the existence of the light and colour cubes was discovered by information habitat: where information lives in november 1996 in the context of designing an online framework for follow-up to the habitat agenda that had been adopted by governments at habitat ii - the second united nations conference on human settlements that had been held in june 1996 in istanbul, turkey.

information habitat - having been responsible for the design and implementation of a web site and communications strategy for the preparations for habitat ii - had been asked in august 1996 by dr. wally n'dow - then executive director of the united nations centre for human settlements - to design a "road map to istanbul + five" in preparation for the five year review of habitat ii that would focus on the roles of the various non-governmental partners that had been identified in the habitat agenda as having key roles to play in implementing the habitat agenda.

dr. n'dow had suggested that i consider the use of colours to track the various partners. in the course of reflecting on how to use colour in a web site - in the broader context of exploring opportunities for participatory online processes for the partners - i came across a page on a web site that had been set up to allow remote electronic participation in a conference to be held in sidney, nova scotia. the page had a table with different background colours for the different cells,
using the methodology for this page - which used the expression 'bgcolor="#rrggbb" - where rr, gg and bb are two digit hexadecimal numbers indicating the intensity of each of the primary colours of light: red, green and blue - i began to explore variations of colours on sample web pages.

reflecting on my initial efforts a few days later - in november 1996 - it suddenly dawned on me that this expression - through which any colour could be described - was equivalent to x, y and z coordinates of a cube with dimensions of red, green and blue. it was a short step to realizing that this meant that all colours can be contained in such a cube.

to be continued ...