Monochromatic design in a polychrome world. Why our cities have become increasingly gray: A dichotomy between production and reception in architectural color design

Abstract

Color is a central component of human experience, yet when we narrow our focus to the practice of city planning and architecture, color only plays a marginal role in the initial phases of the design process. This paper reviews various approaches to using color on buildings: for example, the evolution of regional styles due to the availability of pigments and materials, the use of color as a form of decorative drapery, and the emphasis of a building's pure form without any additional color. Central to the paper is the analysis of the dichotomy between the reality of the process of actually experiencing a city and its buildings on the one hand and the design process on the other—a dichotomy between reception and production, thus, a contradiction between an “atmospheric world” of human perception and cognition and a professional world of imaginative design, in which the spatial atmosphere created by color, material, and light often emerges only as a by-product at the end of a conceptual and diagrammatic planning process. The paper proposes a different way of going about the architectural design process that encompasses holistic thinking in color, material, and light right from the start.