COLOR

Color had always been fundamental to the visual and symbolic human experience of
architecture until the advent of modernism, which largely dismissed its evocative effects
as ornamental and unmodern. Subjugated for decades by the monochromatic architecture
of the International Style, color reemerged in the latter half of the 20th century to again
take its place as a significant design aspect of architectural form.
By the beginning of the 20th century, the scientific understanding of color through
theories of physical light, pigments, and human perception was accepted within standard
artistic methods and incorporated into art and design education. Following the color
experiments of Cubism, the Dutch De Stijl movement conceptualized a spatial use of
color to unify two-and three-dimensional forms. In De Stijl M anifes to V (1923), Cor van Eesteren, Theo van
Doesburg, and Gerrit Rietveld argued, “We have given color its rightful place in
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architecture and we assert that painting separated from the architectonic construction (i.e.
the picture) has no right to exist.” This theory was followed rigorously in architectural
examples, such as Gerrit Rietveld’s Schröder-Schräder House, a design that dispersed
painter Piet Mondrian’s floating planes of color into three dimensions.
Design instruction at the Bauhaus carefully limited color application to abstract
compositions and the intrinsic color of materials. Color theory and composition was one
of the fundamental principles taught within the Preliminary (“Basic”) Course, and color
was considered to be instructional content of the same importance as building materials
in later courses. Among the significant instructors at the Bauhaus who contributed to the
evolution of color theory were Paul Klee, Johannes Itten, and Josef Albers.
Though methods of Bauhaus instruction became popular throughout architecture
schools, color was largely dismissed as an aspect of architectural design because of the
modernist dictum against ornamentation. White planar surfaces and structural elements
became the formal language of modernism as it spread throughout the world as the
International Style. Paradoxically, the work of a number of significant Modern architects
still involved color theory and application. Bruno Taut combined practice as an artist with
architectural design, as did Le Corbusier, who produced complex color schemes for
particular elements within his buildings, sometimes examined through dozens of paint
swatches and colored sketches (Unite d’Habitation, 1945–52). After being reconstructed
in 1986, the richly colored stone surfaces of Mies van der Rohe’s German Pavilion
(1929)—known after its demolition only through black-and-white photographs—were
recognized to be as intentionally spatial as the architectural forms themselves.
Among architects who designed through modernism’s influence, Luis Barragán
integrated color most fully into spatial effects. His Cuadra San Cristóbal in Mexico
(1968) and the Francisco Gilardi House (1976), with its striking blue-walled dining room
and floating red column over water, are among his most significant achievements.
By midcentury advances in engineering and psychology began to create new
“functional” color sciences that ranged from thermal absorption of surfaces to human
visual recognition. Schemes of colorization were classified for building safety and egress
as well as for building components, such as wiring and mechanical systems. Renzo Piano
and Richard Rogers used these as an aesthetic in the Pompidou Center (1977) by
exposing major building systems on the exterior, painted in colors based on the
appropriate standard. The building industry also began to institute color standards for the
selection of building products and finishes.
The advent of Postmodernism in the 1960s returned the possibilities of color to
architectural design. Robert Venturi argued against modernism through a reinvigorated
interest in the complex, evocative, and ambiguous characteristics of architecture. His first
significant built work, the Vanna Venturi House (1964), was painted a disturbing olive
green, intentionally provoking arguments for and against the International Style’s “white”
architecture. Partnered with Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour, Venturi continued
to incorporate bold color patterns and iconography in building design, echoing the
graphic abstractions of pop art.
Other Postmodern architects began to use color profusely throughout their
work, highlighting building surfaces and elements with sometimes raucous
color combinations. Notable among these are Charles Moore (Piazza
d’Italia, 1975–78), Aldo van Eyck (Mothers’ House, 1973–78),
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Arquitectonica (Spear House, 1976–78), and Michael Graves, who
abstracted the formal language of classical architecture and appropriated
its muted “Italian” colors—yellows, ochers, and terra-cottas—in his Port-land Public Services Building (1980). British architect James Stirling repeatedly used a
signature yellow-green, which was applied to hand railings, window frames, and other
details in a number of building designs (Neue Staatsgalerie, 1977–84). Following earlier
work by Barragán, Ricardo Legorreta continued exploring abstractly modernist forms
covered in vibrant, saturated colors typical of the vernacular traditions in his native
Mexico (Solana, 1991).
As in the infrequent use of color in modernism, color in the Postmodern style was
most often employed to give articulation to building elements. This application of color
was more compositional than spatial because it tended to increase the contrast of
elements to one another—making their tectonics and organization more evident—rather
than manipulating space with the advancing and receding characteristics of colored
surfaces.
Frank Gehry choose materials and finishes with consistent color, applying them
individually to forms so that they could set off one another within a larger composition
(Winton Guest House, 1982–87). Peter Eisenman often returned to a palette of pastel
pinks, blues, and greens to distinguish various autonomous patterns in his deconstructed
forms, but in a somewhat programmed manner that suggested an abdication of subjective
color choice (Arnoff Center for Design and Art, 1988–96).
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Though its scientific understanding grew enormously, color was rarely the subject of a
cogent space-making design methodology. With the exceptions of De Stijl and a few
singular buildings, this may remain the greatest unexplored possibility of 20th-century
architecture.