Abstract

History has loaded color white with meanings. Among them, purity and lightness stand out as values frequently associated with the effects of its use in architecture, which have become a true commonplace. Starting from the particular use that Le Corbusier made of white in his theorization of a new architecture devoid of the ties of the past, the article points to a more contemporary understanding of the abstract qualities that white contains, not so much as a color but as an idea. ‘White’ is therefore presented as a trigger for a way of thinking, that runs across philosophy, plastic arts and architecture to this days, but linked to the monochrome, flatness and its frontality, more than to the chromatic literalness of its superficial application. In this way, the repetitive textures of the blind surfaces that cover architecture today are proposed as the latest manifestation of this procedure that focuses on enhancing the effects of indifference and unity, blocking any possible interpretation of the interior. White as a concept no longer embodies the purest, but the purely opaque.