Preface

The Colour and Light in Architecture international conference is the first in Venice in this new millennium. It follows two previous national conferences held in Venice, concentrating on Italian interest in the topics of this event. Until the beginning of this century, academia, in particular Italian departments of Architecture, have neglected colour in architecture: we offer no courses specifically on colour, for instance. There have been personal investigations by isolated though high-quality researchers. The father of ‘city colour plans’ is Italian, for example – Professor Giovanni Brino, who made the first plan in Turin during 1978–1983 – and there have been important experiments, for instance in and around Genoa and in many historical cities, but these focused mainly on the restoration of ancient buildings or old city façades. Now a new interest is growing up, concentrating on landscape regeneration.