Prof Tim Edensor (Manchester Met University)
Abstract:
Though other disciplines have provided rich accounts of the physical, psychological and cultural effects of colour, geographers have not. It is as if space, place, landscape and cities are monochrome realms. In this presentation, after discussing the complex debates that surround the nature and perceptual experience of colour, I explore how colour resonates with symbolic meanings and is enmeshed in power relations. I then turn to consider the ways in which urban places have been shaped by colour, and focus on the pervasive chromophobia that has typified western colour design. I conclude by discussing some recent examples in which colour is used to challenge this design orthodoxy.
Speaker Bio:
Tim Edensor is Professor of Social and Cultural Geography at the Institute of Place Management, Manchester Metropolitan University. He is the author of Tourists at the Taj (1998), National Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life (2002) and Industrial Ruins: Space, Aesthetics and Materiality (2005), and editor of Geographies of Rhythm (2010). More recently, he has authored From Light to Dark: Daylight, Illumination and Gloom (2017) and Stone: Stories of Urban Materiality (2020). He is also co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Place (2020), Rethinking Darkness: Cultures, Histories, Practices (2020) and Weather: Spaces, Mobilities and Affects (2020). He is currently working on a book about a 9th century Scottish stone cross and landscape.