Journal of the International Colour Association (2017): 19, 34-46
Sustainable colour design technologies and products
Premier and Gasparini
in
architecture:
materials,
Alessandro Premier1 and Katia Gasparini2 1University
of Udine, Italy University of Venice, Italy Emails: alessandro.premier@uniud.it; katia.gasparini@iuav.it 2Iuav
When should we consider the colour of a building as a sustainable feature? In contemporary architecture, old and new materials, technologies and products are complying with the new rules of sustainability by providing the architectural project the means to adapt to the new challenges of contemporary innovation. Of course, colour seems to play a strategic role in this scenario, adapting to the choices of the different points of view – sometimes ideological – of contemporary architecture. The paper describes the results of a recent research conducted in the “Eterotopie” Research Centre by the authors, with the valuable contributions of V. Brustolon, A. Dehò, C. Gregoris, A. Martini, and P. Zennaro [1]. The researchers, dealing with various specialisms, studied chromatic use in the architectural design of 12 families of materials, technologies and products with the aim of assessing their real impact on the environment and possible solutions based on a scientific and rational approach. Received 10 April 2017; revised 27 July 2017; accepted 5 August 2017 Published online: 29 September 2017
Introduction Colour is often overshadowed in research on the environmental sustainability of buildings. As we well know, however, colour plays a strategic role not only from an expressive point of view, but also in the control of the internal and external environmental quality of buildings and also for their microclimate. Indeed, we can think about the colour of the surfaces of the building as a tool for the integration with landscape and for the environmental quality or as a tool for controlling the heating of the surfaces irradiated by the sunlight. This survey, carried out within the Eterotopie Research Centre, a spin-off of the Research Unit "Colour and Light in Architecture" of Iuav University of Venice, tried to go further. 34
http://www.aic-colour.org/journal.htm | http://www.aic-color.org/journal.htm
ISSN 2227-1309