Juan Serra Lluch

Influence of Color in a Lactation Room on Users’ Affective Impressions and Preferences

Objective: The present study aims to examine the influence of environmental color hue in a lactation room at a health center on users’ affective response and preference. Background: Hospital design plays an important role in the emotional experience of patients. In this regard, many studies have attempted to find relationships between design variables and healthcare facilities users’ response. Color has been frequently examined because it is always present in the environment and can be easily changed. However, most of the studies dealing with color–emotion relationships acquire users’ affective response by questionnaires developed by experts which could lead to inaccurate results since nonexperts may misunderstand concepts set by experts and use nonimmersive images to simulate the environments to assess. Methods: To overcome these limitations, a Kansei Engineering–based approach was proposed. In the first phase, users’ specific affective factors for lactation rooms were determined using Semantic Differential. In the second phase, the influence of nine different color hues on users’ affective factors was obtained. An immersive display system was used to visualize the room altering hues in an isolated and controlled way. Results: (1) Six user’s affective factors connected to the lactation rooms were discovered: safety, elegance, coziness, spaciousness, simplicity, and luminosity, of which coziness has the most impact on the assessment of the room. (2) Warm colors like orange and yellow tend to score highly for coziness which puts them in leading positions when users’ assess lactation rooms. Conclusions: Results provide recommendations for designers and show the advantages of using semantic differential and immersive displays to analyze user’s affective response to environments.

A New App to Assess the Visual Impact of Buildings in Historical City Centers Called LandArch

We wanted to assess the opinion of citizens on proposed architectural solutions to integrate a set of buildings with a visual impact located in the historical centre of Valencia. Five scenarios were prepared, one of which being the current situation, using spherical photographic panoramas. To prepare the scenarios, a preliminary historiographic study was carried out. Each observer was asked to order the scenarios in order of personal preference and visual integration, using traditional printed images, in addition to a new purpose-built App called “LandArch: Visual Impact Evaluation”, available for free from Google Play. This App allows users to dynamically observe spherical panoramas on the screen of any personal device using 3d glasses. Following the preference and integration assessment of the 5 scenarios, we observe significant differences in the results according to the visualization device used, twice for preference and twice for integration. It seems that the traditional printed image facilitates the recognition of height relationships between buildings and can better resemble the historic imaginary. Conversely, dynamic spherical visualization devices predispose observers to give more positive assessments to risky architectural solutions that use reflections and mirror images for example.

Design of Residential Centres for the Elderly and the Perception in Their Spaces

This paper is part of the R+D+I Research Project recently approved by the MEC which is based on possible modifications in visual comfort on architectural spaces for improving the quality of life of the elderly (BIA2016-79308-R). In the project, a series of buildings in the Valencian Community that present various modifications for adapting them into geriatric institutions are studied and analysed. Two models have been selected, each of which presents a historical singularity (one, late nineteenth and the other, mid twentieth century) and architectural features located in very different environments. This study provides us information about some of the reforms carried out in their interior spaces to turn them into geriatric centres, as well as the conditions of habitability for such a vulnerable group. In the development of this document, different types of perceptive experiences of the users who live in these two spaces are analysed, after the field work in which the problems of adaptation and feeling of well-being permeate throughout. Proposals for improvements to visual accessibility and adaptation of the architectural space for senior citizens are proposed. Finally, we list some technological alternatives to know the type of stimuli in the built environment of senior citizens that might help to bring about improvements in this type of architecture.

Recovering Chromatic Space as a Sign of Identity in the Historic City

This article seeks to reflect on aspects that determine the signs of identity of historical cities through the land, architecture and color characteristics of its urban heritage image. In official agencies of European cities undertaking sensitive architectural interventions in their historic centers, there has been discussion for years over issues related to recovering the historic urban landscape. One of the issues addressed deals with recovering color as a sign of identity in culturally valuable historic architecture. Deciding on how to act and conserve materials and color as structural elements of the buildings entails fundamental nuances that define the urban landscape, and effectively conserving it must be granted certain importance in restoration projects. Likewise, it is hoped instrumental and scientific methods may be established to aide in building protection to advance the unique character of each place and territory.

Practical Actions in the City: Designs for an Environment

The aim of the present text is to explain the contents and the teaching of the course entitled “Product and Environment Colour Design”. This course is included in the “Specialization” called “Products for Collective Use” of the curriculum of the Master’s Degree in Design Engineering. It develops several concepts, procedures and, finally, the design of a specific product to be exhibited in urban environments and local stores. The proposed designs by the students of the Master’s degree are based on the study of colour and the interpretation of several featured authors with renewed artistic works and contemporaneous stiles. The present text explains two different ways of developing the final product designs: on one hand, students work throughout the design project learning; on the other hand, students work throughout the study of colours and shapes attending to the most influential contemporary art movements.

Putting the Colour Back into the Rua Junqueira in Lisbon

The aim of the present article is to explain the objectives, methodology and approval of a coordinated European Research Project leaded by the “Territory, Architectural and Design Research Centre” (CITAD) of the “Minerva Foundation, Culture, Education and Scientific Research” (FMCEIC) in Lisbon, together with the “Grupo de Investigacion del Color” (GIC) del Instituto Universitario de Restauracionm del Patrimonio (IRP). This project, entitled “Methodology for the development of a Color Plan in a Urban Environment” was founded by the “Technology and Science Foundation” (FCT). This project has lasted for three years and has been carried out by a multidisciplinary team of lecturers, doctors and professionals specialized in Colour in Architectural Heritage.

Teaching to Think Through the Hands a Teaching Experience About the Use of the Scale Model for Architectural Design

In the contemporary architectural environment, characterized by the massive introduction of computer graphics in the design process, the attention is caught, even in offices regularly proposing extremely formal complexity designs, by continuity in the employment of one of the oldest ways to display architecture and design: the three-dimensional model. In the “Analisis de Formas Arquitectonicas” course at the UPV (Spain), an articulated teaching methodology has introduced the use of the model to complement the sketch learning, as a graphic mechanism of formal comprehension for the architectural object.

Experimentation with Colour in Architectural Spaces

Even if the false myth of white in modernity is already over, we have a chromatic tradition to some extent broken and which needs to be rebuilt, or better re-experienced. In the Master’s subject “Color and Design of Spaces”, a teaching is developed seeking for a critical understanding of our visual culture and a creative experimentation with colour in architecture. We analyze in depth the strategic ability of colour to support a particular architectural intention together with its cultural and semantic connotations. Secondly, we experience the chromatic possibilities rendered by new building materials, lighting technologies and computer design software.