Recently, a discussion about architects love of white  has started in a LinkedIn group I follow.

Karen Haller proposed that issue. She’s colour consultant working also with architects, so she asks why architects love so much white, in interior design especially. Igor Asselbergs, participating from Netherlands, proposes an interesting historical reconstruction. Renaissance, he suggest, was the time when shape and colours were separated. I’m agree with Igor, and I can add that Renaissance sought the act of building and the design activity detach each other within the architectural process.

Actually, The art of Disegno (drawing in Italian) become the main tool for architects, not only to design but to think and to communicate. Renaissance was that period in which the architect was a theorist too (Leon Battista Alberti), and space measurements passed from the sheet to the built space (Brunelleschi’s Santo Spirito and Portico degli Innocenti in Florence). Thanks to the print reproducibility, very soon Architecture impacted reality mostly because it was designed, and not because it was built. The project became important as the building itself (see at the complicated historical reconstruction about La Fabbrica di San Pietro in Rome). So, white was a feature in that period and Renaissance’s architecture was “also” white, because white is abstraction, substantially. The Architecture changed from to be a technical/practical activity into an intellectual work. Definitely,  Renaissance sough the rise of the Architect as today we mean. So, architects’ love of white origins since architects exist, we could say.

Renaissance’s white is quite different from the baroque one. In the first case white’s presence dominate because of the increasing importance of shape over material, but quite soon Mannerism rediscovers material and colours. Borromini affirmed the supremacy of shape over material, but during the baroque epoch, in Rome especially, white expressed the idea about space’s  and time’s continuity dominating that period. Renaissance’s white is to measure the discreet Euclidean space, while Baroque’s white showed space as a continuum, so as in the Leibniz’s conception. Rarely white is a feature shared between interior and exterior in baroque architecture. White dominate at San Carlo alle quattro fontane by Borromini, whereas Bernini used a colour explosion in his interior, with an extraordinary richness of marbles and coloured stucco contrasting the white marbled sculpture.

However, white never was ‘pure’ white,  but a colour swinging between a very light yellow of certain plastered surfaces, the warm pale yellow of travertine, and a light grey of the pietra serena. Fifty shades of white, we could say.

While white in neoclassical architecture is the biggest misunderstandings about ancient Roman and Greek ruins, white in the Modern Movement was a radical choice. On the contrary, contemporary love of white seems rather a forgetfulness than a aware choice.

Gianni Cagnazzo, a good friend of mine, is architect and colour expert. He sustains that architects love of white well represent this anaesthetic and fearful time we are living. Such an architecture without emotion is designed for humanity worried about emotion. White dominance is a sign of time and it’s not a features of places. So, using white would be a statement of a cultural position. We can be agree or not, but this may explain the success of white. However, Gianni declares that white dominance is a mistake, because human needs colour as much as (natural) light.

Recently, I’m inclining to suspect that white’s success among architects is not a cultural choice. White is not the problem, but the absence of colour is worrisome. Architects are not trained in using colour, this is the matter. This is a grim reality shared by European and US architects, at least. Among a lot of disciplines, colour is neglected. Recently I’ve managed a workshop to train +230 architects: none was familiar with any design methodology about colour. So, white is become the architect’s comfort zone. Paradoxically, a lack of skill is changed  into a value, obtaining a false syllogism:

Luxurious spaces are designed by architects > architects love white > white is luxurious

That syllogism is false because, at least, architects love of white probably is not true: they simply don’t know how to manage the other colour. Nevertheless, the ratio Luxurious/white is a common thinking.

Sometimes architects say that white is a neutral choice, but it’s not so. Overestimating the interior brightness, without balancing contrast, leads toward alienating environment and alienating behaviours.

Colour is not something personal and colour is not something exotic. Frank Mahnke showed twenty years ago his Colour Experience Pyramid: personal taste, fashion and trends are limited to the upper part of the pyramid. The great majority of factors impacting our response to the colour is ignored in design process.

We have just to learn  something about colour to design better. So, do it!