The Italian company Sawaya Moroni in collaboration with designer/programmer John Maeda, using his algorithmic “Fireball” graphic. Photo above by renzo358 from the Abitare Il Tempo 2009 in Verona.

Sports and Leisure Center in Saint-Cloud by KOZ Architectes, via ArchDaily. Photos by Stephan Lucas. This building, designed for children, is so well thought out it’s worth going to ArchDaily and reading the well-written and slightly franglais rationale.

Excerpts: “The building uses colour very openly and assertively, with a wide palette ranging from red to green, by way of yellow, pink and orange. These colours cover the façade in wide stripes. Inside, the same colours are systematically repeated, like stepping in an oversized graffti. A colour coding that helps you locate from the outside the areas created on the inside. A means of spatial orientation for young children. An echo to street culture codes for those who crawl on what is dubbed the coolest indoor climbing wall in France, or practice on the pop fencing rows below!… Over and above the pure functionality of the activities identified in the project, the architects placed great hope on the imagination and inventiveness of the occupants. That’s why all corridors, access ramps and passageways, are wide and spacious, up to 3 times the regulation size… KOZ is part of the “environmentally aware” generation. The openings in the roofs and the glass facades bring maximum natural lighting everywhere to limit electrical consumption. Concrete was chosen for the reasons mentioned above but the preference was for prefabricated concrete, generating less waste and spill. The tinted glass facades provide good protection against setting sun and long-lasting colour. And of course all hot water is solar heated.”

In my neighbourhood there’s a heritage program called True Colours wherein you can receive a pat on the back from heritage types and sometimes free paint if you agree to paint your house in the original house colours circa 1901. Unfortunately, most True Colours are the official colours of depressive mood disorder: muddy hunter green, dark drab maroon, watery urine-sample yellow, sickly ivory. Before the creep of drabness extends any further, I’m planting my flag for Untrue Colours and posting these exuberant and adventurous feats of house and door painting. If we can’t have innovations this exciting, maybe we could at least have more true colour. One old heritage neighbourhood in Vancouver is already heading in a more cheerful, anti-rainy-day-blues direction. If you’ve been to Vancouver in February, you’ll know how important some form of cheerful intervention is. Beautiful photo of house in Indiana, above, by i am krisan on Flickr.

Modernist Vancouver house of the painter BC Binning, who painted his own interior and exterior murals. Photo by Arne Haraldsson. See here for more information on this heritage-protected house.

London house decorated by the painter Stanley Donwood, photo by artofthestate.

Painted facade in Sydney, Australia, by loveroni.

Painted house in Basel, by m.a.r.c.

Psychedelic house in Leiden by Karl O’Brien.

Rainbow house on Clipper Street, San Francisco, by jordanpattern.

Old mural on a housing building by the Polish art group TWOŻYWO, which turns 20 this year. “Dom” means house or home. By zorro za trzepakiem on Flickr and see also misiekgreen.

Doors in Soho, NYC, taken last week.

Final note: I’m not against heritage preservation at all. But I’m against slavish, unimaginative heritage preservation. Sarah adds that around 1900 “houses were originally painted those ugly dark colours because the air was so choked with coal pollution it was the only way to hide the dirt and grime. Why continue with an idea based on something that is no longer relevant?” I would also like to add the salient fact that many of the European settlers here were Scots Presbyterian and since that’s my own heritage I know of what I speak concerning its dour aesthetics. To read about San Francisco’s painted houses, see an interesting entry on Wikipedia.

I’m mesmerized by this door photo by Anna Dorfman-Stark, whose Door Sixteen is one of my favourite blogs. This amazing doorway is in New York City, and I’m probably going to think of it as “door sixteen” from now on. Anna is a book cover designer, so I’m not surprised she loves these doors – double doors always look like a bookcover to me. These are reminiscent of my all-time favourite book covers – the Die Farbe cover below, and the beautiful Brian Wildsmith illustrations of my childhood (click below to see more examples by Wildsmith). More people with solid slab doors should try something like this! Thanks to Anna for permission to use this photo (and to d.sharp for the photo of the “die farbe” book). You might also want to take a look at Anna’s excellent Flickr stream. See another photo of this door here.

(more…)