Orange you glad I didn't say blue?

The Purist. 

If you've taken classes in architecture, chances are good that you've had one-- a professor that wears all black, writes exclusively in the upper-case, and cannot (read CANNOT) to tell you enough about the importance of  f o r m . To be fair they've probably forgotten more things about architecture than I've ever known so they deserve respect in their own right. Nonetheless, I have a bone to pick: I was taught about color, but I was never shown. Or maybe I was never encouraged, I can't tell the difference. 

The list of acceptable materials for our models was as follows: brilliant white museum board, preferably with the laser-burnt edges sanded off to restore the whiteness; cool gray or, if you were feeling a little saucy, warm gray chipboard; virgin, unprinted cardboard sheets of uniform thickness; light basswood sheets and basswood sticks (for when you simply must operate outside the realm of planes).

If you'd skipped that paragraph, I wouldn't have blamed you. I'm sure reading it was about as boring as working with such sterile materials. The point of using them is to get an appreciation for only the mass and void, the infamous form, of the design, but the end result is lackluster in one of the fundamental ways in which we experience the world: color.

"The impression of a color and the message it conveys is of utmost importance in creating the psychological mood or ambiance that supports the function of a space." - TMD Studio for Medium 

The relationship between color and space is vital, and one that I feel is underserviced by the Modernist education of form. It treats form as wholly separate from color which, while technically true, ignores that architecture is for people. Our experience of space is indivisible from our perception of space and our perception is deeply gullible-- we don't see things as they factually are, but rather get an impression based on a variety of instantaneous connections our brain makes for us. One of the important influences on these connections is how the coloring of a space makes us feel. And the feeling is the whole thing of it. 

To quote the immortal Maya Angelou, “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”