.We're again grateful to Nick Harkness and our "Canberra Colour Club" for initiating another very special event, a presentation by Professor of Architectural Practice Fiona McLachlan of the University of Edinburgh. The webinar will be hosted by Sonia van de Haar.of Lymesmith.
Antoni Malinowski painting at Coin Street Neighbourhood Centre, London (F. McLachlan)
The influence of applied colour in architecture extends well beyond surface decoration. It affects the character of adjacent space, can convey meaning, tap into individual and shared experience, and alter our perception. The talk will focus on significant themes from the book publication Colour Beyond the Surface: Art in Architecture which considers the contribution of embedded artwork to architecture, with a particular focus on colour and the dynamic relationships between light, form, material surface, space and movement.
‘A painting made on canvas in a studio setting and conventionally exhibited within a gallery space invites the audience to study its composition, meaning and production…the object of a fixed gaze. An artwork embedded in an architectural surface will become an integral part of the space, and glimpsed in the peripheral vision of an often inattentive, moving audience.’
How might the colour and material surface of an artwork, and the pictorial space within the artwork affect the bodily experience of architecture?
‘The way which we ‘see’ colour as being inherently part of the material surface is deceptive. Colour is often considered to be somehow embedded within a material, yet once the relationship between colour and light is grasped, the fluctuations in the appearance of colour with changing light conditions are readily understood.’
The book draws on historical examples from Karl Friedrich Schinkel to Carlos Raul Villaneuva and Gio Ponti and on a series of interviews with contemporary artists and architects. The different knowledges, practices and understanding between artists and architects makes colour a fertile ground for collaboration. The potential to create resonance, sensorially and intellectually, emerges as a common thread, whether artists are working independently making work for architectural settings or in collaboration with architects,
‘perhaps the best examples of surface applied art in architecture are those where there is a resolution that has a resonance, but also an element of dissonance that achieves a productive tension’.
In the best cases, the art and architecture become inseparable from the atmosphere and memory of the space for which it is made.
Fiona McLachlan is Professor of Architectural Practice at the University of Edinburgh. She teaches architectural design is a past Head of the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA). Her practice– E & F McLachlan Architects– specialized in social housing and residential projects over a thirty-year period and has been included in international exhibitions and publications. She has authored three books: Architectural Colour in the Professional Palette, (Routledge, 2012)– which was stimulated by her work in practice– a co-author of Colour Strategies in Architecture, (Schwabe Verlag, 2015) and author of Colour Beyond the Surface: Art in Architecture (Lund Humphries, 2022).
Mark Titchner Not For Self But For All, London (woolver.com)
Registration
Successful registrants will be notified by reply email and will be sent the Zoom link and instructions shortly before the event. To receive this email with the Zoom link, you must register by the deadline of midnight AEST on Tuesdayday June 24th but please note that this event may be booked out in advance of that date. If you're unable to attend live, please do not register; a recording will be posted on the Colour Society of Australia YouTube account shortly after the webinar and will remain available to the public there for two weeks.
We ask our members and friends to please pass on news of this event to their contacts by sharing our Facebook/ Instagram/ LinkedIn posts or the following link: https://coloursociety.org.au/event-6139542
