Yasmin Vobis

Yasmin Vobis

Founders/Arnold W. Brunner/Katherine Edwards Gordon Rome Prize
January 9–July 10, 2017
Profession
Principal, Ultramoderne, Providence, Rhode Island
Critic, Rhode Island School of Design
Project title
Disciplining Colore
Project description

Though color played an integral role in Roman architecture throughout the centuries, its importance has diminished since Giorgio Vasari first posited a fundamental split between disegno and colore in artistic production, linking the former to rationalism and the latter to intuition and lack of control. The aim of my work in Rome will be to resuscitate a discourse of color within the context of contemporary architectural practice—to give it a viable, precise, and fundamental role in architectural production once more. The investigation will begin with a study of various episodes in the history of architectural polychromy in Roman and Italian architecture, and will continue with an exploration of new analytical methods for drawing and modeling color. Speculations will reintroduce space in a direct way to develop a push-and-pull: a new interdependence between form and color to structure space.