WHITE SPACES

This paper brings white as a colour in designed interiors and whiteness in race together. The 'invisible', unacknowledged prevalence of whiteness in race is aligned with the silent yet pervasive ubiquity of white in architectural space. The paper asserts that both are privileged, that is the colour of the paint and epidermal whiteness. White walls, white surfaces and white expanses are designed to place all other colours into sharp contrast. The smoothness of these white surfaces also shows up texture and variation; the sameness of white in design is positioned as a basis for designed interiors. White in this sense becomes the one upright against which all else is peripheral and as such the paper argues that it has an elite status. This status is more often than not evidence in the all white interiors of expensive architectural spaces. The paper also argues that white as a colour is problematically conflated with light and its associated mythologies of goodness and cleanliness. In this way white as a colour is the insignia of white wealth and ostensible superiority. Specific architectural spaces are described and analysed in relation to white race privilege.