Built and Human Environment: New Paints? Cristina CARAMELO GOMES Faculdade de Arquitectura e Artes, Universidade Lusíada de Lisboa ABSTRACT Colour influences any life form: reproduction, survival, food, shelter, it all may depend of colour. That makes it a codified symbol in any communication process. Chromatic symbols are, throughout history and nature, an unquestionable way of communication for individual or collective identification This influences the built and human environment using colour as one element of the communicative process illustrating political and social ideologies and realities. Colour is a statement. Built and human environment has its own ephemerally provided by the experiences and the life cycle of each building. Colour is influenced by the light and the light is a moment of vivacity or seriousness, emerging and hiding areas, objects, creating real or fantastic environments. The anonymous architecture that is spreading all over the places, neglects the identity of the place and the user. The impact of the urban community within individual is a reality depending on dimensions, forms, geographical location and orientation and appearance of the building. The misinterpretation of some professionals towards this reality is surpassed by the many studies and experiments demonstrating the correlation between light, texture and colour and the power of each one towards human response and behaviour. Several social housing within Lisbon’s periphery is performed with strong chromatic schemes, which achieve the discontinuity of the urban tissue, by the stigmatization of communities, morphologies, typologies and population. Beware!!! 1. COLOUR AND BUILT AND HUMAN ENVIRONMENT: INTEGRATION OR STIGMA? Colour influences any life form: reproduction, survival, food, shelter, it all may depend of colour. That makes it a codified symbol in any communication process. Chromatic symbols are, throughout history and nature, an unquestionable way of communication for individual or collective identification (Veleiro 1991). Architecture, often designated as the royal art, frequently forgets and neglects the power of colour to influence reactions and behaviours; it uses an aesthetical motivated colour code, framed between materials and constructive processes and techniques, where volumes, planes and surfaces are showrooms for a particular artistic movement or fashion of the hour. This influences the built and human environment using colour as one element of the communicative process illustrating political and social ideologies and realities (Mahnke 1996). Colour is a statement. Radical examples can be found within the modern movement, where the demanded sobriety and the emergence of the social classes’ ideology and conscience were coloured with achromatic environments; or in the post-modern movement; where despite the aim of recover the cultural and historical background of the place towards the recovery of the spirit and identity of the place, the colour and ornament demanded, are frequently translated elements of the cartoon world to the built environment. This radical attitude illustrated by the imagination of each artist was once again unaware of the place and user’s identification and requirements. None of these attitudes has considered the physiological, psychological and cultural impact in human behaviour, and yet some voices Caramelo Gomes, C. (2004) Built and Human Environment: New Paints?. In: AIC 2004, COLOR AND PAINTS. [Internet]. Available from: <http://www.fadu.uba.ar/sitios/sicyt/color/abstract.pdf> [Accessed 25 April, 2010]