Color
When the phenomena are endless
"There can be no description or theory of color per se," Irwin insists, "when the phenomena are endless." The notion that color can be reduced to a series of codes, to a grammar, or to a form of "mathematics," to use Wittegensetein's term, is, for Irwin, nonsense, since color is dependent on context and ground-up perceptual experience. Beginning with color codes or concepts was to reduce in advance an infinitely wide range of phenomena to a limited set of categories, editing out all specificity in favor of abstraction.
Irwin Fluorescents
In order: Kenny Price, Blue Lou, Legacy, Fourfold, Niagara.
Irwin has explained that he decided to use the fluorescent tubes in the "dumbest" way possible, but, as one critic cautioned, "dumb, it turns out, has a special meaning for him: It's a form so simple that you end up not paying attention to it as a form." Irwin's interest was, rather, in the range of light, color, reflection, and shadow interaction made possible by combining tubes with different hues and finishes by wrapping them with theatrical gels.
In the lee of the sills
The first thing you register here is the dramatic inconsistency in the coloration of the timber cladding the house in Haldenstein: the natural hues of the wood survive only in the lee of the sills, like re-growth along the parties of a head of dyed hair. But a second glance takes in the precision of the cuts made to accommodate the window and the fact that the pine is used in seamless lengths.
A universal correspondence
In 1923 Kandinsky proposed a universal correspondence between the three elementary shapes and the three primary colors: the dynamic triangle is inherently yellow, the static square is intrinsically red, and the serene circle is naturally blue.
The series ▲■● represents Kandinsky’s attempt to prove a universal correlation between color and geometry; it has become one of the most famous icons of the Bauhaus. Kandinsky conceived of these colors and shapes as a series of oppositions: yellow and blue represent the extremes of hot/cold, light/dark, and active/passive, while red is the intermediary between them. The triangle, square, and circle are graphic equivalents of the same polarities.
250. Warm Colors
Problem
The greens and grays of hospitals and office corridors are depressing and cold. Natural wood, sunlight, bright colors are warm. In some way, the warmth of the colors in a room makes a great deal of difference between comfort and discomfort.
Solution
Choose surface colors which, together with the color of the natural light, reflected light, and artificial lights, create a warm light in the rooms.
Hues subdued
Colors in nature are, in general, more subdued than what comes directly from the pencil or the tube of paint. Greens, especially, tend to be a lot browner than we expect.
The palette of nature
"What nature does with its colors is invariably—the palette of nature is twice as complicated, at least twice as sophisticated, as anything any artist can ever come up with. On a couple levels.
To start with, there are these amazing combinations of colors, filled with surprises and almost never wrong. I don't know how Nature ever conceived to put, say, those together. But, boy, are they right on the money!"
Colors in nature
Twice every summer we discussed whether colors in nature could clash.
Color codes
When not compelled to do otherwise, the Braun design team’s use of color in products was reduced to highly specific areas such as control switches. Restricting the use of color to small points on an otherwise neutral object concentrates its effect, which is shifted away from decoration and towards function, especially when each color is assigned a signal role such as green for ‘on / off' switches, red for ‘fm’ and yellow for ‘phono’ on hi-fis or yellow for the second hand on clocks and watches.
This color coding of operating details is a primary example of the self-explanatory nature of Braun products.
Sketches
Sketches and written notes.
The deception of color
In order to use color effectively it is necessary to recognize
that color deceives continually.What counts here – first and last – is not so-called knowledge
of so-called facts, but vision – seeing.Not the what but the how
Our concern is the interaction of color; that is, seeing
what happens between colors.We are able to hear a single tone.
But we almost never (that is, without special devices) see a single color
unconnected and unrelated to other colors.
Colors present themselves in continuous flux, constantly related to
changing neighbors and changing conditions.As a consequence, this proves for the reading of color
what Kandinsky often demanded for the reading of art:
what counts is not the what but the how.Disliked colors
We try to recognize our preferences and our aversions –
what colors dominate in our work; what colors, on the other hand,
are rejected, disliked, or of no appeal. Usually a special effort
in using disliked colors ends with our falling in love with them.A cook with taste
Observe the interior and exterior, the furniture and textile decoration
following such color schemes, as well as commercialized color “suggestions”
for innumerable do-it-yourselves.Our conclusion: we may forget for a while those rules of thumb
of complementaries, whether complete or “split”, and of triads and
tetrads as well.
They are worn out.Second, no mechanical color system is flexible enough
to precalculate the manifold changing factors, as named before,
in a single prescribed recipe.Good painting, good coloring, is comparable to good cooking.
Even a good cooking recipe demands tasting and repeated tasting
while it is being followed.
And the best tasting still depends on a cook with taste.Does it have color?
Whether something “has color” or not is as hard to define verbally as are
such questions as “what is music” or “what is musical."Chromatic mutiny
Nevertheless there were a number of colorful appliances produced by Braun, particularly from the late 1960s onwards, when plastics in bright primary colors became fashionable and available.
T3 domino lighter
KMM 2 coffee grinder
HLD 4 hairdryer
KF 145 coffee maker
HT 95 pop-up toasterWhen Rams’s team used color in such a way, it was uncompromising in its intensity: loud and demanding. The highly reduced forms of the products that it clothed, which had gently rounded edges, smooth opaque surfaces and discreet (usually black) detailing only served to increase this intensity.
"The intention was to create product alternatives for people who wished for strong color highlights in their living environments. This impulse came from marketing - not from design,” says Rams, dissociating himself from this approach. This was one instance where marketing got the upper hand in the decision-making process and the design team had to bow to contemporary fashion.
Indeed, there is a defiant aspect to these chromatic exceptions; they are not so much compromises as mutinous responses. Nevertheless, the resulting products are beautiful objects in their stand-alone way.
A strange calligraphy
Along the sand there will be frisky shadows, that will dance and fall away.
Or, if there is snow, the flames will write a strange calligraphy against the whiteness.Interaction of Color
A Book by Josef AlbersBetter colormaps?
An Article by Mark LibermanA modest sample of alternative ways of coloring the same type of 2-D density plots of rates of F0 change and amplitude change.
Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours
A Website by Nicholas RougeuxA recreation of the original 1821 color guidebook with new cross references, photographic examples, and posters designed by Nicholas Rougeux.
Color Controversy
A Website by Leo RobinovitchSo some friends and I were talking about colors one day and how we all see colors a bit differently and how that's neat.
But is there a color that is interpreted differently THE MOST? Is there a most controversial color? Well, (if I contrive an ongoing survey and collect data about it), the answer is yes, of course!
The Subtleties of Color
A Series by Robert SimmonThe use of color to display data is a solved problem, right? Just pick a palette from a drop-down menu (probably either a grayscale ramp or a rainbow), set start and end points, press “apply,” and you’re done. Although we all know it’s not that simple, that’s often how colors are chosen in the real world. As a result, many visualizations fail to represent the underlying data as well as they could.
Understanding Architecture
We have turned our faces towards the future
During the modern era, we have even changed our bodily position in relation to the flow of time; the Greeks understood that the future came from behind their backs and the past receded away in front of their eyes, but we have turned our faces towards the future, and the past is disappearing behind our backs.
A timeless space
Our culture reveres youth, aspires to agelessness and is frightened by signs of age, wear and decay. As a consequence of this obsession, and the qualities of our man-made materials, contemporary environments have lost their capacity to contain and communicate traces of time. Our buildings often seem to exist in a timeless space without contact with the past or confidence for the future.
Theatre Epidaurus, Greece, 330 BC
Mounting the massive cut stone stairs [of the amphitheater], we note the way in which the overhanging front edge of each seat folds down to form the first step up to the next section, the second step being the front edge of the foot space of the next set of seats. This detail is complemented by the way the undercut beneath the front edge of each seat is curved rather than sharp-edged — a detail that, being hidden in the shadows, is first revealed by our touch. An equally subtle detail is the way each stone seat is lifted slightly above the level of the foot space behind it, so that one does not set foot on the surface upon which others sit.
The secret life of sculpture
The sculptures are arranged in informal groupings, carefully placed to catch the natural light that brings them to life, so that, when we enter the room, it seems we have interrupted an ongoing conversation among them.
Church on the Water, Hokkaido, 1985–8
At the edges of the outer walls to left and right, the slate floor is held back, creating a shadowed slot into which the concrete wall slips out of sight. Because the wall does not meet and bear upon the floor, as is usual, the relationship of the wall to the ground is uncertain, and the rippling surface of the black slate floor appears to float free of the walls, merging with the rippling surface of the water.
We must go with them
"You cannot make what you want to make, but what the material permits you to make. You cannot make out of marble what you would make out of wood, or out of wood what you would make out of stone. Each material has its own life, and one cannot without punishment destroy a living material to make a dumb senseless thing. That is, we must not try to make our materials speak our language, we must go with them to the point where others will understand their language."
— Constantin Brancusi
Wood
Wood speaks of its two existences and timescales: its first life as a growing tree and the second as a human artefact made by the caring hand of a carpenter or cabinet maker.
Lightness & Heaviness
"Lightness is born of heaviness and heaviness of lightness, instantaneously and reciprocally, returning creation for creation, gaining strength proportionally as they gain in life, and as much more in life as they gain in motion. They destroy one another also at the same time, fulfilling a mutual vendetta, proof that lightness is created only in conjunction with heaviness, and heaviness only where lightness follows."
— Leonardo da Vinci
Errors & Crimes
"A builder who hides any part of the building frame, abandons the only permissible and, at the same time, the most beautiful embellishment of architecture. The one that hides a loadbearing column makes an error. The one who builds a false column commits a crime."
— Auguste Perret
Desired qualities of light
In today's architectural practice, light is regrettably often treated merely as a quantitative phenomenon; design regulations and standards specify required minimum level of illumination and window sizes, but they do not define any maximum levels of luminance, or desired qualities of light, such as its orientation, temperature, color, or reflectedness.
Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, 1959–65
If you are there at sunset, as are the scientists every day, you see the most magical of transformations: the golden glow that fills the sky to the west is first reflected in the water of the ocean and then shoots like a line of fire up through the gathering darkness of the plaza's stone floor, to reach its source in the cubic fountain. The court is breathtaking in its sublime power, opening at the edge of the continent to the Pacific Ocean and framing the light blue-on-dark-blue horizon line of the sea and sky.
Secreted
House and home are two evidently different notions: house is a material, spatial and architectural concept, whereas home is a unique setting and product of the act of dwelling itself. Home is charged with subjective meanings, symbols, memories, and images.
A home is also a set of personal rituals, habits, rhythms, and routines of everyday life. In every sense of the word, home is an extension of its inhabitant. Consequently it can not be an object of design by an architect; it is secreted, as it were, by the actual act of dwelling.
Room continuum
The Modernist aspiration for continuous, flowing space and open interconnections between spaces has a tendency to reduce the sense of room-ness by turning space into a continuum, creating a flow through units instead of projecting a spatial object.
Tree, leaf, house, city
"Tree is leaf and leaf is tree – house is city and city is house. A city is not a city unless it is also a huge house – a house is a house only if it is also a tiny city."
— Aldo van Eyck
Chapel of St. Ignatius, Seattle, 1995–7
The exterior walls of the Chapel of St. Ignatius are made of large, complexly interlocking concrete slabs, a variegated golden-brown in color, and the roofs are clad in light grey metal. At the corners where the joints between the wall panels interlock are windows of various rectangular shapes and sizes, and the egg-shaped metal anchors that were used to lift the walls in place project slightly forward, casting small shadows.
- Bells
Dwelling in ritual
Even a dwelling is a device that generates a distinct pattern of daily activities and their relationships. Some buildings are explicitly built for ritual, but the repetition of any activity, either mundane or religious, tends to ritualize them, and by facilitating this, an architectural structure can turn gradually – sometimes even unnoticeably – into an instrument of ritual.
Ise Shrines, Nagoya, 685–Present
The Ise Shrines at Naiku and Geku, near Nagoya, highly refined idealizations of ancient agricultural storehouses, have been rebuilt at least sixty-one times since first being established. The entire twenty-year building cycle is a continuous, precisely defined ritual. The result is unlike any religious structure in the world, one that is always new, and at the same time over a millenium old.
Memory & Fantasy
Memory and fantasy are related, as are recollection and imagination; one who cannot remember also cannot imagine, as memory is the very soil of imagination.
In our bodies
We tend to think of our memory as a cerebral capacity, but the act of memorizing engages our entire body. Remembering is not solely a mental even; it is also an act of embodiment and bodily projection. Memories are not only hidden in the electrochemical processes of the brain; they are also stored in our skeletons, muscles, senses, and skin.
American Folk Art Museum, New York City, 1998–2001
As we draw closer, we see that the three-faceted planes of the museum are fabricated out of rectangular panels made of white bronze that was poured directly into dammed forms on the concrete floor of the foundry, producing a surface texture similar to both metal and stone.
Take your names with you
When the Masai of Kenya were forced to relocate, they took with them the names of hills, rivers, and plains, and fitted them to the topography of their new domicile.
The same desire is reflected in the countless European place names in the United States, as the borrowed names had the power to project a sense of familiarity in a strange and unfamiliar land.