour is recognized in the speeches of policymakers as an important element in this process of patrimonialization or ennoblement of cities, although the lack of a Plan of Colour can compromise the idea of urban renewal.

Keywords: Renewal. Patrimonialization. Urban Spaces. Plan of Colour

Colours play is an important role in our daily life. Colour theory is a complex field of knowledge. On the occasion of 200 years Goethe's colour theory (2010) an interdisciplinary symposium “Colours in culture and science” was organized. The different topics are now discussed and presented in this book: 1. Colours in Philosophy and Epistemology, 2. Colours in Cultural History – Pigments and Dyes, 3. Colours in Art and Cultural History, 4. Light and Colour – Colour Theory: Newton’s Physics versus Goethe, 4. Colour Theories, Colour Systems and Colour Chemistry, 5. Colour Perception and Colour Vision and 6. Cultural Meaning of Colours.

With contributions by Jakob Steinbrenner, Timm Lampert, Michael Rappenglück, Ulrike Schuh, Heidi Tauber, Solveig Binder, Ruth Keller und Beatrix Alscher, Oliver Jehle, Constantin Canavas, Claudia Schmidt, Robin Rehm, Johannes Jeglinski, Cornelia Lüdecke, Cosima Schwarke, Gábor Á. Zemplén, Harald Goldbeck-Löwe, Matthias Rang, Nora Löbe, Karl Heinrich Wiederkehr, Andreas Schwarz, Peter Bussemer, Michael Kiupel, Susanne M. Hoffmann and Christoph Keller, Vasiliki Papari, Stefan Kirschner, Armin Hüttermann, Rolf G. Kuehni, Henning Schweer, Katrin Cura, Simone Gleßmer, Jürgen Gottschalk, Rolf Bader, Myriam Richter, Rebecca Kittel, Torsten Rüting, Cornelius Steckner, Ralph Brückner, Birgit Brunner, Petra G. Schmidl, Leif Gütschow, Susanne M. Hoffmann and Timo Engels, Harald Goldbeck-Löwe.

Farben spielen in unserem täglichen Leben eine große Rolle (Computer, Fernsehen, Film, Fotografie, Drucktechnik, Mode). Farbenlehre ist ein komplexes Wissensgebiet. Man denkt zunächst an alle Bereiche der Kunst, Archäologie usw., aber man kann auch fragen, wie Farben psychologisch auf den Betrachter wirken oder wie das Auge physiologisch den Farbeindruck verarbeitet. Natürlich ist die Grundlage der Farbenlehre in der Physik zu suchen, zu erklären als elektromagnetische Schwingung. Mit Hilfe der Chemie läßt sich ergänzend zu den natürlichen Farbstoffen auch eine große Vielfalt künstlicher Farbmittel herstellen.
Die modernen Naturwissenschaften machen das Licht beherrschbar und die Vielfalt seiner Farben messbar, reproduzierbar und verfügbar für technische Anwendungen. Das ermöglicht neue optische Schlüsseltechnologien wie u. a. die
Solartechnik, Glasfaser- und Lasertechnik, Nano-Technologie und neue bildgebende Verfahren in der Diagnostik wie den Röntgenlaser sowie in der Informationstechnik die Entwicklung des Quanten-Computers. Die Optoelektronik prägt auch im Alltag zunehmend unsere Umwelt und schafft eine Kultur des Lichtes und der Farbe, die als Signal- und Zeichen-Welt auf unsere Wahrnehmung wirkt und in der Interpretation ihrer Bedeutung auch in den Geistes- und Kulturwissenschaften mehr denn je zum Gegenstand interdisziplinärer Forschung wird. Neue Experimente in den Neurowissenschaften weisen dabei über die traditionelle Farbenlehre im Sinne Newtons hinaus und wecken Zweifel an der Gleichsetzung von gemessener Wellenlänge und gesehener
Farbe. Demzufolge wäre unser subjektives Farberleben artspezifisch, d. h. genetisch abhängig von unserem neuroanatomischen „Bauplan“ im Sinne Jakob von Uexkülls.
Wird Goethes Farbenlehre dadurch bestätigt? Goethe selbst war von der großen Bedeutung seiner Farbenlehre überzeugt.

„Auf alles, was ich als Poet geleistet habe, bilde ich mir gar nichts
ein. Es haben treffliche Dichter mit mir gelebt, es lebten noch trefflichere vor mir, und es werden ihrer nach mir sein. Dass ich aber in meinem Jahrhundert in der schwierigen Wissenschaft der Farbenlehre der einzige bin, der das rechte weiss, darauf tue ich mir etwas zugute . . . .“
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe an Johann Peter Eckermann
(19. Februar 1829).

Charakteristisch für die unterschiedlichen Auffassungen der Natur- und Geisteswissenschaftler ist der Streit über die Farbentheorien von Newton und Goethe; sind das zwei unvereinbare Weltanschauungen?1  So sind im Symposium Colours in culture and science – Farben in Kulturgeschichte
und Naturwissenschaft – anläßlich von 200 Jahre Goethes Farbenlehre – die verschiedenartigsten Aspekte zum Thema „Farben“ zur Sprache gekommen, unter Einbeziehung der Farbenforschung in den Kulturwissenschaften, u. a. der Archäologie und der Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte. Auch die Bedeutungen der Farben in der Zeichentheorie (Semiotik) sowie in den verschiedenen Bereichen der Naturwissenschaften (Astronomie, Physik, Neurophysiologie, Chemie und Biologie) und der Technik wurden behandelt, um dem Phänomen Farbe sowohl
unter geistes- als auch unter naturwissenschaftlichem Aspekt gerecht zu werden. Interessanterweise hatte die Goethesche Farbentheorie (mit dem Farbkreis und der Idee der Polarität, Gegenfarbentheorie) sogar eine große Wirkung insbesondere
auf die Kunst (z. B. Turner, van Gogh, Bauhaus), aber sie lieferte
auch diverse Anregungen für die Philosophie, die Physiologie (die Theorie der Farbwahrnehmung) und die Ordnung von Farbräumen (die Farbmetrik).