Lecture date: 2012-02-07
Antoni Malinowski, Adam Nathaniel Furman, Fenella Collingridge
Saturated Space
Research Cluster Launch Event
Guest speakers include: Â
Lars Stixrude, professor of geophysics at UCL
Dr Jim Harris, researcher at the Courtauld institute
Semir Zeki, professor of neuroesthetics at UCL Louisa Hutton, director at Sauerbruch Hutton
Peter Salter, professor of Architectural Design at Cardiff University.
Ever since Plato defined image as the antithesis of reason or logic, there has been a consistently strong iconoclastic, purging tendency within Western thought, expressed in the oppositions of rhetoric vs discourse, painting vs drawing, colour vs form. It is a line of reasoning that pits superficiality against depth: depth is idolised as pure, abstract, white, difficult to grasp and serious, while whatever is sensual, eloquent, colourful and essentially non-linguistic is ridiculed as superficial, vulgar, indecent and even pornographic. That which operates directly on the senses is demonised and feared for the potency of its power, and ultimately excluded from ‘serious’ discourse. Colour in architectural discipline and theory is necessarily affected by this categorisation, with its legitimacy, although never its power, in perpetual doubt. This research cluster will begin the process of re-evaluating and restructuring the frame of this apparent contradiction. It will seek to develop a set of spatio-chromatic methodologies and form them into a combined figure of complementarity with – rather than opposition to – theoretical and scientific discourse.
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