30
FARBE

Emerging from her world of thought Mrs. Desbaresdes suddenly asked: What's your favourite colour?

Mr. Chauvin, used to this question, automatically replied: Dark red. And yours?

Her gaze vanished under the firm and confident answer.

Why dark red? I don't have any. For me, colour alone doesn't exist, it's

always in relation to a background, to a history, to conventions... <Colour> is never separated from a surface, a matter and especially from light. The difficulty has more to do with the recognition of those parameters and the questioning of them. And also with the medialisation and reproduction of colours and coloured objects. There's no mle, there's no right or wrong.

He waited. He spoke to her in an appeasing and soothing tone.

I simply like red. Does this require any explanation? The choice of a colour is something very personal. Isn't colour depending on one's associations?

She poured some more wine into her glass and said:

For me colour is not so much about the tint itself but it gives me the opportunity to make a certain statement: This is my room, and this is the colour I've chosen. For me, it's a simple way to express myself. One shows his or her colours by choosing them. Neutrality disappears when it comes to colour. It's such a striking tool, isn't it?

Mr. Chauvin looked down.

So my favourite colour is orange.

Mrs. Desbaresdes stood up from her chair. He remained seated, overwhelmed by the absurd situation.

Published in March 2017

Contributors

Ludwig Berger & Lara Mehling, Julius von Bismarck, Amalia Bonsack & Charline Dayer, camponovo baumgartner architekten, Elena Chiavi & Javier Pérez Puchalt, Célestine Claudin & Tanguy Dyer, Clemens Finkelstein, Adnan Gacanin & Marcelo Rovira Torres, Gregory Grämiger & Niklas Naehrig, Dorothee Hahn, Joseph Halligan, SamiaHenni, Natacha Isoz, Oscar Jobin, Matina Kousidi, Ella Mathys & Meghan Rolvien, Eleftherios Panagiotou, Wilko Potgeter, Giulia Scotto, Michel Sikorski, Georg Simmel, Alla Vronskaya, ZUEND & Tiago P. Borges

Editorial Team

Ruben Bernegger, Amelie Nguyen, Adrien Meuwly, Claartje Vuurmans

Table of content

Das Märchen von der Farbe

Colonial modernism or the supremacy of white

Madagascar wings

Misunderstanding colour

Le basilique

The painter's modern life

6000-12'000 K : blue hour observatory

I want this room to be yellow

RGB

Raum, Licht, Farbe : Bruno Taut und das Farbkonzept der Siedlung "Onkel Tom" im Berlin-Zehlendorf

Achtung! Frisch gestrichen

Colourful propaganda

"Das farbige Zürich" : the regulation of facades and the facades of regulation

The fall through color

The "Rotatable drum window" study : Siegfried Ebeling's 1962 manifesto

Hill Valley

Weiss/Grau/Grau : über die Planung der Farbe von Zürich

Hégémonie de la couleur dans l'édifice religieux médiéval : la Cathédrale de Lausanne

Was ist das für ein Gestein, so massiv und so fein

Es gibt nicht mehr das rosa Zimmer

It is now time to have a more relaxed relation to colour again

Des goûts et des couleurs...

Black color and "Negro villages" : why skin color still matters in architecture and planning

Landscape painting