Urban light and color
Name
Byrne_Urban light.pdf
Size
12.3 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
7a3cf7b2659a15ac5a533e2e94477132
Author(s)
Byrne, Alex
Hilbert, David R.
Date Issued
2011
Journal
New Geographies (Book 3)
Publisher
Harvard University Graduate School of Design
Citation
Byrne, Alex, and David R. Hilbert. "Urban Light and Color." in New Geographies, 3: Urbanisms of Color, Gareth Doherty, editor. Cambridge, Ma: Harvard University Press, c2011. 184 p.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
In Colour for Architecture, published in 1976, the editors, Tom Porter and Byron
Mikellides, explain that their book was “produced out of an awareness that colour, as a
basic and vital force, is lacking from the built environment and that our knowledge of it is
isolated and limited.”1 Lack of urban color was then especially salient in Britain—where
the book was published—which had just begun to recoil at the Brutalist legacy of angular
stained gray concrete strewn across the postwar landscape. Perhaps because the most
urgent need was to inject some hue into this architectural dystopia, one of the main
innovations illustrated in the book involves nothing more than cans of paint. Dull
unfinished concrete façades, the interior of a subway station, a cement works, and so on,
are shown enlivened by fields of bright color.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
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