Massimo Caiazzo, designer and IACC vice-president will hold the lecture “Feed the Planet with Color”, a title linked to the Expo 2015’s themes, proposing an ex-cursus on color as “nourishment for our senses”. The lecture will take place on Thursday 21st May at the Italian Cultural Insitute in Washington.

The event, organized by the Italian Embassy and the Italian Cultural Institute of Washington, foresees a lecture about the mankind chromatic heritage and the Italian lifestyle’s colors.
Italy has always expressed in every field an original culture because of it central position in the Mediterranean region, that through many centuries of history has generated a diversified chromatic heritage that goes from the Pompeian red to the red Valentino, through Tiziano and the Ferrari. From Naples yellow to Versace yellow or Lamborghini. From Giotto or Capri blue to that of Guercino or Bulgari. From Veronese to Venice green. From Caravaggio to Armani black.
Color is into the collective intelligence in Italy as one of the aspect of a way of “knowing-how-to-do” and a way of living that has always represented in each field as fashion, design or cooking.
“Color in the built environment is one of the most appealing expression of the collective intelligence. Colors evoke emotions and cause unconscious reactions. They have a subjective and collective meanings and therefore contribute to set up a real emotional landscape”, said Massimo Caiazzo. “Nowadays it is necessary to develop a renovated awareness of our way of doing landscape in the full respect of the human sensibility and its variety”.
“If color plays an essential role into the metropolitan sceneries”, unederlines Caiazzo “in the last years the law of collective levelling has prevailed from a urban and architectural standpoint. Color has been reduced to an optional element and has been completely depleted of its social value. The color culture, instead, is a precious resource to redevelop and appraise the built environment and the life quality because color is not just an aesthetic sensation, but it influences our perception of temperature, volume, weight, sound, taste and passing time”.
Text by Gabriele Masi.