Research on Color in Architecture

and Environmental Design: Brief

History, Current Developments,
and Possible Future
Jose Luis Caivano*
University of Buenos Aires and National Council for Research, SICyT-FADU-UBA, Ciudad Universitaria Pab. 3 piso
4, C1428BFA Buenos Aires, Argentina

Received 26 September 2005; accepted 12 January 2006

Abstract: This article examines some of the outstanding

contributions or points of interest in the research and application of color in architecture, from ancient times to the
present. The discourses about color are classied by periods and according to the utterers: theoreticians or writers
of architectural treatises, archeologists and historians of
architecture, architects who have been relevant in professional practice, color theorists coming from the elds of
architecture and design, and color researchers related to
the International Color Association. As a conclusion, the
main characteristics of these discourses about color are
summarized, and a point is made about the use of instruments derived from color science in color design, implying
that the evolution in the use of color in environmental
design and the research in this eld will increasingly rely on
the interaction between scientists and designers. 2006 Wiley
Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 31, 350 363, 2006; Published online in
Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/col.
20224

Key words: architecture; environmental color design; history; International Color Association
INTRODUCTION

The sources of the contributions to the research and application of color in architecture and design that are reviewed
in this article can be classied into four types, depending on

*Correspondence to: J. L. Caivano (e-mail: [email protected])

An earlier version of this paper was presented as an invited lecture in the
closing session of AIC 2005, 10th Congress of the International Color
Association, Granada, Spain, 8 13 May 2005, and published in the Proceedings.
2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

350

their producers, and are related to specic periods on which

particular focus will be made.
(1) Theoreticians or writers of architectural treatises.
The practice of writing treatises that cover all aspects of
architecture began in the 1st century with Vitruvius, ourished during the Renaissance, and continued until the 19th
century.
(2) Archeologists and historians of architecture. The
archeological and historical research on architecture shows
a peak during the 19th century and still continues.
(3) Architects who have been relevant in the professional
practice. I will concentrate on the main architects of the
modern movement, during the 20th century.
(4) Color theorists coming from the elds of architecture
and design. I will consider the architects who developed
color order systems and the color researchers who have
been related to the International Color Association, founded
in 1967, mainly through its Study Group on Environmental
Color Design, which started in 1982.
THE FIRST ARCHITECTS WHO CONVEYED
KNOWLEDGE ABOUT COLOR

In written sources, one of the rst references to color in

architecture is found in the treatise by Vitruvius, the Roman
architect who lived in the 1st century (Fig. 1). In Book 7,
Chapter 7, he deals with natural colors and focuses on the
description of pigments and colorants, as well as where they
can be found. Vitruvius does not establish a distinction
between color and coloring substance, confusing both concepts: As for colors, some are natural products found in
xed places and dug up there, while others are articial
compounds of different substances treated and mixed in
proper proportions so as to be equally serviceable. In
Chapters 10 to 14 of Book 7 he tackles articial colors
COLOR research and application

FIG. 1. Vitruvius (1st century) and one of the rst printed

editions of De Architectura Libri Decem of 1524.

(again, understood as coloring matters), describing the way

to produce them. The last two chapters are dedicated to the
purple dye obtained from a marine shellsh and to its
possible substitutes. Additionally, an interesting aspect is
included in Chapter 3 of Book 7, about vaulting and stucco
work, where he describes the appearances obtained with
polishing instruments: Just as a silver mirror that is formed
of a thin plate reects indistinctly and with a feeble light,
while one that is substantially made can take on a very high
polish, and reects a brilliant and distinct image when one
looks therein, so it is with stucco [. . .] it is not only brilliant
after being subjected to repeated polishing, but also reects
from its surface a clear image of the beholder.1
In his Ten Books of Architecture, published in 1452, Leon
Battista Alberti (1404 1472) follows Vitruvius conception
of color, merely as coloring substances or paints with
which the wall may be adorned (Book 6, Chapter 9): Of
painted surfaces some are done while the work is fresh, and
others when it is dry. All natural colors which proceed from
the earth, from mines or the like, are proper for paintings in
fresco; but all articial colors, and especially those which
are altered by means of re, require a very dry surface. In
Chapter 10 of Book 7, Alberti makes an observation that
relates color to aesthetic values or preferences. When dealing with the decoration of temples, he says: I am very
ready to believe, that purity and simplicity of color, as of
life, must be most pleasing to the Divine Being. However,
when referring strictly to the aesthetic values of architecture, he takes a rather narrow point of view, including only
geometrical aspectsgures and forms, number, position
or location, congruence of parts, proportion, geometrical
compositionwithout broaching color or other aspects of
appearance (Book 9, Chapters 57).2 The treatment of color
in Albertis book On Painting (1435) is quite different.
Here, the approach is far more abstract and philosophical,
relating color to light and making a classication of colors.
He even refers to the affective or emotional value of colors.3
What may be remarked as odd is the fact that he does not
follow this wider conception in his book on architecture,
completed 17 years later (Fig. 2).
Volume 31, Number 4, August 2006

FIG. 2. Leon Battista Alberti (1404 1472) and De Re

Aedicatoria.

I will not include Leonardo da Vincis conception of

color in this article, as his work deals specically with color
in painting. Giovanni Lomazzo (1538 1600), instead, published a treatise concerned not only with painting but also
with architecture and sculpture.4 The Treatise on the Art of
Painting, Sculpture and Architecture was written in Italian
and is divided into seven books, one of which is devoted to
color and contains a section on the symbolism of the principal colors (Fig. 3).
Andre Felibien (1619 1695) was a French architect and
art historian, secretary of the Royal Academy of Architecture, who became involved in the famous and long discussion between drawing and color held at the Royal Academy
of Painting and Sculpture in France. Although he was
mainly a defender of the drawing side of the debate, he
made some relevant contributions to the color theory of his
time. For instance, in his book on the Principles of Architecture, Sculpture, Painting and Other Arts, published in
1676, appears one of the rst descriptions of color mixtures
starting from three colorsred, yellow, and bluetermed
basic colors. However, this matter is dealt with specically

FIG. 3. Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo (1538 1600) and an early

edition of his Trattato, printed in Milan in 1585.

351

FIG. 4. Front page of the second edition of Andre Felibiens

Principes de lArchitecture. . ., printed in Paris in 1690.

in the third book, of painting. In Book 1, of architecture,

Felibien writes extensively on color in the section on stained
glass and in the section on the technique of gilding (Fig. 4).5
RESEARCH ON THE HISTORY OF COLOR IN
ARCHITECTURE

Let us now take a huge leap in history and land on the

middle of the 19th century, when Jacques-Ignace Hittorff

(17921867) succeeded in conveying the attention toward a

relevant discovery, made previously to him but neglected
for many years: the Greek architecture was not whiteas it
was believed for centuries based on the color of the ruins
but polychromatic. The Greeks used to paint their temples
as well as their family dwellings with vivid colors. Hittorff
published these ndings in his book of 1851 on the polychromy of Greek architecture, where he made a case of the
temple of Empedocles in Selinus, Sicily (Fig. 5).6 The more
general acceptance of this evidence came to change a longheld view about the Greek sense of beauty and harmony.
However, it took some time to change the traditional notion,
and the neoclassicist architects of the 19th century continued to make neoclassic buildings (based on the orders of
Greek architecture) in gray, white, or with a monochromatic
appearance. As a practicing architect, Hittorff was an exception, since he made polychromatic buildings, as it can be
seen in his Winter Circus, in Paris, and in some of his other
buildings.
Owen Jones (1809 1874) and Gottfried Semper (1803
1879) were two 19th century architects who also deserve a
special mention due to their contributions to the study of
polychromatic architecture. Jones was the colorist of the
Crystal Palace, built by Joseph Paxton in 1851,7 and wrote
An Attempt to Dene the Principles Which Should Regulate
the Employment of Color in the Decorative Arts (1852),
Color in Architecture and Decoration: An Apology for the
Colouring of the Greek Court in the Crystal Palace, with a
Fragment of the Origin of Polychromy by Gottfried Semper
(1854), and The Grammar of Ornament (1856). This last
book constitutes an extraordinary source of historical color
designs, systematically arranged and covering different geographies and periods, from the ancient times to the early
17th century (Fig. 6). In the introduction, Jones describes
the principles for the arrangement of form and color.8
John Ruskin (1819 1900), the theoretician who exerted a
strong inuence on the architects and designers of the

FIG. 5. Jacques-Ignace Hittorff (17921867), the front page of the rst edition of Restitution de Temple dEmpedocle a
Selinonte (Paris, 1851) and the chromatic reconstruction of the Greek temple.

352

COLOR research and application

FIG. 6.

Owen Jones (1809 1874), one of the plates from The Grammar of Ornament and a view of the Crystal Palace.

arts-and-crafts period, as well as on the pioneers of modern

architecture, included interesting considerations about color
in his famous book The Seven Lamps of Architecture of
1849 (Fig. 7). In the chapter The Lamp of Truth, he
advocates the use of materials in their natural colors, without resorting to the use of paints (a tenet that would be
followed in the 20th century by the organicist and brutalist
trends of modern architecture). In the chapter The Lamp of
Beauty, he conceives sculpture without color, that is,
monochrome, but he cannot envision architecture in the
same way. He speaks of architecture as an organic being and
encourages the use of color through the observation of
nature.9
Some of the most important historians of architecture
have dedicated sections to the use of color in different
periods. In 1875, Euge`ne-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814
1879) published a history of the human dwelling, in which
he consistently includes sections to describe the use of color
in houses, palaces, villas, and all kinds of family dwelling
architecture in ancient China, Egypt, Assyria, Greece, during the Roman Empire, in the Middle Ages in Europe, and
also in the ancient Muslim world. In the Appendix of the
book, he includes four colored plates depicting the interior
of an Egyptian house, a house in Athens in the 5th century

FIG. 7. John Ruskin (1819 1900) and the cover of a modern edition of The Seven Lamps of Architecture.

Volume 31, Number 4, August 2006

B.C., a Roman palace, and a room in a feudal castle (Fig.

8).10
In his famous History of Architecture of 1899, Auguste
Choisy (18411908) dedicates a section with a specic
heading about color in every chapter, reviewing the use of
color in the architecture of Ancient Egypt, Chaldea and
Assyria, India, China and Japan, as well as the pre-Hellenistic and the Greek architecture.11 Despite the fact that
none of these historians provide precise details about their
sources, and we cannot be sure about the accuracy of their
assertions, their words and drawings are probably the only
sources now available to us to attain some knowledge about
the colored environments of the ancient past.
More recently, the South-African architect Rex Distin
Martienssen (19051942), in his Ph.D. thesis of 1941 on
The Idea of Space in Greek Architecture, conducted a detailed research about the polychromy of the Greek temples
(Fig. 9).12 His sources were his own direct examination of
the ruins, and the writings of L. Magne (1895), A. Choisy
(1899), M. L. DOoge (1908), G. Dickins (1912), P. Gardner (1921), F. Poulsen (1920), and D. S. Robertson (1929,
1932). Curiously, he does not mention the pioneering studies by Hittorff.
As an addition to this section on historical and archeological research on color, we can refer to the paper by Karin
Fridell Anter (1950 ) about Pompeiian colors, presented as
invited lecture in one of the Symposia on Environmental
Color Design in AIC 2005, the 10th Congress of the International Color Association.13 The main contribution of this
paper is that it focuses on the colors of the cityscape, a
subject far less studied than the colors of Pompeiis interiors. From the methodological point of view, the remarkable
aspect is that Fridell Anter employs a broad set of documentation sourcesreports from the rst excavations, texts
that describe the pigments used by the time when Pompeii
ourished, artistic reproductions of the city, an archeological model exhibited in Naples, as well as her own inspection
on sitewith which she is reconstructing, as pieces in a
puzzle, a coherent understanding of color in that ancient
Roman city.
353

FIG.
8. Euge`ne-Emmanuel
Viollet-le-Duc (1814 1879) and
his chromatic reconstructions
of the interiors of an Egyptian
house, a Roman palace, a
Greek house, and a feudal
castle.

ARCHITECTS OF THE 20TH CENTURY

Let us now move on to the practicing architects who worked

in the early 20th century and are considered the masters of
modern architecture, and let us examine their conception of
color. The most outstanding gure we can nd in this
context is Le Corbusier (18871965). His rst writings on
color appear in the articles about purism and cubism written
in collaboration with the painter Amedee Ozenfant. An
article of 1918 reads:
The idea of form precedes that of color. The form is
preeminent, color is but one of its accessories. Color
depends entirely of the material shape: the concept of
sphere, for instance, precedes the concept of color; it is
conceived as a colorless sphere, a colorless plane, color
is not conceived independently of some support. Color
is coordinated with form, but the reciprocal is not true.

FIG. 9. Rex Distin Martienssen (19051942) and the cover

of his book on Greek architecture.

354

We believe, thus, that a theme should be selected for its

forms and not for its colors.14
Some other articles published in 1921, 1923, and 1924 in
the journal LEsprit Nouveau, proceed more or less in the
same vein, that is, denying any importance that color might
have in the construction of space in painting.15 The curious
fact is that a few years later, in his writings on architectural
polychromy of 1931, Le Corbusier seems to have changed
his mind completely, to the extent of quoting and agreeing
with Fernand Leger, who said: Man needs colors to live, it
is an element as necessary as water and re. In addition, Le
Corbusier describes examples of his own use of color in
order to drastically change the spatial perception of architecture, as in the neighborhood designed and built in Pessac
(Fig. 10).16,17
In his monograph written for the exhibition of the Pavillon des Temps Nouveaux in 1937, Le Corbusier includes a
chapter entitled Polychromy Joy, in which he associates the creative ages of architecture with the vitality of
chromatic color and relates the stagnant academicism to sad
gray (Fig. 11).18 At this point, it should be noted that there
is a discrepancy regarding this matter with other advocates
of modern architecture who associate color with the decoration and ornament of traditional architecture, as opposed
to the white purity that modern architecture should exhibit.
It seems that in both his theories and his works, Le Corbusier evolved toward a more conscious and thorough consideration of the power color has to modify the spatial
environment. This is especially evident in the buildings
projected and built after World War II, in what is called his
brutalist period.
The importance that Walter Gropius (18831969)another of the masters of modern architecture gave to color
studies is clearly shown in the programs for the Bauhaus
school (Fig. 12) and in some of the professors that were
COLOR research and application

FIG. 10. Le Corbusier (18871965), a fragment of his text on architectural polychromy, with handwritten corrections (from
Fondation Le Corbusier), and a view of the houses in Pessac, built in 1925.

selected to teach there: Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Josef

Albers, and Johannes Itten, among others.19 In his book
Scope of Total Architecture (1956), when dealing with the
education that architects and designers should receive,
Gropius includes sections about The Language of Vision,
Some Biological Facts about Our Way of Seeing, Optical Illusions, and Psychological Inuence of Shapes and
Colors.20

FIG. 11. Le Corbusier: page on polychromy and colored

reproduction of the Pavilion of the New Times.

Volume 31, Number 4, August 2006

The Dutch neoplasticist movement, organized by 1917

around the publication De Stijl and stemming from the
abstract paintings of Piet Mondrian, helped to create a better
consciousness about color theory and practice,21 introducing
color as determinant of space, in opposition to its traditional
decorative function. However, this movement produced no
important achievements in the eld of architecture and
design, except for a few works by Theo van Doesburg
(18831931)the cabaret Aubette; Jacobus Johannes Pieter
Oud (1890 1963)the restaurant De Unie; and Gerrit Rietveld (1888 1964)the Schroder house, his famous chair,
and a few more designs. Of these examples, only Rietveld
managed to make a true spatial organization of color and
planes, while the others continued to produce two-dimensional transpositions of the neoplasticist elements of painting to architecture (Fig. 13). The inuences were exerted

FIG. 12. Walter Gropius (18831969) and the Bauhaus: the

building in Dessau, a poster, and the divisions of the curricula, where color studies occupy 1/7 part of the total.

355

FIG. 13. Van Doesburg and

the colors in the cabaret Aubette; Oud and the facade of
the restaurant De Unie; Rietveld, the interior of the Schroder house, and the chair.

more through the theoretical manifestos and the imagery of

projects, drawings, and maquettes than through actual buildings.
By far the boldest and most outstanding colorist among
the architects of the modern movement was Bruno Taut
(1880 1938). Even when he is not deemed as eminent as Le
Corbusier, Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, or Wright, because
his inuence on the next generations was not as strong as
theirs, Taut was the one who advocated for the use of color
the most. The audacity of Tauts color schemes led Le
Corbusier to say in 1927: My God, Taut is color-blind!
Commenting about the impact caused by his Falkenberg
housing estate of 1915 in Berlin-Grunau, Taut himself declared that his color scheme provoked the Berliners who,
coming from the gray tenement quarters, repeatedly declared that the architect deserved to be locked up (Fig. 14).
Among his many writings, the vast majority of which are
only in German and not easily available and which are
worthy of a wider dissemination, in 1919 Taut published a
Call for Colorful Architecture, which was cosigned by
Walter Gropius, Peter Behrens, Hans Scharoun, Max Taut,
Hans Poelzig, Fritz Schumacher, Otto Wagner, and others.22
We can note a series of curious and apparent contradictions in the positions in favor or against architectural polychromy among the architects of the modern movement
during the rst half of the 20th century. The modern movement reacted against the academicist architecture of the 19th
century, which was attacked, among other aspects, for its
lack of color by some architects, as well as for using
color by others. On one side, Taut and his followers
criticize the architecture of the past for its monochromatic
and sad aspect:
The 19th century . . . paying attention to its general
characteristic features, is dominated by a thought
which is not productive or joyful of life, and is marked
356

by the face of grayness and paleness, instead of being

enhanced with a vivid redness.23
On the other side, the promoters of purism, rationalism, and
what would later be known as the international style in
modern architecture, consider that color, regarded as a decorative element, is linked to the architecture of the past and
to regionalisms. The new architecture should refrain from
decoration or ornament. Thus, they tried to differentiate
from the past by producing a white and purist architecture
with no geographical markers. Cesar Pelli, the Argentine
architect who, living and working in the United States, has
acquired international recognition, describes the situation in
the 1940s:
When I was a student of architecture in Tucuman,
Argentina, I learned that proper, serious Modern architecture should have no colour except for the colours of
natural materials, whites or greysanything else was
frivolous or decadent. In the years after the Second
World War, students of architecture in progressive
schools all over the world must have learned the same
lessons.24
However, we can see that another way of addressing this
controversy is possible: Much of the discussion among
modern architects with regard to the conception and use of
color can be considered in connection with the different
modes of dealing with color, instead of being established
between the detractors and the defenders of color. A milder
view would show that even those who were very austere or
purist in this sense (like Gropius or Mies, for instance) did
not ignore the importance of color. The color white in the
most purist modern architecture was intended to make the
building contrast with the environment, or to make the
details or furniture in the interiors stand out, or to let the
COLOR research and application

FIG.
14. Bruno
Taut
(1880 1938) and some of his
colorful houses.

chromatic weight of the landscape penetrate with more

strength into the interiors through the large surfaces of glass
or the horizontal windows. The followers of the organicist
architecture (whose paradigm is Frank Lloyd Wright), supporters of not covering surfaces with paints but leaving the
materials to express their inherent color, were not less aware
of the value of color.
For those who wish to go deeper into the complex aspects
and variations of color in architecture in the rst half of the
20th century, and especially in the 1920s, there is an excellent monograph by Maurice Besset.25
The postmodern reaction of the 1970s and 1980s brought
about a host of architects concerned with the references to
history and to the environment, and color in architecture
also acquired a new meaning under these orientations. As
examples, we can mention the works by Charles Moore,
Robert Venturi, Michael Graves, and Stanley Tigerman (in
the United States), Paolo Portoghesi and Aldo Rossi (in
Italy), Aldo van Eyck (in the Netherlands), and Mario Botta
(in Switzerland).
As for the 1990s, in the book on Color in Architecture by
Harold Linton (1947) we can nd a good account of the
works by architects and colorists of the more recent generations, who mainly act as color consultants: Jean-Philippe
Lenclos (France), Tomas Taveira (Portugal), Shashi Caan
and Donald Kaufman (the United States), Begona Munoz
(Spain), Eva Fay (Australia), Lourdes Legorreta (Mexico),
Volume 31, Number 4, August 2006

Malvina Arrarte (Peru), Shingo Yoshida (Japan), Giovanni

Brino (Italy), Michael Lancaster (UK), and Leo Oberascher
(Austria), among them.26 These works encompass not only
color projects for new buildings but also color restoration of
historical urban centers, landscape color plans, and models
developed for color research and education in architecture.
The specicity of the knowledge about color in environmental design has given rise over the past decades to a new
profession: the color consultant, who can work in collaboration with other architects or designers or be hired for
special projects by companies and private or governmental
agencies. In her articles about this topic, Sonia Prieto mentions various renowned color consultants who have worked
over the past years in France: Jacques Fillacier (1913
1986), Georges Patrix (1920 1992), Fabio Rieti (1927),
Bernard Lassus (1929 ), Jean-Philippe Lenclos (1938 ),
France Cler (1940 ), and Michel Cler (1938 ). Some of
them are also authors of publications with theoretical insights.27,28
In order to nish this section on color in architecture in
the 20th century, apart from the previous chronological
sequence, and making a geographical move to Latin America, I want to mention three cases of recognized masters of
architecture that are paradigmatic for the conception and
application of color: Carlos Raul Villanueva (Venezuela),
Luis Barragan (Mexico), and Clorindo Testa (Argentina).
The most famous work by Villanueva (1900 1975) is un357

FIG. 15. Carlos Villanueva, Luis Barragan, and Clorindo

Testa, beside examples of their architecture in Caracas,
Mexico City, and Buenos Aires, respectively.

cases of architects who have been involved in the development of color order systems.
The English architect William Benson published in
1868 a book entitled Principles of the Science of Colour,
where he makes a historical review of color studies and
presents a color order system organized in a cubic shape,
which seems to be the rst of this kind in the chronology of
color order systems.30
The Argentine architect Julio Villalobos (1905?) was
coauthor, together with his father, Candido Villalobos
Domnguez (18811954), of the Colour Atlas, published in
Buenos Aires in 1947. This atlas, organized in a system with
an hexagonal prismatic shape, includes 7279 printed color
samples and was at the time of its appearance the larger
systematic color collection ever published (Fig. 16).31
The Swedish scholar Sven Hesselgren (19071993) was a
color theorist and a practicing architect. Early in his career,
he tried to put into practice the color harmonies developed
by Ostwald by applying them in a project for a hospital.
According to his own words, the results were terrifying.32
Later on, he developed a color order system that was one of
the antecedents that gave origin to the Natural Color System
(Fig. 17).33,34 These two facts alone show to what extent he
was interested both in doing color research and in testing
research ndings in the architectural practice. Furthermore,
in his book The Language of Architecture, Hesselgren devotes several chapters to color and presents an early attempt
at developing a graphic representation of a color order
system which comprises the modes of appearance described
by David Katz. This model could be regarded as a normal
three-dimensional color space moving along a two-dimensional plane, thus comprising ve dimensions.35

doubtedly the University Campus in Caracas, an architectonic complex that in the year 2000 was declared cultural
heritage of mankind by UNESCO, in which polychromy
plays a key role.29 Luis Barragan (19021988), a Mexican
colorist who has created spaces of great expressiveness, was
the second architect, after Philip Johnson, being awarded
the Pritzker Prize (the equivalent to a Nobel Prize in architecture) in 1980. Clorindo Testa (1923), who was born in
Italy but studied and built his whole career as an artist and
architect in Argentina, began at the early stages of his
professional work to develop a kind of architecture inuenced by Le Corbusiers brutalist period, but soon evolved
toward a very personal and original treatment of the spatial
congurations and color. In 2005, at the age of 82, he is still
considered a living master who keeps renovating himself
constantly and constitutes a source of inspiration for the
young generations (Fig. 15). The verbal discourses about
color of these architects, however, are usually less salient
than their concrete chromatic and spatial congurations.
ARCHITECTS WHO HAVE DEVELOPED COLOR
ORDER SYSTEMS

Among the contributions to color theory coming from the

eld of architecture, I would like to mention a few particular
358

FIG. 16. Julio Villalobos (1905?), the front page of Atlas de

los Colores, published in 1947, the chromatic hexagon, and
a page of constant hue from the atlas.

COLOR research and application

FIG. 17. Sven Hesselgren

(19071993), the chromatic circle, and a plane of constant hue
from his Colour Atlas of 1953.

Hesselgren was one of the theorists whose ideas exerted

a strong inuence on the Argentine architect and professor
Cesar Jannello (1918 1985), who invented the term cesia
to encompass visual perceptions such as gloss, transparency, translucency, etc., which can be regarded either as
different modes of appearance of color or as composing a
separate set of visual variables, complementing color.36 The
variables of cesia and the three-dimensional model for their
representation were later developed and systematized by the
author of the present article.37
In the next section we will see some other contributions
to the development of color order systems related to environmental design.
RESEARCH ON ENVIRONMENTAL COLOR DESIGN
IN RELATION TO THE AIC

Having provided an overview on the rst theorists of architecture who dealt with color, on some of the historians of
architecture who included color in their studies, on some of
the research and application of color in the architecture of
the 20th century, and on some of the architects who contributed to the development of color order systems, I want to
present a short account of what has been researched on color
in architecture and design over the most recent years, after
the foundation of the International Color Association (AIC,
Association Internationale de la Couleur) and the participation of many specialists working in these areas in the AIC
meetings. As it is impossible in this article even to mention
all the authors that have contributed to the development of
color theories or applications related to architecture and
design, I will present a rather arbitrary selection mostly
based on my personal knowledge of the people involved. I
will just refer to a few pioneers and to some of the people
who have been connected with the Environmental Color
Design (ECD) Study Group of the AIC.
Sven Hesselgren, already mentioned in the previous section, was also involved in activities in relation to the AIC.
He participated in the AIC Forsius Symposium on Color
Order System in 1983, delivering one of the invited lectures.38
The contributions by Antal Nemcsics, Anders Hrd, Lars
Sivik, Werner Spillmann, and other past and present members of the ECD Study Group to its own constitution and
Volume 31, Number 4, August 2006

development have been highlighted in a paper presented at

AIC 2002, in Maribor, Slovenia.39 As for the scientic
aspect, Nemcsics and Hrds main achievements have been
without doubt the development of two color order systems
that are very useful in architecture and design. Antal Nemcsics (1927) is the author of the Coloroid system, which has
the unique feature that its scales are homogeneous from the
aesthetic point of view and the interesting characteristic that
it includes in the same model both the boundaries for all
perceptible colors and the boundaries for the set of surface
colors.40,41 Anders Hrd (1922), who in 1997 received the
AIC Judd Award, was the main responsible for the development of the Natural Color System on the grounds of
Ewald Herings theory of color opponency.42,43 Today, the
NCS is perhaps the most used color order system in architecture and design. Werner Spillmann (1933) has worked
both as a color consultant in architecture projects and as a
theorist. He delivered the opening lecture of AIC 1989,
precisely on the topic of color in architecture and design.44
Among other aspects of his research interests, his knowledge about ancient and modern color order systems is
paramount.45,46
Giovanni Brino was a pioneer in developing color plans
and methodologies of color restoration in historical centers,
as well as in setting up a school of urban restoration in
Turin. I would just like to quote from his invited lecture at
the AIC 1993 congress in Budapest: The colour plan of
Turin, carried out by the writer between 1978 and 1983,
represented the rst attempt in Italy at a rational response to
the problem of restoring facades on a city-wide scale, on the
basis of objective historic documentation.47
Shigenobu Kobayashi (1925), working at the Nippon
Color & Design Research Institute, has developed a color
image scale, a fundamental instrument that links image
words to color combinations. This is clearly a device connecting a systematic psychological research on color meanings with applications in design.48,49
Lars Sivik (1933) received the AIC Judd Award together with Anders Hrd and Gunnar Tonnquist in 1997.
Coming from the eld of psychology, Siviks whole career
in color research has always been linked to environmental
color design. His elds of interest range from color order
systems (he was deeply involved in the development of the
359

NCS) to color meaning associations and color combinations.50-53

Of the color consultants who have been working in
France in the past years, mentioned before, Michel Cler
(1938 ) is the one who most actively has participated in
AIC meetings since 1991.54 56 Regarding professional
work, the Atelier France and Michel Cler carried out chromatic urban projects not only in France but also in Hong
Kong, Vietnam, and the Antilles.
Theano Fanny Tosca (1955) has worked mainly on
semiotic aspects of color in architecture and urban spaces
and has developed color rehabilitation projects in
Greece.5759
Leo Oberascher (1955) wrote his Ph.D. thesis on color
and cognitive psychology and has been working as color
consultant in architecture and design for decades. His realscale models that explore the realms of color, texture, cesia,
and other aspects of appearance can be considered both an
educational tool and a source for testing spatial congurations applicable to architecture.60,61 In the AIC, he has been
a prominent gure in nearly every congress since 1987, and
he has chaired the ECD Study Group.
Paul Green-Armytage (1939 ) possesses great expertise
in teaching color to students of design and has presented his
ideas in most of the AIC congresses since 1981, as well as
in other meetings and publications. The most salient aspects
of his work, from my point of view, are the call for the
development of a color language that can be shared in all
elds of color research and education and his efforts to
promote bridges between the ndings in color science and
their application in design.62 65 Precisely, his paper on
Colour Science for Colour Design presented as an invited
lecture in one of the ECD Symposia in AIC 2005, Granada,
is very enlightening in this regard.66
Lucia Ronchi (1927), former president of the AIC during the 1994 1997 term, has always shown a great interest
in the studies on color and the environment and contributed
with related papers in various AIC meetings, with a glossary
of terms, and conveying the research on color vision that
could be useful in the eld of design.67 69
The most recent laureate with the AIC Judd Award, John
Hutchings (1932), is a physicist with interdisciplinary interests, who has worked mainly on color in food, appearance, color in folklore, and environmental color design. A
remarkable contribution to the links between color science
and design was made in a couple of articles entitled The
Continuity of Color, Design, Art, and Science, published in
Color Research and Application.70 He has also traced links
between color appearance in food and design.71,72 It is an
honor for the ECD Study Group to have him among its
members. A former and somehow shorter version of his
Judd Award lecture presented in AIC 2005 was about design ethics in the use of color in food marketing and was
originally intended for one of the ECD symposia in the
same congress.
The use of spectrophotometric techniques for color measurement and of standardized samples from color order
systems for classication and specication purposes appears
360

today as a necessity in studies of colors, color plans, and

projects of rehabilitation or restoration of historical buildings and urban districts, offering the possibility of constituting accurate color-data banks. Some of these methodologies can be seen applied, for instance, in the works by
Angela Garca Codoner (1944 ) in Valencia, Spain,73
Mara Mercedes Avila (1944 ) in Cordoba, Argentina,74,75
and Grete Smedal (1937) in Norway,76 just to make reference to members of the ECD Study Group or participants
in AIC 2005.
A number of researchers of environmental color design
have been employing experimental methodologies (derived
mainly from the research in psychology, psychometrics, and
psychophysics) in their studies. I would just like to mention
an outstanding case in the ECD group: Monica Billger
(1961).77,78
Today, the ECD Study Group is a truly interdisciplinary
network, with members coming from various different
elds, such as architecture and urban studies, textile design,
graphic design, ne arts, history, physics, optics, vision,
psychology, ecology, and engineering.
CONCLUSIONS AND PROSPECT OF THE
IDEAL FUTURE

To conclude, let us summarize the main characteristics of

the conceptions of color reviewed so far. The focus of the
discourses about color in the architectural treatises from the
ancient times until the Renaissance seems to have been put
on the material aspects: pigments and their mixtures. As for
the discourses of the historians and archeologists of the 19th
century, they are mainly descriptive of the use of color in
the past, with a pretension of objectivity. Among the modern architects of the 20th century we can nd two kinds of
discourse: (a) the architects who write in a didactical way,
giving importance to color studies and appealing to color
science (like Gropius), usually do not make a special use of
color in their projects or buildings; (b) the architects who
have produced polychrome architecture usually write about
color in a rhetorical way (like Taut), trying to convince
rather than educate or convey information or knowledge
about color. Finally, among the color researchers who come
from the eld of architecture and design and have been
related to the International Color Association, I want to
highlight those who try to build common grounds between
color science and color design.
I have no doubts that the evolution in the use of color in
environmental design in the future, and thus the research in
this eld, will have to rely more and more on a fruitful
interaction between scientists and designers. The surveys
conducted by Jan Janssens and Byron Mikellides on color in
architectural education show that there is a severe lack of
knowledge about color research among students of architecture.79,80 This situation must be reverted. In this sense,
the most important task for the researchers of environmental
color design will be to act as a nexus between both groups,
developing applications of color science in color design,
proposing theoretical hypotheses that could be scientically
COLOR research and application

tested, and contributing to the mutual communication by

agreeing on terminological matters based on common
grounds. In my view, the most interesting scenario we can
desire and expect in the years to come is a true integration
of all elds of color research and the sharing of a common
language. This has been one of the main goals of the
International Color Association since its creation in 1967. In
view of this, I would like to nish by quoting Paul GreenArmytage in his lecture for the closing session of AIC 2001:
In the future that I hope for there will be more interaction between the arts and sciences in the eld of
color. Artists and scientists each have their own way of
contributing to knowledge. I hope we can encourage
more artists to join the designers and architects in the
AIC. [. . .] I was struck by an instance during the
congress where an artist and a scientist had come to
similar conclusions, but through their own distinct
ways. [. . .] If there is to be more cooperation between
the disciplines, between people in the sciences and the
humanities, and if that is to be productive, a rst move
might be to tackle the thorny problem of terminology.
It will be a good way to start if we can learn to speak
each others color languages.81
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I express my gratitude to Lisa Taylor, Peter le Roux, and

Clive Chipkin of Johannesburg, South Africa, for images
and information about Rex Martienssen; and to Verena
Schindler for information about the Atelier France &
Michel Cler, and color consultants in France. Some aspects
of this research were developed under the project A009,
2004 2007, supported by the University of Buenos Aires,
with R. Amuchastegui, A. Pappier, M. Lopez, M. Musso, J.
Garavaglia, P. Becerra, and G. Cutuli as collaborators.
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