Colour strategies

Written in conjunction with Tom Porter, an acclaimed colour specialist and author of several books on architectural drawing and environmental colour.

A basic role of colour in the built environment is to bring special identity to what the late Charles Moore described as the all-important ‘sense of place’. Indeed, colour, more than any other building attribute, can represent a direct reaction to the particularity of a context and form a human dialogue with the environment. But colour can also speak of the reason for a building, that is, make reference to its function or to its architectural style or make-up. In either case, colour provides for the designer a responsive signature of both the influence of the site and the building function.

Colour blending responds to the need to soften the impact of architectural form and mass on its setting. To do so, hues are selected which make harmonious reference to those found in the surrounding landscape or urban-scape, or to materials used on other buildings in the immediate site area. This form of blending is known as ‘colour attachment’.

Colour blending is often accompanied by the attendant need to reduce the impression of a large building mass. When this occurs, a kind of formal ‘camouflage’ can be applied which, enlisting smaller units of colour, breaks down the overall form of a building into a fragmented and a more visually digestible version of itself.

Diametrically opposed to colour blending and known as ‘colour detachment’ is the strategy of creating a building which functions as a visual centre of attention. This is a strategy which celebrates the architectural form in colour to provide a focal point. Often deployed to highlight the more interesting parts of a building, contrasting colours essentially respond to the basic human urge to decorate and the need to celebrate the building form as an eye-catching object.

While the blending process will decrease degrees of difference between the constituent hues of a building, the contrasting colour approach, in order to grab attention, exploits variation in hue, tonality and saturation.

Colour change between two distinct shades is not only in the nuance of colour (the relationship between chromatic strength and lightness), but also in the actual physical change of the perceived colour (hue). It can be seen to add another dimension to the aesthetic appeal of the chosen colour.

While a colour may appear to blend or harmonise in one instance or when viewed from one angle, when the viewer moves from A to B the colour could be seen to create new relationships or even contrast with the surrounding colours. In the realm of aesthetic theory, this colour shift stretches the static relationships between the perceived colours, so-called synchronic rhyme, to a new  ynamic and temporal dimension of diachronic rhyme.

This shifting colour dynamic holds an aesthetic appeal which has direct links to what author Tom Wolfe has described as architectural ‘ephemerality’, that is, the concept of the ‘intangibility’ and ‘dematerialisation’ of the building envelope which finds its roots in the pioneering Modernist visions of Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier.

Colour indexing uses contrasting hues to clearly define the structural elements of a building. This is an architectural diagramming process which discriminates between the working parts of a building. It has roots in antiquity, when, for example, the stepped layers of ziggurats were colour-coded and when many ancient Greek temples were colour-washed to differentiate columns from pediments. Today, colour indexing is commonly found on ‘high-tech’ buildings, where rich hues denote elements which hold and support, while more subdued hues denote hung or carried elements.

Colour branding refers to the architectural use of colour which references the building as a promotional tool in the marketing of corporate identity, products or services. There are many examples of this form of commercial heraldry: football stadia clad in the strip colour of the home side, or commercial buildings which flagship the associated colour of a brand or product.

A further consideration when developing a colour strategy is the deployed extent of a colour range. For instance, a single hue is often used to lessen the impact of the appearance of a highly articulated, complex form. This is a design move which seeks visual cohesion.

Alternatively, when visual excitement is the aim, this can be achieved by introducing colour variegation to less-articulated façades, with several colours being applied. Furthermore, the apparent size of a building can be lessened by avoiding the more saturated hues and using the more ‘atmospheric’ greys, bluish greys and dark blues, while the size of a smaller building form can be increased by selecting brighter, stronger hues and counter-pointing them.

Le Corbusier described his use of colour in a similar way, as a tool for modifying the formal impression of his buildings. For example, he described his use of hue to push the building toward the viewer or to reduce its impact on the eye. He talked of colours which ‘push and ‘pull’: reds and warm colours ‘pushing’ their form toward the viewer and blue and cool colours helping to make a form recede.

Similar to colour branding is the use of colour to symbolise a concept or association that relates (the use of) the building to its context or to its function. A common example of the former is the widespread use of blue on buildings near or associated with the sea.