Light and colour are powerful means in creating architecture, landscapes, and urban environments, yet within the broader field, they sometimes struggle to gain prominence and may even be under-researched. Over the past few decades, both light and colour have been increasingly viewed as providing possibilities as well as challenges—with respect to social and cultural as well as and ecological questions—within research, practice, and popular discourse alike. This has direct and indirect effects on how environments are designed and built. Whilst both fields have seen significant advances, they have also been confronted with increasing sustainability demands in connection with a range of aspects such as raw materials pollution, health and well-being concerns, multi-species considerations, and energy use. Against this backdrop, the annual symposium of the Nordic Association for Architectural Research (NAAR) is dedicated to topics relating to light and colour in the wider field of architecture.

Light and colour are fundamental to the experience and creation of architecture and urban planning. They are inseparable in human visual perception and together they create the visual experience of the environment; and whether consciously or not, architecture, landscapes, and urban design deal with light and colour by giving shape, form, and materiality to our lived environment. Of growing importance and relevance for the field, too, is how they support and affect not only human life, but other species as well as natural processes.[1] Understanding light, colour, and their interaction is thus fundamental for the professions responsible for forming, creating, and organizing them.

This understanding includes many aspects: environmental, social, cultural, aesthetic, psychological, perceptual, ecological, and many others. Colour, light, and material interact to create or communicate visual and tactile experiences, which also affect everything, from observable animals and insects to vegetation and microbes, in multifaceted, complex, and differentiated ways. They affect the atmosphere that is experienced, the expression of universal or/and local-cultural meanings, visual comfort and ergonomics, and wayfinding, and have both direct and indirect non-visual effects such as influencing alertness and the regulation of circadian rhythms as well as the emergence of heat island effects. Through its treatment of light and colour, architecture impacts living beings through reflecting, absorbing, and diffusing light, as well as creating the colour environments that these beings navigate and that may affect them directly or indirectly.

The NAF Symposium 2025 is dedicated to the interests of scholars and practitioners in the wider architectural field. We invite a broad range of scientific articles and academic essays, from practical and empirical experiments to theoretical and/or critical analyses addressing specific questions or broad concepts within these wider research challenges.

Colour

Colour has become an increasingly topical question in architecture and urban design over the past decades; around 2010 there was an increasing expression of disquiet over the use of achromatic colourants both in new, large-scale projects and on the domestic front. Barcode in Oslo, for example, was seen by many as a tipping point indicating that corporate development and the building industry were showing an increasing level of inhumanity in the production of space, and it was perhaps not a coincidence that ‘Arkitekuroppror’ began to gain traction in public awareness at this time.[2]

The past ten years have seen a return to a more general interest in implementing colour and a desire for a deeper understanding of the role played by colour in the production of space and place in the architectural and planning professions as well as amongst administrative stakeholders and the general public.[3] The aesthetics of material qualities and their colouration, new materials, buildings as well as landscapes and infrastructures, the restoration and maintenance of historical contexts, and adaptation and re-use are now of considerable interest. These interests also include considerations with respect to atmosphere, comfort, and human well-being. Whilst challenges have also arisen, with the impact of sustainability concerns leading to the use of new construction and surface materials, colouring agents, material restrictions, and energy technologies, with a noticeable impact on maintaining and developing colour quality in heritage-sensitive areas.

Light

Current lighting research points to the importance of expanding our understanding of light so as to be able to address physiological effects, which necessitates, besides ‘photometric’ considerations, also including ‘spectral’ or ‘non-visual’ aspects.[4] Broadening research questions concern both human well-being and engaging with ‘more-than-human’ perspectives, such as direct and indirect effects on other beings. At the same time, increasing densification puts pressure on the handling of daylight in both interior and exterior spaces.[5] Additionally, the potentials, risks, and effects of technological developments, such as the evolving characteristics of electric lighting and new types of glazing, need to be better understood.

The handling of light, whether electric, daylight, or from other light sources, also includes conflicts and synergies between human needs and preferences, energy use, indirect effects such as light pollution, and the living conditions and life of other species. There are various ways in which light’s relationship to architecture is also intertwined with other architectural aspects: Windows provide possibilities for light to enter or leak out, but also facilitate views and exposures, and are addressed both broadly in the architectural field and specifically within lighting design research. But from an aesthetic, cultural, experiential, and social perspective, how architecture and light interact also plays a role in creating atmospheres, experiences, conditions for orientation, and in communicating values and cultural meaning.

Thematic Tracks

We invite architectural researchers and practitioners to contribute with papers and essays that promote the understanding and use of colour and light along the thematic tracks described below. For all these tracks, we welcome contributions that include theoretical, critical, methodological, and empirical research, whereby contributions can be either more overarching or focussed or specific in character. All tracks also welcome submissions focussing on design strategies, methods, and concepts.

LIGHT AND COLOUR

Artistic and Aesthetic Dimensions

Colour and light are fundamental means of expression in architecture, and are also important in human perception: Colour and lighting contribute to the articulation of the work of architecture, its space and place. They create emotional moods and atmospheres. They may function as symbols and create meaning and identity. Debates on colour and light were important in classical architecture, and have been in modern as well as post-modern architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design as well. Throughout architectural history, the use of different colours, pigments, and sources of light have affected artistic and aesthetic expression, whether nature-, crafts-, or synthetically based. Traditionally, art and aesthetic approaches in general have influenced architecture substantially, and they continue to provide fertile ways to engage with colour and light alike. This track thereby focusses on artistic and aesthetic considerations of colour and light—including both artistic research and aesthetic analysis and discourse.

Social Dimensions (from the ‘Everyday Social’ to the ‘Societal’)

Light and colour are part of social life: social life generates and may require specific treatments of colour or light, and light and colour may affect what activities take place where—or at all. The architectural handling of light, such as how openings and covers are formed and arranged or how artificial light is distributed, also affects social relations in terms of facilitating or preventing views and exposures, for instance, how windows are simultaneously both views out of and into a building, and may be more one or the other depending on relative light levels. Colours are social and cultural signifiers that communicate a broad range of things. Both light and colour are also used positively to encourage or facilitate, whether preventively, such as in safety discourse, or critically, for example, how colour is used in norm-critical design. Such uses also affect different people in different ways. This track thereby welcomes contributions where the relation between, broadly speaking, social and societal questions, light and colour, and architecture are the focus.

Comfort, Health, and Human Well-Being

Within light and colour research, questions of comfort, health, and well-being have been important and assumed different characteristics over time. Research has ranged from qualitative studies to large-scale quantitative studies of how light and colour affect comfort, health, and well-being. This thematic track examines a combination of these questions and fields of research: whether interior or exterior, on a large or small scale, built environments and landscapes, direct or indirect, or over a long or short span of time. It can concern ergonomics, glare, sleep rhythms, wayfinding, sense of well-being, and be related to cognition and cognitive faculties or other perspectives. Contributions can thus range from specific to broader discussions addressing how individuals, groups, or entire populations relate to and are affected by light and colour from these perspectives. This track welcomes contributions engaging with how colour and light are linked to comfort, health, and well-being at both a large and small scale, in specific situations, or over longer time spans.

Light and Colour Ecologies: Post-Human/Multispecies Considerations

Light, colour, and materials relate not only to humans and human life, but also directly and indirectly affect other beings and other processes, from recognizable creatures such as mammals and insects to processes like heat distribution and water cycles. What does it mean to work with light and colour in architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design—whether daylight and the colours of materials or electric light and various paints and other colourings—from the perspectives of the ‘other’? Does, and if so how, a distinction between human and non-human or more-than-human help? And whether one makes this division or not, what challenges, potentials, and uncovered ground need to be addressed in order to expand the field of consideration for a broader inclusiveness of those beings and processes traditionally left out of the discourse on light and colour? This track welcomes contributions that address light and colour from a post-human, multispecies, or more-than-human perspectives, ranging from empirical analyses to artistic research explorations.

COLOUR

The Current and Future Impact of Environmental Sustainability on the Use of Colour in Architecture

The use of new materials, colouring agents, material restrictions, and energy technologies, have become important questions in sustainable development—including but not limited to questions of circularity and the reuse of components. The effect building materials have on the environment pushes architecture to change which materials are used and how, and to interrogate how the choice of materials in addition to choices of colouring affects colour expression. These developments highlight, on the one hand, that the use of colour has an impact on sustainability in various ways, and, on the other hand, that such developments may end up affecting how colour is or can be used in architecture. One can thereby find direct links between technological and material developments and the aesthetic and experiential concerns of architecture. This track welcomes contributions that engage with how colour—whether material colour, pigments, or other ways in which colour is applied in architecture—relates to sustainability challenges and sustainable development, and how this impacts architecture.

Historical Dimensions

Materials, colouring agents, material restrictions, and energy technologies are not only concerns for future sustainable development, but have also impacted the use of colour historically. Historical dimensions of colour therefore include both material-related and technological developments as well as shifting aesthetic, cultural, and architectural ideals. Traditional uses of colour may linger even when they are no longer technically motivated, just as shifts in use of colour can be related to shifts in ideals as well as new colouring techniques. Shifts in colours can, furthermore, depend on economic and political geographies and their effect on resource chains and price levels. Regardless of the reasons, historical uses of colour affect the current understanding of colour in architecture, but can also become contested topics, such as which colour the Royal Castle in Stockholm should be. Historical dimensions of colour, thus, also encompass crucial questions with respect to preservation and restoration. This track welcomes contributions that consider colour in and through history, whether cultural, aesthetic, or material histories.

Cultural Dimensions

Different cultures have different relations to colour. Here, we consider culture not only in the global geographical sense, but also in a differentiated local sense, such as subcultures and class differences within societies on national, regional, and at times local scales. The use of colours can signify cohesion as well as difference, and can do so in relation to history and tradition as well as within contemporary contexts, and many policies, plans, or regulations address colour either directly or indirectly: directly, for instance, through suggested or regulated ranges or types of colour, and indirectly through expectations of adapting to the surrounding context. One can also find that different architectural cultures work with colours differently. While such differences and belonging are important cultural aspects, colour can also be used as an affirmative means of cultural expression. The use of colour can thereby contribute to a sense of inclusion or exclusion, and concern who has the right to be present and represented. This track welcomes contributions that engage with cultural discourses, values, and negotiations based on the uses and expressions of colour, as well as contributions that study specific cultural uses or expressions of colour.

LIGHT

Designing Daylight in Architecture, Landscapes, and Urban Settings

Daylight is an important component in the design and experience of architecture, with effects ranging from how sites and spaces are or can be used, to their aesthetics and how they are experienced. In some situations, light creates spaces or has sculptural qualities all on its own. In the Nordic context, daylight also varies significantly between seasons, posing challenges and potentials that vary both seasonally as well as on a daily basis. In the treatment of daylight and shadow, recent technological developments in glazing and windows as well as construction play important roles in further broadening these challenges and possibilities by facilitating the construction of new shapes, new material expressions, and new relations between, for instance, energy saving or solar films and transparency. The handling of daylight, shadow and darkness are important to a similar extent in how landscapes are experienced and function. This track thereby includes the functional, technical, social, and aesthetic aspects of daylight.

New and Emerging Lighting Technologies

Technologies related to lighting for landscapes, architecture, and urban environments are developing rapidly, clearly affecting both the potentials and considerations of light. For instance, new electric light sources have significantly impacted the way lighting is and can be used, and approaches to regulating, controlling, and adapting light are growing. While this has facilitated many improvements to lit environments, it has also given rise to challenges connected with light pollution, both direct and indirect, which impacts both people and other species. Lighting for experiential, functional, and social purposes, which is being used more and more in directly aestheticized ways, such as in lighting installations or the illumination of the facades of cultural heritage buildings, contributes as a whole to increasing the general amount of light in inhabited as well as natural environments. This track focusses specifically on understanding the relationship between lighting technologies, lighting, and architecture.

Light Histories and Lighting Cultures

How light and darkness are and have been viewed varies over time, space, individuals, societies, and cultures. Thus, while the currently dominant trend of increasing light levels and regarding darkness an issue may appear universal, it is actually related to culture and history. What and who needs lit environments when, as well as lighting strategies and tactics, have also varied for many reasons, including but not limited to lighting technologies. In many cultures or eras, darkness also holds, or has held, significant social, cultural, religious, or other significances, and how people relate to darkness is diverse and multifaceted, a fact that is arguably of interest also today—not least considering ecological, energy, and light pollution challenges. In this track, these questions are at the forefront and it thus welcomes contributions that address both similarities and differences in the social and cultural relations to, as well treatment of lighting, light, and darkness between cultures and across time.

Organizing Committee

Department of Architecture and Technology, NTNU:

Dr Eivind Kasa, Associate Professor (coordinator)

Dr Barbara Szybinska Matusiak, Professor

Nordic Association of Architectural Research NAF/NAAR:

Dr Anne Elisabeth Toft, Associate Professor

Dr Magnus Rönn, Associate Professor

Dr Daniel Koch, Associate Professor

Guidelines

An abstract of 300 words, a list of 4–8 keywords, and a title and subtitles. The abstract must be anonymized by the author/s. We therefore urge you to remove all traces and references that might reveal

your identity as the author/s of the abstract. In this connection, please pay attention to whether, for example, named collaborations, institutions and research projects, etc. might possibly reveal your identity. The abstract title as well as the author’s name and email address should be sent (by email) in a separate document to the organizing committee no later than 15 March 2025. Note: a maximum of only three authors per abstract!

Authors whose abstracts are approved will be asked to submit a full paper no later than 13 October 2025. Submitted papers (anonymized) should have a minimum of 6,000 words but not exceed 8,000 words (excluding the abstract, references, and figures). Note: a maximum of only three authors per paper!

Authors should use endnotes (rather than a reference list). Max. 50 notes. Further guidelines will be sent at a later date to authors whose abstracts have been approved.

Important dates and deadlines:

Call for papers: 15 January 2025

Abstract deadline: 15 March 2025

Response to authors: 11 April 2025

Full paper: 13 October 2025

Symposium: 13–14 November 2025

Conference language:
English

Conference venue:
NTNU, Trondheim, Norway (in situ)

Proceedings publication:
A double-blind, peer-reviewed proceedings publication will follow the symposium. The proceedings will be in English, both printed and online.

Symposium fee:
Teachers and researchers €300, PhD students €200.
The fee includes a double-blind peer review process for full papers published in the resulting proceedings publication.

Email:

Send abstracts and conference papers to Anne Elisabeth Toft, aet@aarch.dk, and Magnus Rönn, magnus.ronn.arch@gmail.com

For general questions contact Eivind Kasa, eivind.kasa@ntnu.no

Homepage: (under construction)

AI Statement

In this NAF/NAAR-symposium, generative AI tools may only be used for language improvements such as spelling, grammar, and the general editing of abstract and papers.