Colour energy and wellbeing in the context of architecture and design are underestimated in terms of the value they bring to design, branding and real estate development in all sectors, ranging from residential to corporate projects, including the hospitality and luxury industry. Colour, with a particular focus on its latent energy, has not yet been sufficiently explored, researched or discussed, and remains one of the great mysteries of perception. Colour is essential for life and survival, and reaches far beyond art and the decoration of space. The sensation of colour, as an expression of the sense of sight, influences wellbeing and is connected to deeply embedded themes and patterns on emotional, cultural, or personal levels, through which it impacts on wellbeing, health, and decision-making in essential ways, not least because vision has replaced odour as the most essential sense for survival. The majority of all conscious and unconscious decisions are affected by notions of colour, a discipline of constant debate in both art and science. Architecture is somewhere in between, and practising architects are expected to provide the client with individual solutions based on informed decisions. When they do this, however, basing their decisions on experience, unspecified knowledge and intuition, they are often perceived as arrogant. Architecture and the design of space are a constant concern for everyone. The desire to build a home, a temple or a public building in a three dimensional environment is a fundamental urge and as old as mankind itself. Yet perhaps because of these strong impulses, the complexity of creating space is often underestimated. Our body records millions of impressions per minute across all five senses. The five senses keep us alive; they warn, nurture, and alert us, and human perception is based on receiving the vibrations caused by energy fields. These sensory vibrations are directly linked with the human body and it is through them that experiences like I am feeling good in this space and even unconscious memories are triggered. Clients may expect the architect to know everything about the perception of space. Architecture, however, is a very complex matter, and in most academic programs little or no time is allowed for the in-depth study of perception, psychology, colour energy, or wellbeing. Even architecture and interior design are often conflated, and treated as one combined subject rather than two complementary disciplines. What is most striking is that colour is often ignored in Western architecture. Furthermore, there is a bias in the literature and education of the West when compared to the holistic approach in the East. In the Orient, holistic means body, spirit and soul. In the Occident, in contrast, it means body, mind and brain. Spirit and soul are missing. And although the sense of something missing becomes more evident in the West, research fights shy of spirit and soul, and leaves unaddressed questions like: 1. What is the relation of colour energy, wellbeing and space in the Occident and Orient? 2. Why is colour not used more often and more instrumentally to improve wellbeing and influence perception? 3. Where do the inhibitions and obstacles come from that prevent occidental architecture and design from reflecting and applying ancient oriental knowledge and belief to colour healing, health, and wellbeing? As a colour theorist, architect and designer I propose that colour energy offers effective principles that provide an invaluable source for informed architectural decisions, which are genuinely independent of subjective taste or contemporary fashion trends, and that enable a truly holistic approach. This research proposes that wellbeing is both timeless and priceless and that wellbeing, health and perception can be stimulated by colour energy.

Interface colour scheme design is complex, but important. Most software allows users to choose the colours of single items individually and out of context, but does not acknowledge colour schemes or aid in their design. Creating colour schemes by picking individual colours can be time-consuming, error-prone, and frustrating, and the results are often mediocre, especially for those without colour design skills. Further, as colour harmony arises from the interactions between all of the coloured elements, anticipating the overall eff ect of changing the colour of any single element can be difficult. This research explores the feasibility of extending artistic colour harmony models to include factors pertinent to user interface design. An extended colour harmony model is proposed and used as the basis for an objective function that can algorithmically assess the colour relationships in an interface colour scheme. Its assessments have been found to agree well with human evaluations and have been used as part of a process to automatically create harmonious and usable interface colour schemes. A three stage process for the design of interface colour schemes is described. In the fi rst stage, the designer speci es, in broad terms and without requiring colour design expertise, colouring constraints such as grouping and distinguishability that are needed to ensure that the colouring of interface elements reflects their semantics. The second stage is an optimisation process that chooses colour relationships to satisfy the competing requirements of harmonious colour usage, any designer-specified constraints, and readability. It produces sets of coordinates that constitute abstract colour schemes: they de fine only relationships between coloured items, not real colours. In the third and fi nal stage, a user interactively maps an abstract scheme to one or more real colour schemes. The colours can be fi ne-tuned as a set (but not altered individually), to allow for such "soft" factors as personal, contextual and cultural considerations, while preserving the integrity of the design embodied in the abstract scheme. The colours in the displayed interface are updated continuously, so users can interactively explore a large number of colour schemes, all of which have readable text, distinguishable controls, and conform to the principles of colour harmony. Experimental trials using a proof-of-concept implementation called the Colour Harmoniser have been used to evaluate a method of holistic colour adjustment and the resulting colour schemes. The results indicate that the holistic controls are easy to understand and eff ective, and that the automatically produced colour schemes, prior to fi ne-tuning, are comparable in quality to many manually created schemes, and after fi ne-tuning, are generally better. By designing schemes that incorporate colouring constraints specifi ed by the user prior to scheme creation, and enabling the user to interactively fi ne-tune the schemes after creation, there is no need to specify or incorporate the subtle and not well understood factors that determine whether any particular set of colours is "suitable". Instead, the approach used produces broadly harmonious schemes, and defers to the developer in the choice of the fi nal colours.

The overall aim of the thesis is to discuss cultural significations and notions of colour in Swedish post-war architecture. More specifically, the purpose is to analyse the question of colour in architecture linked to the polychrome walls of Årsta Community Centre, including background, intentions, cultural context and debate. Årsta Community Centre, situated just south of Stockholm, was built in 1947-53. The buildings as well as the colourful paintings covering the walls facing the square were designed by architects and brothers Erik and Tore Ahlsén. Newspapers and journals showed a clear indignation concerning the colourful exterior walls. Why did the polychrome walls at Årsta raise so much attention and cause such criticism? And how are these reactions related to contemporary ideas of colour in architecture in general? The thesis is divided into six chapters. The introductory chapter is followed by a historical retrospect with examples of use and notions of colour in architecture, in order to present a prelude to post-war thoughts and design. This text leads up to two central concepts developed for this thesis: Structural and independent colour effect. The third chapter presents Årsta Community Centre with focus on the polychrome walls at Årsta square, analysing the role of the architects and the cultural and social environment in which they were interacting. Special attention is paid to the important inspiration provided by the thoughts of the Danish artist and writer Asger Jorn. The forth chapter deals with the critique of Årsta square as well as arguments in contemporary debates concerning colour in architecture (as for example in the Apollo and Dionysus-debate). Chapter five discusses the role of independent colour effect in art and architecture of the 1940´s and 50´s related to examples of contemporary ideas and use of history. The conclusions of the study are presented in the sixth chapter. It contains an interpretation of the polychrome space, mainly focusing on two themes: The first is the understanding of the square as a theatre, based on historical social and urban patterns. The second is the suggestion of a modernistic language of colour and architecture for common man that is universal and time-less, challenging established social and material hierarchies. The thesis finishes with an analysis and a summary point by point of the critique directed at the colours of Årsta Community Centre with main emphasis on the underlaying political motives. / <p>QC 20101112</p>