Detailed Notes on Color in Architecture

Color in Traditional/Vernacular Architecture

  • Colors in vernacular architecture come from building materials and reflect the landscape.

Architectural Skins

  • Skins are decorative, protective, and expressive.

Early Use of Color in Architecture

  • Sumerians (3rd millennium BCE) used baked-brick cones in mosaic patterns for decoration and wall protection.

Huaca de la Luna (Peru)

  • Featured polychrome plaster decorations, emphasizing building relevance.

Ancient Greece and Color

  • Greeks valued light's role in color, using strong tones for visual impact in bright sunlight.

  • Color enhanced visibility and highlighted details.

  • "Precious colors" signified high status, ritual display, and wealth.

  • Ancient Greeks had a unique color perception, with limited color descriptions and unusual usage.

Color Symbolism in Ancient Rome

  • Red symbolized war, blue represented public servants, black symbolized mourning, purple symbolized royalty, green symbolized beauty, and yellow was worn at weddings.

Roman Blue

  • Blue symbolized temper, character, and moral values in Rome. Romans made blue dye from woad and other plants, and distinguished between light gray-blue (CAESIS) for gods and deep blue (CAERULIS) for enemies.

Purple Pasts: Color Codification in the Ancient World

  • Purple was metaphorically trademarked in antiquity with clear symbolism through language, literature, and sumptuary laws.

Tyrian Purple and the Murex Snails

  • Tyrian purple, a reddish-purple dye from Murex snails, symbolized power and wealth.

Royal Blue

  • Phoenicians also made royal blue dye from marine snails.

Color in Religious Texts and Structures

  • Examples include the "Blue Qur'an" and FIRDAWS MOSQUE (ALEPPO).

Chinese Emperors and Yellow

  • The imperial yellow jacket symbolized high honor in China’s Qing dynasty.

Painting with Color

  • Involves using stone, glass, pigments, media, light reflections, and filters.

Color and Light Reception/Perception

  • A three-stage process: light's color temperature, object's spectral filters, and the resolving detector (eye or camera).

Color Temperature

  • Ranges from warmer to cooler, measured in Kelvin.

Understanding Color Temperature

  • Based on Black Body Radiation and Kelvin scale; radiation and color change with temperature as per black body radiation laws.

Light Source Characteristics

  • Various light sources have different color temperatures.

Spectral Filters

  • Illuminated objects reflect/absorb radiation or filter light.

Resolving Detector and Metamerism

  • Each observer sees colors differently (Observer Metamerism).

  • Metamerism occurs when colors change under different light sources.

Color and Computers

  • Computer color profiles define color vision; embedding profiles ensures specific shades.

Mosaic Art: Construction of the Archangel Mosaic in Hagia Sophia

  • Uses materials like glass, marble, red glass, gold, and silver.

Mosaic Effects

  • Achieved through variations in format and inclination to reflect and refract light.

Stained Glass

  • SAINTE CHAPELLE PARIS

  • Pointed Arches and Butresses

  • Examples: PALMA DE DE MALLORCA, LINCOLN CATHEDRAL, AL-HAMBRA PALACE

Changes in Taste

  • Color preferences vary across cultures and change over centuries.

Changes of Taste and of Color Palettes

  • Renaissance and Manierism eras had shifts in artwork and architecture; Manierism used saffron yellow, pink, tuqueois, and light green.

The Use of Color by El Greco

  • Domenico Theotocopulos