Looking for some design inspiration or perhaps an exciting summer read? Check out in full COLOUR: Recent Buildings and Interiors with projects selected by Dirk Meyerhöfer. This book documents a wide variety of projects where use of color, either of colored surfaces, colored light, or both, has a transformative effect on the built environment. These projects illustrate the remarkable power of color in architecture to define and organize space, and to create an emotional response. Perception of color is both personal and social; the colors we see are a result of our brain processing physical stimuli from our eyes through the filter of our cultural experience, which means each person’s experience of color is unique. This might make a less daring designer hesitate, but as the projects in this book illustrate, the bold use of color activates and energizes the built environment. In the introduction Meyerhöfer says “through the warmth or coolness of a given colour…or through the choice of several, interrelated colour families, a building can be endowed with a ‘soul.'” If this seems like a stretch, choose the image below that most appeals to you. Now try to imagine the space with only neutral colors, or with entirely different colors. How does your experience, or your feelings about the space change?
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