Color & Pattern
When things in the built environment have color and pattern on their surface, I always look at what’s the purpose, or what’s the intent.
With most design decisions, it’s the intent that should be clear in the result that you see in the final product.
Why? Because you’re typically not there to explain what’s going on. The building or object speaks for itself.
Is the color or pattern applied for no real reason? Is it helping us understand something about what we’re looking at? Is it trying to confuse us or hide something? Basically, is there a purpose or a reason why this is happening?
One way to look at using color and pattern would be to break it up into 2 opposing purposes. One purpose of color and pattern would be to hide or camouflage, and the opposite of that would be to highlight and attract attention.
Camouflage and Hiding in Plain Sight:
One place we see meaningful use of pattern is in nature, on animals like zebras. A BBC article discusses how zebra stripes have at least 18 possible reasons for existing, which ranges from camouflage, to identifying markers, to thermoregulation, to being a fly deterrent (these flies are an issue in Africa because they can carry damaging diseases).
In order to test these theories, the biologists in the article applied zebra stripe coats to horses (without stripes normally), in order to see how biting flies reacted. Their 2019 study showed that flies were less likely to land on both zebras and horses with zebra stripe coats on, when compared to horses without these striped coats on.
Source: Equiport
Another artificial camouflage can be seen when car manufacturers wrap their test cars in visually confusing “livery” so that when they take them to the test track, it’s harder to pick out the detail in a spy photo.
Source: Motor1.com
This has been taken even further, with camouflage patterns that are intentionally designed to mess with cameras that may be taking unwanted pictures.
Anti-camera camouflage - Source: Cnet
One of the more functional uses of camouflage patterning is with the dazzle painting of warships in World War I. The German fleet of U-boat submarines cruised around the Atlantic and were able to sneak up and sink more than 5,700 vessels, so the purpose of these irregular dazzle paint jobs was to confuse someone looking through a periscope regarding the ship’s size, shape, speed, and direction of travel.
Dazzle Ship - Source: History
This was a use of camouflage that did not try to hide the ship, but visually confuse and obscure what’s really going on while remaining in plain sight.
This is a concept that has been observed and studied since back in the 1850’s. It was developed in Dawrin’s theory of natural selection, and continues to be studied in more recent books as well.
Clarity and Identification:
On the opposite side of the coin from camouflage, is the use of color and pattern to help understand built objects by enhancing visual clarity, and creating depth and difference between surfaces, spaces, and objects.
For example, the Architect Rem Koolhaas often uses distinct colors to identify different spaces and purposes, while also attracting attention to important features like escalators.
Seattle Public Library - Source
Other Architects choose to use a distinct lack of color and pattern, to focus your attention on the organization and layout of the spaces of a building.
SANAA - Source: Architect
In my own work designing buildings and climbing walls, I generally look at using color and pattern as a way to make things more understandable and help distinguish spaces, shapes, and surfaces (see a recent project for Brooklyn Boulders below). There are times when we may be interested in visual deception and trickery, but for the most part, I generally look at pattern and color as a tool to help bring the intent of the design to the forefront.
Brooklyn Boulders Eckington - Source: Loopnet/ Gustavo Moser
For example, I try not to have lines that fly across surfaces in a way that doesn't have some purpose beyond a “gesture” of some sort, unless the intent is to confuse or camouflage. This is all personal preference to a degree, but there are practical issues as well.
For instance, transitions between materials and textures that are flat or co-planar with each other can create gaps and edges that can be difficult to build and maintain. For that reason, I usually have changes in material, texture, and color happen along changes in geometry, to control those details and keep things clean.
Tokyo Olympic Climbing Wall (Entre Prises Climbing Walls) - Source: ABC
This isn’t saying that surface “applied” colors aren’t valuable and important in certain contexts.
For instance, ships often use different special paint below the water line to help prevent the growth of marine life, which is a huge issue because it can deteriorate certain materials and creates extra drag. Other markings on the ship’s hull are applied to show how the ship is loaded with a quick visual observation.
Ship with anti-foul coating (special red paint) - Source
Wrap Up:
For the most part, the use of color and pattern in nature has developed over time, with specific intentions that help with survival in some way. It’s not trivial, and it’s not that we need to mimic the complicated patterns we see in nature in our buildings and objects, because the intent and purpose is very different.
We can however, choose to use patterns and color in useful and intentional ways, which can not only add depth and excitement, but help people better understand what’s going on in our built environment.
Thank you for reading,
-Chris
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