A perceptual approach to the urban colour reading

The Colour Plans in Italy, since the end of Seventies, have represented an answer to the necessity of preserving and disciplining, but also enhancing, the colour of the historical centres. The methodological and instrumental approaches developed inside these plans reflect a substantially conservative and restoration purpose towards the urban colour and show all their limits, if we want to face a chromatic planning addressed to the city in its entirety. Such a purpose requires, indeed, a design approach that draws motivation not only from history and pre-existent, but also from colour’s ability to perceptually modify and influence the vision and the experience of a space. This contribution wants to bring attention to the necessity of an urban colour perceptual reading, able to relate the chromatic component to the cultural, temporal and spatial context, and then to the more complex system of variables (light, material, etc.) that determines our perceptual experience of places.