• Korean Institute of Interior Design Journal
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.61-70
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• 2009

Rapid social changes and scientific advances of the $21^{th}c$ have brought on a major paradigm shift towards consilience, making boundaries more or less irrelevant. In the field of architecture, this is manifested in the emergence of colors that can be described as 'being aleatory', 'non-formal', 'non-deterministic' and 'perpetually evolving'. Contemporary architectural colors are not definitively fixed. They are rather liquid and metaphorical. Whereas the more traditional architectural colors have delivered clearly and precisely the intended symbolic meaning and visual information, those of today are less definitive and embody a more liquid and conceptual value system. This paper discusses the denoted signification and the meaning effect of the metaphorical color system found in contemporary architecture. This paper analyzes works of architecture from the late 20th century, when dramatic change sin architectural color system surfaced, to the more contemporary creations. Here, three categories of color are suggested, namely material color, spatial color and liquid color. Each categories considered in connection with deconstruction, holistic interactivity and the multiplicity of meanings that may result as information from the external world is perceived as stimulus to the inner mind. Contemporary architectural color scheme is characterized by its unpredictable vagueness of meaning, synesthetic engagement of imagination and chance, and expansion of the inner and outer world, all of which contribute to a metaphorical effect. The metaphorical color system of contemporary architecture can be classified into three dimensions, and it connects with human consciousness and amplifies itself through flexible and fluid communication. In this process non-physical colors materially serve as formal logic and room for varied interpretation of architectural space and our conceptual framework.