Abstract

The Role of Colour in Kindergartens - more than just decoration

Research question: How can colour positively enhance a child’s learning experience in a kindergarten?

The impression of a colour and the message it delivers is of prominence in creating the psychological mood or ambience that supports the function of a space. Despite its presence and its variations, colour is present in all places. The use of colours on surfaces often influences the users’ experience of the space. It is important as an architect to consider the colour effect of every element of a building’s construction, from earthy colours of primary construction materials like timber, brick and stone to the expansive variety of colours available for paint wall, doors and windows. In architecture, appropriate colour specification is its role in keeping visual efficiency and comfort.

We are stimulated by the moods created by certain works of art, as well as by their transcendent qualities. Naturally, the experience of an inhabited space is extremely different from that of the primarily visual space of a painting or an installation. The lived space will be not only seen, but also touched, felt, smelt, heard-all this in the course of going about the routines and rituals of everyday life. Thus, it will mostly be experienced as the mere background to one’s everyday activities. Colour is an essential element in architecture nowadays that it is not only important aesthetically, but it also has a great psycho-sensory importance.

The project aims to develop a consideration on the history and use of colour in space moving away from the flatness of standard paint, opening up a reinterpretation of the way architecture interacts with colours.

Introduction

Research question: How can colour positively enhance a child’s learning experience in a kindergarten?

The initiative of this research is to study how colours are used to affect people’s mood in architecture, from a variation of thoughts and methods, as presented in psychological, cultural, architecture theory or past and present proposals. The research analyses these theories and forms upon them to propose and seek how successful elements from these colour theories can be applied to a present and future design intervention that improvised logic of growth, improving and energizing a common visual space. This research is being proposed as colour is a very subjective matter and it can only be reacted by understanding in what way we perceive colours in the first place. “How we perceive colour depends on our individual brains and collective cultures.” (Clair, 2017) It all started with light rays hitting an object around us and being reflected off their surfaces and into our eyes. Essentially, objects absorb some wavelengths of the visible spectrum and reflect others and so, we see different things as different colour. As like how colour used in architecture, it could be down to scientific impact that certain colours have on a mood. Colour is more than just decoration, it can be a powerful tool to enhance and improve moods.

Figure 1.1 Spectacular mastery of light in spectrum installation by Tokojin Yoshioka Chen, T. (2017) The rainbow engineer - Tokujin Yoshioka. Available at: https://www.frameweb.com/news/therainbow-engineer-tokujin-yoshioka (Accessed: 14 November 2019).