The Orange and the Green

THE ORANGE AND THE GREEN Paint and Architecture

By Jon Astbury

In 2001, the Dutch architectural firm MVRDV completed a building for Thonik, an Amsterdam-based graphic design studio.

It was a cheap project, a simple two-storey block, clad in polyurethane and then painted in one of the studio’s favourite colours — and the Dutch national colour — orange.

More accurately, a searing, hazard orange.

This was both something of an advert for the studio, a means of publicity for the smallest budget — coverage to achieve coverage, so to speak — and also an attempt to emphasise “plasticity” in the way lurid paint, and its very nature as a painted-on, applied surface will still conjure images of

cheapness, of rubber and plastic.

Studio Thonik’s orange, however, was not to last. It certainly drew coverage, but primarily due to the complaints it received: one neighbouring resident c laimed that MVRDV ’s particular shade of orange “injures the mind”, so seriously had he felt the effects of basking in its glow. Similar responses from more locals led to a slightly token-feeling public consultation — as told

by Jacob van Rijs in an interview with Sandra Karina Löschke: “these are the ten colours we selected; if you pick three, which in your opinion are the best ones, I can then

Studio Thonik — Orange

Studio Thonik — Green

go back to my clients and we can decide”1 .

And so Studio Thonik was repainted green — again, not a subtle shade but a vivid candy apple green.

Coverage being what it is, the internet remains full of images of Studio Thonik in both its orange and green periods — with the addition of some seemingly rare shots freezing it half-way, a clash of green elevations and yet-to-be-painted orange window frames. MVRDV distilled all of this into an appropriately “surface” conclusion in the interview with Löschke: “a green house is friendly and an orange house is aggressive”2. After all, it was not so much the colour that was the point, nor did the change seem to particularly bother the architects, as long as the building remained noticeable.

Paint is perhaps the most common mediator between vision and the built environment, and yet contemporary architectural histories pay it little notice. Visually and physically it is everywhere, but conceptually, unlike the colour that it so often applies, paint’s status as a separate surface, a material of its own with its own properties and implications, is usually ignored. It is treated as passive or superficial, beneath the loftier concerns of space and form. Par ticular l y when considered as an action — to paint or repaint — it serves as a means of muddling and reconsidering of the very constraints and considerations that a piece of architecture initially had. And as a material, it has its own history of changes that have shaped how it was used.

Studio Thonik may seem like a simple case of architecture not going quite as planned, even a failure, but here I wish to unpack its themes and draw out what they can tell us about architecture’s curious relationship with paint, one that is in many ways married to the treatment of colour, and even to forms of ornament. Split into the three stages of the building itself — Orange, Orange/Green and Green — each of the following small

I would argue, however, that the complete change in colour that Studio Thonik went through in this brief period of time is perhaps one of the biggest alterations a piece of existing architecture can go through, one more often than not the result of a somewhat maligned architectural material: paint.

1

Löschke, S.K. (2016), Materiality and Architecture, Oxford: Routledge, p.233

2

Ibid.

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Kensigton Striped House

sections will consider a condensed history through which to view paint, and three lenses through which to view Studio Thonik: each demonstrating that this overlooked material is a fertile ground for architectural consideration, seemingly inverse to its innocuous status.

mid 20th Century.

In The Calculus of Paint, Perry Kulper presents the 1950s and 60s as the beginning of the shift “from the spiritual truth of painting to the use of mass-produced, or ready-made commercial paint”3, occurring not long after acrylic became commercially available, with modern, high-viscosity paints following shortly after. Kulper argues that at this point, “Surfaces previously deemed permanent were now vulnerable to the paint-over, or erasure…the permanence of works of art, and in parallel, architecture, was in peril conceptually, by the purchase of inexpensive paint, the paintbrush and l a b o u r " 4 . Th i s w a s e s s e n t i a l l y a democratisation of paint, and subsequently of what it was capable of, particularly regarding a changing idea of “flatness”,

Orange Period: ‘The plan worked — architecture as advert!’

MVDRV ’s initial intention for using coloured paint was to make the building stand out in order to be noticed. Perhaps unknowingly, the claim on the firm’s website — “the plan worked — architecture as advert!” — conjures a history of the painted building to “sell”, and the relationship between paint and the commercial that has contributed to it being maligned since the 3

Kulper, P., ‘The Calculus of Paint’, The Journal of Architecture v.14 n.3 (2009) pp. 378

4

Ibid, p. 381

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termed by Frederic Jameson as a hallmark of postmodernity in The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Whether this emergence put architecture conceptually in “peril” is debatable: architecture has long struggled with how to deal with ideas of surface, and had indeed long used paint. But as well as acting to defer permanence — the sight of peeling paint has the remarkable ability to undermine a perfectly solid structure as its “surface” becomes emblematic of the building as a whole — a greater accessibility to paint opened up the opportunity to resurface, to overwrite and alter.

painting became agents of change, of active ‘inscription’, where Modernism would have confined colour to activities of control and erasure.

In Blowing the Lid Off Paint, John McMorragh convincingly argues for these bright wall paintings as highlighting something of a lacuna in architectural history, much as I believe Studio Thonik does. Referring to a Supergraphic produced

by Barbara Stauffacher in Charles Moore’s Bathhouse at Sea Ranch — a geometric pattern of red, white and blue, McMorrough terms the aspiration as “the facile alteration of an already established context to some emotional effect”6 . Just like Studio Thonik, the Bath House Supergraphic was the result of a small (in this case, severely cut) budget — it was an inexpensive way of essentially covering finishes that were cheaper than desired. Conceptually, it is clear why architecture has some trouble with this.

S upergraphics required onl y a few millimetres of cheaply available paint, could be “installed” almost instantaneously by almost anyone, and could prove transformative. McMorrough’s terming of it as ‘facile’ should perhaps be read as positive: he concludes that through the Supergraphic, “this technology of paint actually generates a condition where one could understand the whole of the environment as re-codable, and not in terms of destruction and rebuilding directly over the existing condition”7. All of this approaches an example of what Jill Stoner has termed a “minor architecture”, practices that can emerge from the bottom of power structures to deconstruct some of the engrained notions of the built environment, territory already well-trodden by graffiti and street art.

The biggest parallel of the impact of paint’s remarkable ability to rapidly transform architecture can be found in the so-called Supergraphics of the late 60s and early 70s.

Supergraphics were a big moment for paint — Argentine architect Cesar Pelli commented how “paint used to be something outside the pale” and it was Supergraphics that demonstrated how “colours themsel ves c an become architecture” 5 . This was high praise, demonstrating how, much like paint itself, the simplicity of Supergraphics – often the painting of large arrows, numbers or words onto walls — was inverse to their conceptual potential. The interiors of Charles Moore, Paul Rudolph and Robert Venturi all featured them, and they appeared on city murals in New York. Somewhat overintellectualised they may be (not everything could be a supergraphic, only those motivated by a certain impulse), but the impact of Supergraphics is still felt today, particularly in uses of painting and colour as a means of Urban Renewal, in the work of artists such as Haas and Hahn in Rio de Janerio. Supergraphics saw paint as a means to “un-define” space, and colour and

McMorrough, J, ‘Blowing the Lid off Paint’. In: Dean, P. (ed.) (2006) Hunch 11: Rethinking Representations, Rotterdam: Episode Publishers, pp. 64 5

6

Ibid, p.66

7

Ibid, p.72

4

Barbara Stauffacher Supergraphic in Charles Moore Bath House

Repainting: Sacrificial and treacherous

to question the nature of the surface it is covering, this can be extended to any form of painting even in its most mundane of guises — and it is this concept that has made it particularly appealing to those studying post-occupancy or the alteration of architecture, albeit only being given prominence in a handful of accounts.

What makes the ‘halfway’ image of Studio Thonik so compelling is that it freezes this re-coding in process, akin to a coloured illustration of a building that has long since lost its hues. If a fundamental element of the Supergraphic was its ability

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surface finishes 11.

Fred Scott’s book On Altering Architecture throws a little light on the surface conundrum that paint throws up. Key to this is a mention of the theorist Marcello Paribeni, who in the 1970s tackled the subject of both colour and paint through the idea of a “sacrificial surface”8. This term was something of an umbrella for any stucco, render, varnishes or paint that would cover a built surface, a layer that recognised its temporality and role as a protector for the ‘real’ building beneath — provided it was promptly restored when it inevitably began to decay. Far from being something superficial, this surface was seen as a retreat from an obsession with ruination and decay.

As theorist Paolo Marconi puts it, “one either joins the cause of those that value the macabre valences of disintegration…or one joins the cause of those who don’t see the reason for this decadent renouncement or macabre pleasure, and so choose the path of cautious, difficult and demanding restoration of the “sacrificed surfaces”9. It was Marconi’s belief that it was far more difficult to achieve “a good limestone paint job” than to “impregnate a wall with miraculous varnishes that, what’s more would give it the permanent appearance of a biscuit soaked in oil”10 — and as an aside, it is worth noting that “biscuit-coloured” has more recently been used in a similar attack by architect Peter Cook on buildings that favour a straight-forward appearance with minimal

What Marconi gives us is a rare example of the painted surface being given the status of the demanding and cautious route, where uses such as Supergraphics and MVRDV’s at Studio Thonik would sooner have it known as a spurious and superficial one, over which material honestly should reign as the more considered and worthy. Indeed, for Marconi it is the spectacle of a building decaying that is “decadent”, rather than its covering by another surface. In this Paribeni and Marconi are unique: many other studies, such as Stewart Brand’s How Buildings Learn, frame paint as something of the realm of interiors, which he terms “flighty, fickle and inconstant”12 — and the only mention of paint is to comment on how “even so simple a thing as paint colour gets complicated.” For Brand paint is classified as a “skin”, beneath the longer lasting concerns of site and structure and glossed over as something that changes simply “to keep up with fashion or technology”13. There is a rather sinister misconception here that availability, ease of use and dare we add — popular appeal — cannot mesh with or indeed provide any real architectural meaning.

To wrest back some of paint’s deep complexity, conservation can provide a worthwhile lens. In a study of historical

8

Scott, F. (2007) On Altering Architecture, Oxford: Routledge, p.94

9

Ibid, p. 94

10

Ibid.

Peter Cook used a speech at The Architects’ Journal AJ100 awards to attack what he called the ‘biscuit boys’ of London architecture, stating: ‘there is a camp, probably represented in this tent, that enjoys what I call the grim, biscuit-coloured world.’ Cook was primarily referring to what has become known as ‘New London Vernacular’, a trend for polite brick developments in the city.

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12

Brand, S. (1994) How Buildings Learn: What Happens After they’re Built. London: Orion Books

13

Ibid.

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colour schemes in S ilesia, Austria, Brandenburg and S axony, K arolina Białobłocka comments how “it was not until the mid 1990s that paint research became an integral part of the examination of monuments”14 — exactly the “demanding” path that Marconi speaks of. Regardless of how spurious the historical reasons for a certain colour scheme may have been, once it enters into some canon deemed worthy of preservation its discovery throws up questions of originality and intention. To refer back to Studio Thonik, were it to fall into decay and be restored, would its original colour scheme be deemed orange or green?

In the lack of sufficient evidence during field research, Białobłocka describes how “colours that were sometimes discovered were combined with colours that were considered by conservators, architects or public officials as the most suitable”15. This could be seen as something of a throwing back into the realms of public taste and consensus what may have once been deemed challenging, and this is where what some term as the “treachery” of paint becomes a consideration — its ability to misconstrue or hide what was original, or simply to muddle whatever was intended.

the ornamental. If Studio Thonik’s orange was quickly outed as a traitor, no doubt its green will at some point too — but why not celebrate such an ability, and such freedom to recodify a building long after it has been built, or even resurrect and reshape codes that have been and gone? Here we could look to projects such as Phase 2 of Park Hill my Mikhail Riches which finds a large conceptual basis in celebrating the colour’s residents painted on the cheeks of their own balconies. Originally, these would have been architecturally ‘meaningless’ choices, yet their re-casting in the restoration of the project subjects them to an entirely new set of criteria and system of decision making.

Green Period: Unmotivated/motivated This brings us to the final consideration, that of why something is painted. At Studio Th o n i k i t w a s o s t e n s i b l y o f l i t t l e consequence what colour the building was, as long as it was bright and drew attention.

It was only complaints based on what we could argue was mere taste — the psychological effects of colour notwithstanding — that saw it change.

McMorragh’s makes it clear from the outset of his study that Supergraphics should be distinguished from the general painting of a wall, “distinguished by its connection to a set of articulated aspirations for a paint scheme”17. But of course, unarticulated aspirations can be just as revealing. The ubiquity of what we could call unmotivated house painting was what led Frederic Jameson to turn to it in his search for a completely non-metaphorical art form: “the

Scott goes as far to call it “unfair”, that paint should appear so elusive: “that the act of merely smearing can render such changes, and the magic of it be locked up in the eye and the mind of the artist, seems sometimes doubly unfair to the intellect; its power may even make us feel shallow ourselves.”16 This fear of feeling shallow is perhaps a key for explaining so much of architecture’s maligning of the painted, not to mention

Białobłocka, K. ‘Historical Colour Schemes of Architecture: Selected Methods of Presentation’, Technical Transac,ons (2016) 2-A, pp. 214 14

15

Ibid, p. 216

16

Scott, F. (2007) On Altering Architecture, Oxford: Routledge, p.92

17

McMorrough, J, ‘Blowing the Lid off Paint’. In: Dean, P. (2006) Hunch 11: Rethinking Representations, Rotterdam: Episode Publishers, pp. 65

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more contentious example came in January 2018, when the outer walls of the Haj House in Lucknow was painted saffron by the right-wing BJP Government - a literal example of “Saffronisation", a term used by critics to refer to the policies of Hindu nationalists. The walls were repainted in their original colour a day later.

The motivation can even be more explicitly commercial than at Studio Thonik. In 2011, for example, the California-based company Godialing offered to pay the monthly mortgage of 10 homeowners in exchange for painting their houses with advertisements — as written about on the Saturated Space Blog. And in 2015, a study in Developing Country Studies looked at a similar occurrence, where residential buildings in Kumasi, Ghana were being painted in the colours of multinational companies19. These are rather dramatic examples, but ones that effectively present the manifold motivations and meanings that can lie behind a coat of paint — how quickly Jameson’s idea of general meaning can shift into powerful metaphor.

Tschumi on Villa Savoye

colours of a house or wall”, he states, “generally respond to some conventional colour scheme that is culturally meaningful even if it does not exactly mean s om e t h i n g ”18 . Th e s i l e n t c on s e n s u s surrounding colour — taste, complementary hues, and so on — will place most interior or exterior painting within a system, one that makes any slightl y motivated application of paint incredibly obvious. This was, after all, the whole point of MVRDV using colour — and they needn’t have gone so far as using orange to cause controversy.

An architect famed for his use of colour, Luis Barragan, had the foresight of asking the resident-to-be of Casa Gilardi in Mexico City, Martin Luque, whether he could live with its pink walls — something MVRDV could have perhaps asked of their orange. The fact that Barragan’s works are repainted every few years to maintain their hues exemplifies paint’s ability to defer the permanence that preoccupies so much architectural thought. They have entered the realm of a form of architectural conservation, where the colour has almost soaked into the structure itself, whereas Studio Thonik remains wearing its colour

For example, many may remember the story that made national news in the UK when in 2015, developer Zipporah LisleMainwaring painted red candy stripes on her Kensington home to spite neighbours who objected to her plans to demolish it, a colour scheme that a court would later rule was her right to have, after attempts by the council to force her to repaint it white. A 18

Jameson, F (2001) ‘From Metaphor to Allegory’. In: Davidson, C. (ed) Anything, Cambridge: MIT Press

19

Oppong, R.A., Poku-Boansi, M. and Adabor, E., ‘Colour and Architecture: An Empirical Study of a New Paradigm of Painting of Residential Buildings and Ownership in Kumasi’. Developing Country Studies, v. n.18 (2015), pp.21-28

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Haj House Saffron

firmly as a form of clothing, one that could simply be changed again at short notice.

idealisation’ is one Kulper also addresses, demonstrated by Bernard Tschumi’s famous use of a peeling Villa Savoye in his 1977 Advertisements for Architecture.

Such motivations can often expose contradictions: Mark Wigley’s 1995 study White Walls, Designer Dresses: The Fashioning of Modern Architecture addresses the fact that for all its talk of stripping away and simplifying, the white walls that typified Modernism — often painted — were simply another form of dress, one with its own codes. Wigley extends this to challenge the entire familiar assumption of Modern architecture as white as being the result of a historiography that has worked to suppress c o l o u r, b e i t s i m p l y t h r o u g h t h e dissemination of black and white photographs and what McMorrough calls ‘the justifying teleology of the monochrome’ or simply through a lack of study or even decay. The very ability of paint to undermine Modernism’s ideas of ‘cultural and hygienic

As we begin to become more comfortable once more with ideas of colour and how it is applied, paint may yet find itself subject to a rigorous architectural interrogation: one particularly exciting in its ability to draw on occupation, conservation and material culture, as well as its ability to so quickly transform ideas of material and surface.

Studio Thonik itself it emblematic of both how simplistic current approaches to paint and colour are, but also of how the construction of a “surface” is still one architectural theories have trouble with. If this all comes down to paint provoking a fear that we are shallow, this is something we would do well to reconcile ourselves with.

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SOURCE OF IMAGES:

01 — Source: https://www.mimoa.eu/ p ro j e c t s/N e t h e r l a n d s/A m st e rd a m / Studio%20Thonik/ 02 — Source https://www.mimoa.eu/ p ro j e c t s/N e t h e r l a n d s/A m st e rd a m / Studio%20Thonik/ 03 — A blending of Studio Thonik in green and orange. Created by the author u s i n g p h o t o g ra p h s f ro m h t t p s : / / www.mimoa.eu/projects/Netherlands/ Amsterdam/Studio%20Thonik/ (green) and mvrdv.nl (orange) 04 — Created by the author as above, with addition of green/orange image, source: https://hiveminer.com/Tags/ mvrdv%2Corange 05 — Credit: Jim Alinder / Princeton Architectural Press 06 — Credit: Nick Edwards, Source: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/stripyh o u s e - b a t t l e - e n d s - i n demolition-0ghvk2vhf 07 — Source: https://www.indiatoday.in/ india/story/lucknow-haj-house-saffronyo g i - a d i t ya n a t h - g ove r n m e n t - u t t a r pradesh-1123010-2018-01-05 08 — Source: ht tp://www.we-findw i l d n e s s . c o m / 2 0 1 0 / 1 2 /b e r n a rd tschumi-advertisements-for-architecture/

edited by Valentino Danilo Matteis

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