The Colours of... ‘No longer just a thin layer of change, but something that genuinely alters perception.’ Rem Koolhaas Library of Congress Cataloging-in- © 2015 VK Projects Naarden Publication data. A CIP catalog record © 2015 Birkhäuser Verlag GmbH, Basel for this book has been applied for at P.O. Box 44, 4009 Basel, Switzerland the Library of Congress. Part of Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Munich/Boston Bibliographic information published by the German National Library. The Ger- Printed on acid-free paper produced man National Library lists this publication from chlorine-free pulp. TCF ∞ in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available ISBN 978-3-03821-586-8 on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or www.birkhauser.com part of the material is concerned, specifi- cally the rights of translation, reprinting, re-use of illustrations, recitation, broad- casting, reproduction on microfilms or in other ways, and storage in databases. For any kind of use, permission of the copyright owner must be obtained. This publication is also available as an e-book (ISBN PDF 978-3-03821-365-9; ISBN EPUB 978-3-03821-685-8). The Colours of... Frank O. Gehry Edited by Jean Nouvel Cees W. de Jong Wang Shu BIG Essays by Stefano Boeri Erik Mattie Zaha Hadid Sophie Roulet Herzog & de Meuron Bert de Muynck Steven Holl Architects Toyo Ito Lui Jiakun Michael Malzan Architecture Giancarlo Mazzanti Enric Ruiz-Geli, Cloud 9 SANAA Jean Nouvel 84 Images in colour By Sophie Roulet 94 Coloured depths Agbar Tower, Barcelona 112 Vivid red colour Serpentine Pavilion, London 126 Lantern magic Concert Hall, Copenhagen Contents 138 A vibrant red line The red kilometer, Bergamo Wang Shu The Colours of... 152 Translating tradition for modern times 7 Introduction by Cees W. de Jong By Bert de Muynck Frank O. Gehry 168 Old and beautiful material 20 The balance between form and colour Historic Museum, Ningbo By Erik Mattie 180 Traditional Chinese garden Park Pavilion, Jinhua 34 Collage of form and colour 188 Architecture needs time to change Museum of Biodiversity, Panama China Academy of Art, Hangzhou 52 Bend and fold colour 200 Meditation and poetry New World Symphony, Miami Wa Shan Guesthouse, Hangzhou 68 Colour of the mind Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, Las Vegas 224 Colour in perspective Lui Jiakun Vision and perception 310 Favourite colour pink By Erik Mattie Hu Huishan Earthquake Memorial, Sichuan BIG Michael Malzan Architecture 236 Light blue texture 318 Rhythm of light and shadow Danish Pavilion, EXPO 2010, Shanghai New Carver Apartments, Los Angeles 246 Colour coded master plan 326 Texture, form, light and colour Superkilen Urban Park, Copenhagen Inner City Arts Campus, Los Angeles Stefano Boeri Giancarlo Mazzanti 254 Glass and basalt prism 334 Interrelated colour Complex of Buildings at La Maddalena, Sardinia Timayui School, Santa Marta Zaha Hadid Enric Ruiz-Geli, Cloud 9 266 Suspended black 346 Transparent colour MAXXI Museum, Rome Media Tic Building, Barcelona Herzog & de Meuron SANAA 278 Many shades of green 358 Bright golden colour 28 Condominiums at 40 Bond Street, New York Derek Lam Store, New York Steven Holl Architects 368 About the authors 288 Open colour Linked Hybrid Apartment Complex , Beijing 372 Acknowledgements Toyo Ito 373 Illustration credits 302 Polished painted colour Mikimoto Ginza 2, Tokyo 374 Reference literature ‘Colour reflects the turbulence that rocks societies around the world we live in.’ The Colours of... Introduction by Cees W. de Jong ‘That man came. Newton, with the help of nothing more than a prism, opened our eyes to the fact that light is an agglomeration of coloured rays which, all together, produce the colour white. (…) The first is the colour of fire; the second, lemon; the third, yellow; the fourth, green; the fifth, blue; the sixth, indigo; the seventh, violet. Each of these rays, though sifted 1 Voltaire, Lettres philosophiques (1733) in: Philosophical Letters: Letters afterwards through a hundred other prisms, Concerning the English Nation. Dover Publications, Mineola, New York, 2003 will keep its colour unchanged, just as gold (unabridged reprint of the Bobbs-Mer- rill, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1962 edition once refined changes no more in crucibles.’ 1 translated by Ernest Dilworth), p. 76. 7 Alessandro Mendini. Norman Foster. Blue Galla Placidia. ‘295 Yellow is the corporate colour of the Renault Centre, Swindon, UK. In turn, this building was an important symbol of their corporate culture.’ ‘Colour has often been considered the feminine element in architecture, which changes accord- ing to fashion, rather than which is eternal and lasts.’ Rem Koolhaas. Richard Meier. Attribute. Personal choice red. White. Hand-painted sample with brush strokes. Colour red of BiC ballpoint. 8 The Colours of... Colour is important to our lives, perhaps even essential. Artists, designers and architects all use colour in their own unique and intensely personal way. Colour reflects the turbulence that rocks societies around the world we live in. Our own personal connection to colour can also be a source of inspira- tion. In the past I worked with four renowned architects, Mendini, Foster, Koolhaas and Meier, to create and publish four completely different books about colour. Each of these four architects has their own approach to using colour: ‘I have always treated the matter of colour in a very instinctive way. I may 2 In a conversation with Stefano rely on rules and methodologies, but they spring from instinct, not from Casciani, Italy. Alessandro Mendini, 30 Colours. Published in 1996, optico-scientific or spiritualistic facts.’ Alessandro Mendini 2 V+K Bussum / AkzoNobel. ‘Colour is perceived with the eyes. Therefore, it is one of the elements of reaction to the five senses, like flavour, taste, sound, smell ... Colour might be like taste, or a kind of olfaction, a sort of sound. Indeed there are similarities. There is something slightly culinary about putting colours Introduction by Cees W. de Jong 9 together in a building, in an object, don’t you think? And similarly, it is a rhythmic thing. In theories of colour, in fact, colour is repeatedly said to correspond to tones, sounds.’ Alessandro Mendini 2 ‘Historically, there is a long tradition of a distinction between the formal, or structural elements in architecture or painting and the element of colour (often represented as decorative or ornamental), between disegno and colore. This idea, which originates in Classical Greece, was redefined in the Renaissance and continues, through 19th century academic art theories like that of Charles Blanc, to the modern period. In my architecture also, colour seems generally to be distinct from those elements that form or shape a building: the structural members and the partitions or walls which delimit the space, although the yellow-painted structural frames of the Renault Centre seem to have been an important exception. Colour has often been considered the feminine element in architecture, which changes according 3 In a conversation between Norman Foster, John Small, Cees W. de Jong, to fashion, rather than which is eternal and lasts. Form and structure, on the Hans Ultee and Paul Overy at the offices of Sir Norman Foster and Partners at other hand, have traditionally been perceived as masculine and enduring. Riverside Three, 22 Hester Road, Lon- don SW11, on 27 June 1997. Norman In a world of shifting ideas about gender and its stereotypes, colour today Foster 30 Colours. Published in 1998, V+K Blaricum / AkzoNobel. plays a different role from the recent past in this respect.’ Norman Foster 3 ‘The modernist artist and designer László Moholy-Nagy claimed that what was most important in modern art, architecture and design was very often what was left out. In Foster’s buildings, colour is not so much that which is left out, as the indeterminate element that connotes change and use within architecture, its sustainability, an element that is sometimes 10 The Colours of...