Colour for Architects
Sunday Morning Colour Talk with Juan Serra Lluch
On Sunday, 8 February 2026, our guest was Juan Serra Lluch, PhD architect, Full Professor at the School of Architecture (ETSA) of the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), and Sub-Dean of Research. He presented his book, Color for Architects.
Colour is essential to architecture yet often misunderstood and overlooked in education; this engaging, richly illustrated volume brings clarity to colour theory by seamlessly blending theory, practice, and real-world examples, offering designers practical tools to confidently use colour in architectural design.
Colour is an integral part of architectural design, yet it remains one of its most enigmatic components. Despite its impact, formal colour theory is often overlooked in architectural curricula, leaving architects to puzzle out the hows and whys of which colours to select and how they interact, complement or clash.
Color for Architects is profusely illustrated and provides a clear, concise primer on colour for designers of every kind. This latest volume in our Architecture Briefs series combines the theoretical and practical, providing the basics on which to build a fuller mastery of this essential component of design. A wealth of built examples, exercises, and activities allows students to apply their learning of colour to real-world situations.
If you’d like to read the book, there are English and French versions available.
You can buy the English book here:
Neue Galerie / Standaard Boekhandel / Biblio / Architectura & Natura
French version, published by Le Moniteur: Utiliser la couleur dans un projet d’architecture, can be bought here:
Libris.nl / Athenaeum Scheltema / Filigranes / Le Moniteur
*ICA-Belgium is an affiliate of Routledge, Libris and Atheneum Scheltema. We may earn a small commission from qualifying purchases made through these links, at no cost to you, which helps support our mission.
ABOUT
Juan Serra is PhD architect, Full Professor in the School of Architecture (ETSA) of the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) in Spain, and Sub-Dean of Research at ETSA. He is co-chair of the Study Group on Environmental Colour Design of the International Color Association (AIC), and member of the Colour Research Group in Architecture of the Heritage Restoration Institute (IRP-UPV). Editor in Chief of VLC Architecture: Research Journal (UPV), and member of the editorial board of Colour Research and Application (Wiley). He has been a Fulbright Visiting Researcher at the Munsell Color Science Laboratory (RIT 2023) and visiting researcher in Oxford, Milan, Paris, Lisbon and Lima. He is a regular contributor to the AIC Colour Congresses, and the Architectural Graphic Expression International Congresses (EGA). He has been a researcher in competitive national and international projects about color restoration, colour integration of buildings, colour perception in interior architecture, colour for wellbeing and performance, and neuroarchitecture. He has published numerous papers in indexed research journals and is author of the book Color for Architects (NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2019).
juaserl1@upv.edu.es | Orcid | Grupo de Investigación del Color en Arquitectura IRP
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