Full Spectrum - Clouds of Colour

Maya has contributed a chapter to the Full Spectrum Book edited by Elena Manfredini and Jasmine Benyamin.

Colour is architecture’s sharpest tool in the box. It has indexed everything from the feminine, cosmetic and vulgar to the pure, intrinsic and embodied. Colour has played a central role in the history of architecture. From the polychromy of the ancients to the great white interiors of high modernism. The figurative flourishes of postmodernism to the embedded sublime of contemporary building systems and facades. In contemporary architecture, colour has emerged as something powerful, both a mode of working and a political proposition. The second digital age has brought a fundamental shift in how architects engage colour. Employing the full range of colour puts forth a projective mode of action. It aids the democratisation of visual culture: opening the field to enable subjectivities, bring in new references and embrace new voices. This book explores the function of colour in contemporary architecture and argues it is not to present a vision of an idealised other world, but to prompt new imaginaries. Take in the full spectrum.

Maya's piece is titled Clouds of Colour. Clouds are as complex as the subject of colour. They cannot be easily classified, remaining open to continuous re-interpretations. Today, point clouds and their associated colour values, as constructed by contemporary imaging technologies, might help us look anew at the complicated entanglements of colour, cultural 'norms’ and identity within architecture.

It includes an engagement with the work of Ibiye Camp, a British Nigerian multidisciplinary artist, Lulu Jemimah & Vitjitua Ndjiharine, and Yara Feghali, founder of the studio Folly Feast Lab.