Architectural Polychromy
The Architectural Polychromy is a comprehensive color system by the architect Le Corbusier for architectural color design. It contains 63 shades that Le Corbusier created in two color collections in 1931 and 1959. All colors have an artistic-historical background and are architecturally coordinated so that they can be combined in any way. The Le Corbusier colors cannot be translated into the RAL or NCS color systems .
The combination of colorful and achromatic hues and different brightness values underlines Le Corbusier's experience in architecture and as a painter, which form the foundation of the entire Architectural Polychromy.
history
“In architecture, color is just as powerful a medium as floor plan and section. Or better: the polychromy, part of the floor plan and the section itself ”. When Le Corbusier presented this knowledge in Rome in 1936, he had created a comprehensive color theory - the cornerstone of the Architectural Polychromy. With this it was possible to think in terms of color in architecture and design right from the start.
Le Corbusier used the opportunity offered by the Swiss company Salubra a few years earlier to publish the first part of the Architectural Polychromy as a wallpaper collection. This was an "oil paint in rolls". He takes into account the different sensitivities of individuals when choosing colors. Le Corbusier wrote:
«Salubra's offer […] came through the game of chance. […] First of all, I eliminated most of the pigment colors. I retained “the noble scale”: white, black, ultramarine, blue, tones of English green, ocher yellow, natural sienna, a vermilion red, a carmine red, the English red, the burnt sienna. And for each of these tones I looked for the most effective values - from the point of view of the wall. […] Having done this, I had 43 shades. I could certainly have had more, but I don't want to get bogged down. 43 tones, this results in a booklet of plain colors that you leaf through and which offers you successive, often very contrasting, sensations, which, however, at the decisive moment of selection, bring you into a state of fatigue, uneasiness, and consistently unfortunate nervous tension. In order to choose one does not have to feel consecutively, but synchronously. To choose one has to see what it is and the eye has to be like an agile tool at the service of a deep instinct. [...] »
1931 collection
The puristic color palette from 1931 comprises 43 colors in 14 series. The series are made up of full-tone colors and graduated lightening. The original coding of the Le Corbusier color tones begins constantly with ‹32xxx› - the series and their lightening are identified by the last three digits. For example, the five shades of ultramarine blue have the last digits ‹020› to ‹024›.
1959 collection
The second collection from 1959 completes the Architectural Polychromy with 20 additional colors that appear stronger and more dynamic. These luminous shades are called “4320x” - from 4320A to 4320W. The combination of colorful and achromatic hues and different brightness values underlines Le Corbusier's experience in architecture and as a painter.
The color keyboards
In addition to the color collections from 1931 and 1959, Le Corbusier created color keyboards to facilitate the combination and selection of colors. These arrange the 63 architectural colors into thirteen different color moods and at the same time reflect specific functions of the color. The atmospheric moods of the individual color keyboards are defined by means of horizontal transverse bands, which provide the descriptive name and character of the different keyboards through their mural meaning. The colors in the middle are used as accent colors. The shades are arranged in such a way that with the help of 'glasses' (stencils) a single shade or a combination of two or three colors can be isolated against two background shades.
“These color keyboards appeal to personal initiative [...]. They appear to me as a tool for precise, purposeful work, which makes it possible to give the modern apartment a strictly architectural color, which at the same time corresponds to the natural feeling [...]. "
For the color palette from 1931, consisting of 43 shades, Le Corbusier developed 12 individual color keyboards, each of which creates a specific atmospheric effect - with the exception of the last three color keyboards (Buntscheckig I, II and III), which Le Corbusier put together without any specific atmospheric effect and which offer more random chords. He gave each mood a name that took up the polychrome effect: space, sky, velvet I and velvet II, wall I and wall II, sand I and sand II and landscape.
From the 20 colors of the 1959 collection, Le Corbusier developed an additional color keyboard that offers further possibilities for color combinations. All 20 colors from 1959 harmonize with the moods from 1931.
Color effect and theory
The 63 color tones form a standardized color system based on natural primary colors. They are harmonious with each other and can be combined in any way. The 63 colors of the Architectural Polychromy are chosen so that the desired color effects can be easily designed and negative effects are excluded from the outset.
«You should forbid those colors that set the walls in a kind of vibration and thus rob them of their effect. […] Hence a dictatorial intervention: Exclusion of all colors that can be described as unarchitectural or better: search and select those colors that can be qualified as eminently architectural and say to yourself: ‹There are already more than enough of them this way! ›»
Le Corbusier defined the 63 colors in 9 color groups:
- 2 × white
- 8 × gray & black
- 13 × blue
- 9 × green
- 4 × ocher & yellow
- 4 × orange
- 8 × red
- 8 × red ocher & brown
- 7 × umber
Each color group and each hue embody spatial effects and cause characteristic reactions to human sensitivities.
To this end, Le Corbusier determined the following principles:
- Color modifies the room «Blue and its green mixtures create space, give distance, create atmosphere, move the wall into the distance […]. Red (and its brown, orange and other mixtures) fix the wall, confirms its exact position, its dimension, its presence. [...] »
- Color classifies objects «Monochrome allows an exact assessment of the volumes of an object. Polychromy (two, three colors, etc.) destroys the pure form of the object, changes its volume, opposes the exact assessment of this volume and, conversely, makes it possible to let only that which one wants to show emerge from a volume into consciousness: it doesn't matter whether house, interior or object. [...] »
- Color has a physiological effect on us and reacts strongly to our sensitivities «Color is closely linked to our being; each of us may have our own color; even if we are often not aware of it, our instincts are not mistaken. "
Individual evidence
- ^ Les Couleurs Suisse AG: Architectural Polychromy. Retrieved April 6, 2019 .
- ↑ Weißenhofsiedlung, Stuttgart - Architect: Le Corbusier. Retrieved April 11, 2019 .
- ↑ Salubra, claviers de couleur, LE CORBUSIER, 1931. Retrieved on April 3, 2019 (French).
- ↑ Arthur Ruegg architecturale LeCorbusier, polychrome . Ed .: Arthur Rüegg. Birkenhäuser Verlag, ISBN 978-3-0356-0661-4 .
- ^ Les Couleurs Suisse AG: The color keyboards from 1931. Retrieved on April 5, 2019 .
- ^ Les Couleurs Suisse AG: The color keyboard from 1959. Accessed on April 1, 2019 .
- ↑ Collectiv: The Color Keyboards. Le Corbusier's Architectural Polychromy . Ed .: Les Couleurs Suisse AG. Zurich 2017, ISBN 978-3-03306113-2 .
- ^ Arthur Rüegg: Architectural Polychromy "Le Corbusier's color keyboards from 1931 and 1959" . Birkenhäuser Verlag, 1997.
- ↑ Le Corbusier: Salubra, claviers de couleur (2ème série), LE CORBUSIER, 1959. Fondation Le Corbusier, accessed on April 3, 2019 (French).
- ↑ Collectiv: The Color Keyboards. Le Corbusier's Architectural Polychromy . Ed .: Les Couleurs Suisse AG. Zurich 2017, ISBN 978-3-03306113-2 .
- ↑ Royale Aspira + Les Couleurs® Le Corbusier: tribute Le Corbusier's polychrome Architecturale at Asian Paints . Ed .: Aspira. S. 6 .