Atomik: Studio Conversations #6

In colour : Colour in

By Mike Oades - Director, Atomik

In the final days of my architecture degree in 1992 we were preparing for our end of year show and designing the catalogue of our work.?As students, we had a healthy debate about whether our end of year catalogue should be in colour or black and white.?There were reasons for and against, but we finally agreed that it should be black and white. Influenced by some of Ben Kelly’s work for Factory Records in Manchester I was keen to show off my colourful fa?ades. Not to be disheartened, I redrew my submission for the catalogue with a key so that it could at least be coloured by numbers –?I have no idea whether anyone took up this glorious opportunity, but they would not have been disappointed.

Our collective body of work was surprisingly colourful compared to many pen and ink schools at the time. Perhaps this was because our School of Architecture was based within and Art College; then the Kent Institute of Art and Design (now University of the Creative Arts). Our first year was a quasi ‘Art Foundation Course’ where we were exposed to and had access to each of the other disciplines taught in the art school from etching, printing, painting, sculpture, fashion, film, photography and graphics.?We didn’t have a colour printer at the time, so that anything we wanted ‘in colour’ had to be self-coloured in some way.

Another potential stimulus for our colourful creations was our introduction to architecture and particularly German Expressionist Architecture by our first year tutor Tony Cooper.?Very little of this work was actually constructed and even less survives. Often what does survive are monochrome photographs and prints captured in the pages of contemporary journals – it seems that our struggle with showing our work in colour was not just an issue for our generation.

Through Tony we were able to understand that the small muddy photographs of the buildings that we saw in books like Kenneth Frampton’s ‘Modern Architecture: a critical history’, were actually complex multi-coloured compositions.?In fact, colour was integral to the concept of many of the buildings.?There were many theories employed about the use, selection and application of colour.?Rudolf Steiner’s work for example drew inspiration from Goethe’s theories of colour and he produced his own colour theories as a result.?Whilst Steiner’s theories were perhaps less scientific than Isaac Newton’s approach to the understanding of colour, he was able to evoke other meanings and the more spiritual qualities that material and applied colour possessed. The architect Bruno Taut also shared a keen interest in colour and light; his Glass Pavilion, built in 1914 for the Cologne Deutscher Werkbund Exhibition was a colourful jewel-like building built from concrete and coloured glass. I have since had the opportunity to experience some of these buildings myself or view the original artworks with my own eyes.?Like Hermann Finsterlin’s fantastical models and drawings that are all too often only found imprisoned on the pages of books or screens - they positively jump into polychromatic life in the flesh.

Whilst not necessarily the starting point, this foundation in colour is an essential part of my design process; whether it is developing a plan, an elevation, or a detail.?The approximation of colour and light helps me to think and rationalise ideas.?It could be the depiction of material texture and colour, the application of colour onto a surface or object, or simply coding drawings to distinguish different roles and responsibilities.

It is important too, to remember that there is no standard palette despite the global exposure of architecture over platforms like Dezeen.?Colour is inextricably linked to a location and its light conditions. Material colour has given many regions their architectural identity, whether it is the mud bricks of Khiva in Uzbekistan, or the granite buildings of Aberdeen.?Understanding how materials patinate, weather and discolour is also fundamental to how our buildings will look in time. With the application of opaque pigments, would the complex and subtle colour palettes of Louisa Hutton’s architectural compositions look faded and washed out in Mexico City? Similarly, would Luis Barragan’s bold block tones of his Mexican houses look positively dowdy in Berlin.

In my second year out, not so long after my colour by numbers submission to the end of term catalogue, I had the opportunity to complete the same task for someone else. My initial invitation to work at Foster and Partners consisted entirely on whether I could ‘colour in’. Luckily for me (and them) I could.?We didn’t win the competition for the beautifully coloured pink and green airport in Thailand, but I feel that I have been colouring in ever since.