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Background
The aesthetics of colour and light play an important role in the
fields of art, design and communication. Colour and light in
built spaces influence our experiences and feelings, our com-
fort and physiological well-being. Colour and light have great
impact on health and can promote visual clarity, functionality,
orientation and sense of security.
When designing, colouring and illuminating objects and en-
vironment (or ourselves), a general experience of a rich and
complex world around is not enough. To a designer it is also
necessary to have a sound knowledge of what constitutes how
we experience the world – both for the creative process and
a critical distance. It is one thing to experience or intuitively
imagine the “tone” of an object or a “mood” of a space; another
thing is to be able to consciously reflect on the sources of such
experiences. Professionals in the field of design must in one
way or another find distinct concepts and concise approaches
in order to understand coherence and causes of aesthetic
expression. Such concepts and approaches are not easily
found. The essence of our experiences and emotions might
even be beyond the limits of (verbal) language. But, as Ludwig
Wittgenstein has pointed out, even if we cannot explain them
verbally they manifest themselves to the senses. They can be
demonstrated and their cognitive and perceptual basis can be
described (Wittgenstein 1992: 64, 122).
Creativity requires conceptual means to consider conditions
and nature of intuitions and experiences. And this is not only
important for designers, artists and researchers. It is also
highly important to technicians and politicians – and, actually,
to all of us. We are all responsible for how the world is de-
signed. In design all the senses are involved, but when deal-
ing with colour and light we can confine ourselves to vision;
designers must understand the conditions of visual perception.
Colour and light are only seldom integrated from the beginning
in the design process in education. Traditionally colour and
light in design and design education have been looked upon as
something that is discussed when the design is finished; de-
signed objects or designed spaces are thought to be ’coloured’
and ’illuminated’ afterwards. This educational choice – or lack
of choice – is done in spite of the fact that appearance is basic
in spatial design, and that colour and light are absolute condi-
tions of appearance. This way of looking at colour and light as
being subordinated and of minor importance is based on an
insufficient understanding of human visual perception and on
basic conceptual confusions.
Academic research about colour and light is split between
several disciplines. There is also technological research and
development of light sources, light fittings, dyes, paints etc.
carried out by industry. This division between different institu-
tions and organisations has lead to diverging research tradi-
tions and conceptual approaches.
Manufacturers and researchers often have difficulties under-
standing and forming opinions about each other’s methods
and results, although they are working with similar questions.
One important aspect of this is the absence of common and
generally accepted concepts. The confusion about the concept
of
colour
is discussed in Green-Armytage (2006). The need for
specifications of the concept of
light
is discussed in Liljefors
(2006). In design education this incoherence of the field has
resulted in confusion of ideas about the nature of colour and
light.
Colour, light and space
We live in a spatial and continuously changing world. Our
cognitive and perceptual systems derive their distinctive
characters from this fact. Even if our perceptions are subjec-
tive, our basic spatial experiences are natural perceptual facts
and functionally universal. All senses add to the experience of
a spatial and changing world around, but the principal
spa-
tial
sense is sight. Vision provides a coherent and continuous
understanding of space. We always experience the surround-
ing world as three-dimensional: visual patterns that can be
understood as spatial are given naturally such an interpretation
in perception (Gregory 1966:147).
Traditionally, research about colour has most often neglected
the need of knowledge about spatial visual perception, and al-
though colour and light are mentally inseparable in our experi-
ence of the world around, the complicated relation between co-
lour and light experiences has not been given attention. Colour
phenomena have usually been presented two-dimensionally
and without intention to be spatially experienced. If they, in that
way, are abstracted from their natural and simultaneous con-
nections to light, spatial order, and cultural context, the causal
relations behind colour phenomena become inconceivable and
mystified.
Concepts describing colour and light as integrated in a spatial
whole have to be based on coherent spatial experiences. Spa-
tial perception demands spatial relations and directions, size
gradients, enclosure, etc. David Prall (1936: 39) says:
You cannot make a spatial whole except with elements the very
nature and being of which is spatial extension – – The elements
must lie in an order native to their being, an order grasped by
us as constituted by relation. We call structures intelligible – –
so far we find them capable of analysis into such elements so
related.
Colours as such have no spatial extension. They have no formal
structure except colour qualities related to other colour quali-
ties, i.e. contrasts in lightness, whiteness, blackness, hue or
chromaticness (this colour terminology refers to The Natural
Colour System, NCS – The Swedish standard for colour nota-