Colour indicative work out

Another idea using changing colour to show the passing of time - in this example the colours also act to help produce the desired activity - orange is stimulating so gets you started with your work out, red is more stimulating so promotes more physical activity, green helps concentration and then fades to blue for the warm down.

Survey Results

I plotted the results in two different forms:
+The first set of graphs take the colour as the starting point and shows how many of each of the feelings were collected for that colour.
+The second set of graphs takes the feelings as the starting point and shows which colours were most picked for that feeling.

I feel like the second way of plotting is the easiest to read, although the first way is good for showing peaks and lows for the colours individually.

Survey

Tomorrow I will carry out a survey on my fellow students by asking them to indicate which colours induce particular emotions or physical feelings.
I made a "voting box" with 13 compartments into which participants will place their slips of paper depending on which colour they feel most creates the emotion or feeling written on the paper.

 Each participant will be given a bundle of slips of paper with the following feelings and emotions written on them:

Physically Active

Mentally Active

Restful

Soothing

Hungry for healthy food

Hungry for comfort food

Hungry for sweet food

Thirsty

Optimistic

Depressed

Sociable

Private / Introvert

Anxiety

Comfort

Warm

Cold

When I have carried out the survey I will put the results into graphs.

Colour for Pricing

I was thinking about the way places like Yo!Sushi use colour to indicate price (dishes on different coloured plates cost different amounts and then the waiter counts up your empty plates at the end) and I thought how good it would be if the colour was used as an indicator of the total as you went along.

So I imagined a system where, for example, you enter into a computer the amount you would like to spend at the beginning of the meal and then as you order dishes the computer keeps a running total and the colour of your booth/table/place mat turns from one colour to another (through illumination) so you are automatically aware of how much money you are spending.

This would be a good thing for the customer but perhaps the bill awareness would not encourage restaurants to install this system! Perhaps it could be used to indicate time spent so it would encourage visitors with time restrictions. 

In terms of indicating the course of a set period of time, this could be used in other settings too such as a meeting room, gym, etc to avoid people having to keep looking at their watches.

Eg: a meeting is scheduled to last for 2 hours so the computer is programmed to change the colour of the ceiling from blue to green in the 1st hour and green to yellow in the 2nd hour. This way everyone has a clear consciousness of the passing of time and so schedules can be kept to more easily.

Your Rainbow Panorama by Olafur Eliasson

This is "Your Rainbow Panorama" by Olafur Eliasson. It sits on top of the ARoS museum of art and gives a panoramic view of the city of Aarhus in Danemark as visitors walk around it. As visitors walk around their view of the city is coloured in each colour of the spectrum in turn.

Essay Tutorial

So today i had a tutorial for the essays we have to write for January. They are only 2500 words so not a lot of space but it should be ok, we have to compare/contrast 2 practitioners. I've chosen to look at someone from the Modernist or Post-Modernist movement (where interiors are generally white white white) with either an earlier practitioner (where everything was very colourful and ornamented) or someone very contemporary where colour is beginning to come back in to fashion in interiors.
I want to explore the social backgrounds of the times and see how this and the artistic movement to which they belong affects the look of the interior and what theories led to these attitudes.
Should be interesting!

Inamo

Another example of personalise-able space through colour is the restaurant Inamo in Covent Garden. I was lucky enough to eat there a couple of years ago. It uses projectors above the table which project a "virtual table cloth" and an interactive menu onto the table top. You can scroll through the menu, order food and drinks and play games using a touch pad in the table.

http://www.inamo-restaurant.com/pc/gallery-photos.php

change of plans!

After a meeting with my heads of year, I have decided that my project will take a turn away from healthcare and more towards the effect of colour on people in other circumstances. This will give me a chance to look at other settings where colour is used to induce certain reactions in people.
I'm also interested in looking at interactivity in spaces in terms of colour and found this project called Interactive Kolsch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4L2SEd--GM (apologies - its in german - but you get the idea)

Which I thought was great and got me thinking about reactive lighting/colouring. Perhaps to react to temperature/amount of visitors/heart rate/time spent/sound levels etc. 

I've been thinking about how this could be used in conjunction with my research into colour and physical/emotional reactions... perhaps it could be used in an office space where if the worker is seeming to get bored or sleepy the colours react to be more stimulating, and if the worker seems stressed they react to be more calming.

adjustable colour films

this is a new idea that I had of using a coloured film on a roller system so that it can be rolled through the spectrum to colour the natural light of a window in different tints. I would imagine that only half of the window would be coloured with the film so that natural light is still allowed to reach the space.

References

Swanke Hayden Connell Architects - King's Mill Hospital (more info)

Phoenix Children's Hospital New Patient Care Tower – HKS Architects (more info)

The University of Minnesota Amplatz Children's Hospital – Tsoi/Kobus & Associates (more info)

I also found out about a charity called Paintings in Hospitals (link) which works to get paintings on the walls in hospitals through donations - they recognise that visual stimulation is important and also that the "hospital feel" has a negative effect on patients.

Diagrams

This is just a quick diagram I did to show the different ways we can perceive colour.

Another diagram to show my research on red and blue lighting.

A quick model I made to show how coloured glass (or a coloured film on glass) can be used to create colour. I have left half of the window clear so that natural light can also benefit the patient.

Colour quotes

Here are some quotes on colour that I found:

“Colour is the place where our brain and the universe meet.” - Paul Klee

“although we can differentiate millions of shades, our vocabulary still only has about thirty colour words.” - Alan Fletcher

“All languages have black and white. If there are three words the third is red. If there are four, then it is green or yellow. If five then whichever didn't make four, yellow or green. If six, it is blue. If seven, it is brown. If eight or more, the purple, pink, orange and grey are added in any order.” - Martin Gardner

“An African desert tribe has no word for green, but six for red. Italian has three words for blue … Swahili doesn't have any … Creek and Natchez Indians use the same name for yellow and green, as do the Highland Scots for blue and green. French has two words for brown … but there isn't onein Chinese, Japanese, Welsh, or Inuit.... [who] do have at least seven words for white.” - Alan Fletcher

“Colour is nothing but a sensation and has no existence at all” Ogden Rood

“Colour is a creative element, not a trimming.” Piet Zwart

“Colour is a power which directly influences the soul.” W. Kandinsky

Another day of research

Today I've been working with this book which is by the same author as th brown and orange on in the previous post.
It's a bit more of an overview but includes some interesting information on colour in general, example: It was Newton who decided on the 7 colour rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet) and this was because of the 7 notes of the musical scale. This is interesting because when you look at a rainbow it is easy to put the colours into those 7 compartments, but I suppose this is because we have all grown up learning these to be THE colours. When in reality (and once you actually start describing colours you see) the colours blend seamlessly into each other, it is interesting that we don't have that many words for in-between colours... the only one i can really think of which is used in common language is turquoise... for example what do you call the colour between orange and yellow? (we would probably just say yellowy-orange) It's also strange that Newton chose to define indigo as a specific colour in between blue and purple (violet).
This isn't really relevant to my research but I found it interesting.
On a more relevant note:
There is a quote from H W Bronsin and E O Fromm which says: (a colour blind person) "may lack the phenomenal color experience from the physical stimulus, but there seems to be no reason to doubt that he experiences the same physiological effects."
Which I think is a critical point. I had wondered whether the effects of colour depended on a person being "chromatically aware" or whether the effects are sub-conscious. However, if this statement is correct then it means that colour can be used effectively perhaps even on unconscious people (coma patients?)
Since certain wave lengths of electromagnetic waves have effects on us - infra red, ultraviolet, x rays etc... then it is not inconceivable that waves within the visual spectrum also affect us past the purely visual reception.
I also read about cases where many high caste Hindu women and children in India developed rickets because they were kept inside as this was seen appropriate for their caste, and the lack of sunlight meant that their bodies did not produce enough vitamin D.
I learnt the word "Photobiology" which I think is a useful (if imaginary) word.
I also made a diagram to outline the activities that take place in a health care environment, so that I know what I'm dealing with.

The mistake of judging a book by its cover

So I was sorting through the books I'd got out of the library and deciding which ones to return when I came across this book which I had got out on the first day of the masters and which I had overlooked because of the out of date looking cover and not very useful blurb on the back. However, after spending a few days reading it I've found it extremely useful and have realised that it has exactly the kind of information I was looking for!


Among the things I discovered from this book are:


-Tremor, torticollis and sometimes Parkinsonism “can at times be diminished in severity if the individuals are protected against red or yellow, if they wear, or instance, spectacles with green lenses.” (Kurt Goldstein) 


-Red encourages extroverted activity - centrifugal, blue encourages introverted -centripetal. (as shown in an interesting experiment by Felis Deutsch and Friedrich Ellinger (experiment by H Ehrenwald)  where subjects stood with arms stretched out in front of them and different coloured lights were shone on one side of them. Arms moved slightly towards red light and away from blue (even with eyes closed)

Robert Gerard: colour experiment using red and blue light (and white as a control) blood pressure – red = increase, blue = decrease. Respiration – increase in red, decreased in blue. Eye blinks – increased in red, decreased in blue. Cortical activity – all increased it but red kept it increased for the longest.

-Suggested uses in treatment:

Blue: anxiety, insomnia, hypertension, torticollis, tremors, pain relief (mental effect rather than an actual pain killer),

Red: fatigue, certain types of depression, lack of libido.

Although of course this will only be part of the treatment - no one's saying that you can cure someone by shining a blue light in their face!

-The view that colours are childish may come from our development as children. As infants we react to colour on this basic and emotional level, but as we grow older we develop intellect and so become more interested in the form of objects and their purpose. However most of us still retain this basic attraction to colour and it is this feeling that people are somehow ashamed of as it takes us back to childish emotions. However it is not something to be ashamed of, colour effects us all.

Generally people who are most interested in their surroundings (or extroverted) will be most attracted to colours, whereas those who are more interested in internal or mental workings (or introverted) are generally less interested in colour.

-Faber Birren “...emotionally responsive persons will react freely to color; inhibited mortals may be shocked or embarrassed by it; restricted and detached types may be unaffected.”

 

-Faber Birren “Manic-depressives in particular will be pleased by color and will react with considerable (and agreeable) excitement to it... Schizophrenic types are inclined to reject color, to look upon it as something which may prove 'catastrophic' and break into their inner world.”

 

-Faber Birren “In small children, a pacific environment and pacific attitude may serve only to increase tension and prod irritability. Here bright color may relieve nervousness by creating an outward stimulus to balance an inner and wholly natural fervor. Conversely, in melancholy humans an attempt to 'cheer up' a mood of dejection (through color or anything else) may serve merely to aggravate the misery and drive it even deeper.”

So I definitely have my work cut out for me... It's all so subjective and also there is the problem (outlined in the last bullet point) that effects can be opposite to what is intended. Also the contradiction between people's cultural or personal view of colours and the effect that it actually has on them (for example a patient might request to be surrounded by yellow because they associate it with positivity, but it may in fact have the opposite effect on them)

Its all very complicated....

quick idea

I know I'm not supposed to be designing yet... but i wanted to put my initial idea into something visual so that i could better understand what I meant. The hexagons have an high saturation colour on each face and can be rotated so that a pale version of that colour is reflected onto the wall.

The window one is more of a problem - i would need to find a way of producing a wider ray of light using mirrors. I would experiment through physical models if i take this route.

Question, Aims, Objectives

I have outlined here a summary of how my project has taken shape so far:

Question: How can colour be used to improve health and well being?

Aims: I want to find out how colour affects human health and well being and find a way that places used for health care can use the beneficial effects of different colours to promote recovery. I will explore how the subjectiveness of colour means that colour therapy needs to be tailored to suit each patient as an individual and how this can be done in a cost effective way.

Objectives: I will continue researching into colour psychology and experiments that have shown certain effects of colour on people, I will then research more fully existing examples of how colour has been used in this way and analyse this information finding gaps and areas that need to be improved. I will then explore how my research can be manifested in a design and technologies which could be useful. I will try to find an existing health care unit which i could base my design around, taking into account the type of patients and treatments they offer there.

Getting stuck in

This is a doodle to represent the stages of starting the MA!

Meeting with interiors leader

Surprise meeting today! got an email when I woke up this morning which had come yesterday saying could we all meet and 11.30 so I scampered in to uni and met everyone and our interiors leader.
We went round the group and each talked about our research so far, which I was nervous about at first because I felt that I was behind, but it seems we're all at a similar stage.

I spoke about my research this week and how I had found my initial research very scientific and more to do with how we see colour (which was really interesting so I got a bit too involved!) than how it actually affects us.
However over the last week I've found a few books which have been really useful and have more examples of how colour can actually be used in the context of interior design.
I'm still considering what area I want to focus on, and was thinking last week that it would be education and I looked at Peckham Library by Alsop Architects which I visited in my 2nd year of the BA:

The building has a multi coloured glass facade which means that areas of different coloured light are formed inside. I liked the idea that you can choose which colour you want to be immersed in while reading or studying. Colour's links to emotions are very subjective and so I think choice and personalise-ability will be key in this project.
I also looked at the Montessori school in aachen by Kasper-Klever and Friedrick Schmuck:

I thought this would be a good source to look out but it turned out to be a bit of a dead end! I found it in the book "Color: communication in architectural space" by Gerhard Meerwein, Bettina Rodeck, Frank H. Mahnke, but could only see the online version so I'll have to wait for it to be ordered to the campus until i can read it properly (all the important pages are missing online!)
I read some interesting information about reflected colour in "Dimensional Color" by Lois Swirnoff. 

I thought that this could be an interesting idea to use, as only a relatively small area would have to be changed to change the colour of the whole wall (or whatever surface) and natural light could still be used (I had thought about coloured light but worried about the extra use of electricity and lack of healthy natural light) I will definately consider this as a method of colouring space. For example, in a white room up-lights (or upward pointing natural light reflectors) could be used to light a coloured panel around the ceiling and this would reflect out onto the white walls giving them a tint of the original colour.
(I think the most successful image is the bottom left one where you can't see the colour source at all, so this is what I will aim for if I use this idea)


As i research more, i find that I'm increasingly interested in how colour affects people's well being in terms of health and recovery, I think I'm moving towards designing for a healthcare environment.
Peter, our interiors leader, told me about Disability Challengers http://www.disability-challengers.org/ which is a centre which has been designed specially for children and young people with disabilities, he showed me some images of the interiors which was really interesting. He also told me about Maggie's Centres http://www.maggiescentres.org/ which are hospices started up by Charles Jenkes who's wife (Maggie) had cancer and he was unhappy about the institutional-ness of the hospice she was cared for in. They are designed to be more pleasant and homely places to be. I think they will become a good inspiration and source for me to look at too.

I learnt a few key facts in my research today:
- Seeing yellow (including as an after image from seeing purple) increases the chances of vomiting if you are feeling nauseous, so both these colours should be avoided in places where people are likely to be nauseous.
- Yellow also makes you look more ill - whereas orange (which has the same affects as red - increase of heart rate and so encouragement of activity) compliments most skin tones and so makes you look more well which has a good effect on patients.
-Colours can be used to affect the other senses. Warm colours can make a cold space seem warmer (and visa versa) and taste/smell associated colours can be used to enhance or subdue a particular smell or taste (the example used in "Color in three-dimensional design" by Jeanne Kopacz is workers in a chocolate factory - if the factory is painted greens and blues then the sickly smell of the environment can be lessened)
That's all for now - on with the reading!

meeting with interiors group

Yesterday we had a meeting with Matt who is one of our subject academics. He showed us some past projects which we got to look through properly in pairs, some of them were really interesting and gave me a good idea of what is expected.
I left feeling excited to get on with my research and found this lecture on TED: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/beau_lotto_optical_illusions_show_how_we_see.html which inspired me to look at various areas of colour as well as just coloured surfaces which i had previously thought to focus on.
I also spoke to Matt about my plan to use my research in the context of an office environment, but since then have been thinking about hospitals, schools, public transport, and hotels. It's hard not to jump straight to designs, but we've been advised that this first stage really is for research so I'll try to just research with an open mind without thinking about my own designs at this stage.

Group Project Finished

It was our group project presentation on Wednesday which went well, we each said a bit about our mood boards and then presented our final object which was a 3D model of the letters "UCA" made of card and wrapped in images from our mood boards. I think it came together quite well and from the sounds of it our group work ran a lot smoother than some other groups! We came to our decisions quickly and without arguing and the discussion was good with lots of bouncing off each other and no one trying to take over the whole group.
This was our outcome.

It goes to show how much the BA has de-sensitised me against presenting to a group of people as i found myself surprised that some people were nervous. The last 3 years have seen me  grow so much as a person, this time 4 years ago i would have been very nervous at the thought of presenting to a group of people who I had only known for a week.

In preparation for tomorrow I have been writing my proposal:

I propose to study the affect that colour and light in a person's close environment has on the human condition in terms of mood, health, productivity, imagination, and other attributes.

I would like to see how subjective (or not) these effects are, and if so propose ways in which personal space within public space (eg: each desk space within a company, train seating, hotel rooms, restaurant tables) can be personalised to optimise personal well being.

I think this will be a valuable area in which to research because it could be used in the world of design to optimise personal well being in spaces and help to promote people to their full potential in many areas.

I would like to research scientific studies as well as existing architectural examples of how light or colour have been used to affect people's moods, as well as existing examples of spaces which have been designed so as to be personalise-able.

I will document my research on my personal blog so that I can easily refer back to sources.

Tomorrow we have a discussion about our proposals so I'm looking forward to that and to hearing what other people have proposed.

Group Project

so our group project to get us all started is to make a new logo for our university, we are each making a mood board to show our first impressions of the university and then we will collaborate to try to make a logo out of these images.
this is my mood board. I did it more as an overview of the university spacially, trying to add in all the areas which i visited on my first day by warping the perspectives.

I don't know what the rest of the group will think about mine, they all seemed a lot more arty and less spacial so i wonder if they might think my is unimaginative. but honestly this is the way i percieve the university, spacially, ive truly had architecture drummed into my brain!

Masters Days 2 and 3

This week of the masters is inductions and a group activity to get us started.
I met all the other people from the the various MA courses yesterday and found out who i would be doing interiors with. Everyone seems really nice and interesting and I had some good chats with people and even though we are all from such different backgrounds and levels of experience we all seem to be in about the same place when it comes to thinking about the masters.
Today we had an introduction to blogging and we were encouraged to start our own blog as well as using the uni community blog for this current group project. So once i start work properly i intend to use this blog as a place to post work in progress as well as to contemplate and discuss the research i am doing.
Our task for the group project is to come up with a rebranding of the university in the group. We decided to each make a mood board and to combine them to create a logo. I'll take my camera in tomorrow and collect images for this.
It's interesting being put into groups with people from other areas of the MA because of all the different perspectives people are coming from. I found myself feeling quite shy in our group meeting firstly because I was the only interiors person (and feel a bit separate from the other courses because of that because it is much less craft based) and because i think i may be the youngest person in the whole group! everyone else seems to have worked for at least a few years between the BA and now and so i easily find myself feeling quite inexperienced and young, but i forced myself to contribute in the group discussion and felt better because of that :)
looking forward to the course a lot!

Masters Day 1

Today I enrolled on my masters course in Interior Design. I got my student card and took out a few books on colour from the library.
I'm thinking about focusing my masters on the way colour and light in a person's environment affects their mood and abilities in terms of productivity, creativity, empathy etc.
I met Clare who was enrolling for MA animation while we were waiting to go in, she seems very friendly and seems to know a lot about what's good to do in town, alternative film screenings and open mic nights, so I might check those out soon.
I met my mum (who has just started a foundation course) for coffee and we chatted about how strange it is to be at the same uni as each other!
Got the bus back up to the house on the hill and read some of one of the books I got out of the library. Lots of interesting ideas combining philosophy, biology, art and design, I'm excited to get going with the masters.
Next week is a group research project into our first impressions of the town. I wonder how it will go and look forward to meeting the other people on my course.