Il colore dello spazio pubblico

The public space has three dimensions and has colors. Its thickness is determined by the nature, or by the architectural backdrops made of solid materials that have a color like wood, cement, stone or brick. Modernity breaks once and for all the profound link between material and color in architecture, finally making this relationship free to characterize the public space. Then after the end of nine hundred the color, freed from the slavery of matter assumes an increasingly decisive importance for public spaces. It is a landmark, a scene able to create new significances, becomes volume, environment: a reference point and a background for the social emancipation of local communities. The constantly increasing use of colored surfaces in contemporary urban spaces is probably due to the integration between urban design and landscape design in the actions of urban regeneration. It concerns the transfiguration of already open spaces from functional to emotional and can be specifically analyzed emphasizing three non-opposing but integrated design concepts -performative, social, narrative- that characterize the new role of color in the design of public space. The first concept is color as a performance device. This is the technological paradigm declined as a principle of operational aesthetics. The performative painting versus coloring in itself means focusing the color project on the innovative results appreciable in ecological terms, but not only. Color as a social action device is the second concept. This is the idea of many (even temporary) works on buildings and public spaces. Using paintings or graffiti on the walls is a choice that has often radical meanings that certainly has the public space as a point of reference. The third concept is that of color as a narrative device and expresses the need to load the project of public space with new meanings and to discover with different eyes what is already there. The narrative can tells the story of the place and of its inhabitants, reveals a new dimension of the urban public space that can only be perceived through color.