New house in an old neighbourhood of Wroclaw, Poland, in the NYT today. Spruce on the outside, particle board on the inside, and the whole thing cost US$80,000 to build. It will fade to grey. This seems equivalent to laneway housing in Vancouver – and memo to Vancouver: modern mixes well with traditional architecture. Take a chance! I just hope they used non-formaldehyde particle board in the interior, because if not that’s a lot of off-gassing. Photos: Olo Rutkowski. See more current Polish architecture here.

This chapel in Tarnów, Poland, is by Marta Rowińska & Lech Rowiński of the firm Beton (photos by Beton) and was completed in 2009. Like so many wooden churches, it feels like an inverted wooden ship. Being a completely non-religious non-churchgoer who really dislikes all the tortured religious iconography and narrative (and could do without the cross), I don’t know why I’m so attracted to all these humble churches (see also here). Maybe because there’s something surrealist or fantastical about their architecture, not just in that they suggest poetical barns or ships, but because their utility is somewhat non-utilitarian and undefinable. Having said that, the design of this church grew out of very practical, material concerns (like so much successful architecture): Via archdaily:

“Building the church had also a “side” purpose: to bring the local community together. It was built by not very skilled workers, so the technology had to be really simple. Concrete slab as a foundation, timber structure as the main “spine” of the building and the wooden cladding. There is almost no detail, no fancy elements. This is also a kind of experiment – how to create a certain quality of space with the use of rudimentary technical simplicity. The investor, who is a quite well-known Polish writer, decided to save this small bit of the Vistula bank from becoming an another wild beach with a cheap bar on the side.”

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.