Blu. Come condiziona la percezione dello spazio // Blue. How it affects the perception of space

Were the Greeks and Romans able to see blue? Although today blue is one of the most used and preferred colours by most people, its history is not very ancient and is certainly more recent than that of its historical rival: red. Going through the meanings it has assumed over time, we realize that colour is primarily a cultural fact, being part of a socially accepted code of a community. But colour is also a physical phenomenon, something that affects our body and affects our emotional state. Blue is calming, relaxing but also cold, sad, and melancholic. So how does it affect our perception of space? In architecture it can be used in various ways, to communicate a message, allowing the viewer to orientate or create a reference to the surrounding environment, as different is the emotional aspect to which it is associated in paintings and films. The main purpose of this paper is to show the importance of colour in architectural design, focusing the analysis on blue, as it is capable of transmitting antithetical emotions: tranquillity and quietness, but also coldness and melancholy. In order to understand how it can influence the perception of any form of space, the starting point is to identify three possible definitions of the concept of colour since it is at the same time a social, a scientific and a spiritual fact, linked to the culture and collective memory of a specific place. The uses and meanings attributed to it by human beings from its origins until today, the photobiological effects on the organism and the emotional ones, up to use in the context of architectural design were then investigated. As a result, the main function of colour is to communicate, hiding or highlighting a content, making it aesthetic or unesthetic and producing a completely personal sensation in the observer. To demonstrate this, the main messages, and emotions that blue can transmit through the cross-analysis of the work of some famous artists, such as Van Gogh, Picasso, Chagall and Magritte, and film directors, Kubrick, Scott, Gondry and Weir. Even regarding the concept of space, it is not possible to provide a univocal definition, therefore it has been considered under various forms: background, landscape, scenography, home of memories and architectural work. By interacting with it, all the various functions that colour plays come into play, so that our perception turns out to be its synthesis, thus demonstrating how there can be no architectural product that does not use colour.