Color In Architecture

Color is the place where our brain and the universe meet. It creates, enhances, changes, reveals and establishes the mood of the design. In my opinion this was one of the most important lectures, because as future architects, we have to pay a lot of attention to the way we use and design with color. We also got to practice this in studio when we did the color designs, and we saw how beautiful and difficult at the same time it is to work with colors and the ways we can pair them and make 2 or more colors compatible with one-another.

All the colors are created by the three primary colors: Red, Blue and Yellow. They then are divided to warm and cool colors. This division is important and we encounter it unconsciously on a daily bases: we see red always related to warmth and blue to coolness. (weather reports, thermometers etc.).

Every color has it’s unique features: value, chroma, tint, hue, tone and shade.

Another type of color relationship that we got to practice on studio is monochromatic, achromatic and complementary colors. We got the chance to choose which type of relationship we can use on our design: monochromatic or complementary. Monochromatic is using the different shades of the same color, and complementary is using two colors that are on the opposite side of the spectrum.

Another importance of color is it’s psychology effects. It can have a huge effect on our mood or the way we look at a building. We can see that in a lot of houses when a room is smaller, if we want it to look bigger we design it with lighter colors, and vice-versa, dark colors make a room look smaller. Our brain always relates the color white to cleanness and freshness or we relate green to nature and eco-friendly environment. It can also be used for cultural differences. Us Albanians, always get a home-friendly feeling when we see the colors red and black together, because it reminds us of our home country.

In architecture color has been used since ancient times as a very important element. We use color for division (In our university every class has it’s own unique color.). When we see a kid’s room painted in blue, we know the child is a boy and when it is pink it’s a girl. We can identify modern architecture by looking at it’s typical colors: brick red, marble white and concrete gray.

Every space can be distinguished with its approach towards the human and non-human interaction. Architecture plays an important role in promoting it, and color in architecture helps understand that interaction better.