Colour Beyond the Surface: Art in Architecture Book Launch

Colour Beyond the Surface: Art in Architecture considers the contribution of embedded artwork to architecture, with a particular focus on colour and the dynamic relationships between light, form, material surface, space and movement.

Historically, there was little separation between art and architecture, and an expectation that architectural surfaces would be decorated. For many the Baroque period exemplifies the intertwining of visual art, sculpture, and architecture. Today, the physical demands of making art within an architectural space, the economic context of portable art as commodity, and the demands of the contemporary building industry, have all contributed to a decline in such an integrated approach, and the disciplines have drifted apart.

Studies of art in architecture tend to have been written by art historians rather than architects and have rarely considered the role and contribution of colour – spatially, materially, and culturally. By establishing recurring themes using a transhistorical approach – such as tensions between surface and form, between art and architecture, the contribution of pictorial space and material practice, and drawing on a series of interviews and exemplars, the book considers the challenges and opportunities of integrating visual art into architecture through individual and collaborative practices.

It is divided into three main sections: the first focusing on architecture, the second on the artworks and the final section on collaboration. It examines the work of architects whose use of colour is informed by their own artistic practice, from Karl Friedrich Schinkel to Bolles + Wilson, and a series of contemporary British visual artists who have made artworks for architectural settings, for example Tess Jaray, Sinta Tantra and Jason Bruges. It explores successful collaborations where a symbiotic relationship between art and architecture is firmly established, notably between Antoni Malinowski and Haworth Tompkins, and culminates with A House for Essex by Grayson Perry and FAT Architecture.

Fiona McLachlan is Professor of Architectural Practice at the University of Edinburgh and is an architect and educator. She teaches architectural design and professional practice and is a past Head of the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA). She is the author of Architectural Colour in the Professional Palette, (2012), which was stimulated by the work of her own architectural practice – E & F McLachlan Architects – over a thirty-year period, and a co-author of Colour Strategies in Architecture, (2015). Her third book, Colour Beyond the Surface: Art in Architecture will be published by Lund Humphries in 2022.

Launch Price £35, RRP £45.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

AA Bookshop, Architectural Association, 33 Bedford Square, London, United Kingdom