choosing your colour strategy

Blacktown Animal Rehoming Centre. Photo: Brett Boardman

DONT ‘BARC’ UP THE WRONG TREE, select the right COLOUR STRATEGY

Colour in Architecture can take on many forms and can be used in wildly different ways.

From a “truth to materials” approach, where colours are an inherent property of a material, and are used in a relatively unmediated way (such as in the SRG House)  to “colour as a second layer” where paint is applied like a second skin and functions to unify or camouflage the underlying structure, or perhaps as a purely decorative layer.

Colour can be a delicate companion in a refined material palette. Applied sparingly and in service to other materials such as natural stones and timber, it has a supporting role and never dominates the ensemble, as in the Ballast Point House.

Colour can also challenge and excite interaction with so called ‘natural’ materials. Polychrome House is an example of this more dynamic approach.

My point?  It’s not only choosing the colours that matters, it is how and where to apply them that makes a difference in architecture. Building typology, site and use all influence the colour responses I propose to my architecture collaborators.

A recently completed project, Blacktown Animal Rehoming Centre, (BARC) is essentially a series of shed buildings in an industrial estate full of big sheds, where colour is rarely used as anything other than a branding exercise.  

The colours of signage and branding on buildings are usually bright and simple; one or two primary or  secondary colours plus black or white. Therefore, my colour response at BARC was equally bold albeit with many more colours to create interest and engagement with a story of place, in this case a story of local birds from the nearby Nurragingy reserve. 

The colours in this project (all derived from 6 local bird species) perform many roles; they connect the building to the Western Sydney Parklands via the bird story, they are the primary wayfinding device throughout the facility, they are used in all the signage, and they give each building a unique identity. They also turn a very imposing 100m long security fence into a piece of integrated public art.

This very special project, with longtime collaborators Sam Crawford Architects, is now live on the projects page. Read more about it here.

Blacktown Animal Rehoming Centre. Photo: Brett Boardman