COLORZOOM

Abstract

COLORZOOM is an investigation into the disciplinary status of color in architecture. The design investigations of COLORZOOM pursue architectural color in both the broad context of increasingly image-driven architectural practice and a discrete historical moment in which architecture must proceed in a digital and distributed manner. COLORZOOM is a proto-pedagogy which positions color as the central driver of the design process. It proposes its series of didactic color exercises as a new curriculum for architects exploring the perception and production of color in the context of contemporary design tools. Despite a widening void of expertise and the disappearance of color curriculum from most architectural academies, color saturates the built environment and daily life. As the techniques and technologies of architectural production transition architecture from a practice of drawing to one of image-making, pixel and image become elevated to a status typically reserved for form and line. In the context of this disciplinary and technological shift, COLORZOOM identifies a necessity for image-making expertise. And, if a future of architectural imaging is to have a kind of tectonics, color may well be its structure. COLORZOOM attempts to wrangle with the disciplinary haiku of color - to wade through its uncomfortable mixture of light and material and culture and perception - to reposition color as an active protagonist in architectural design.