Corbu's Colors

Who doesn't love a fan deck of colors? Paint samples, Pantone swatches - you name it, I love them all. But I think this one just might take the cake. The architect and designer Le Corbusier created custom paints to compliment his modernist interior spaces. Generally speaking, mention of a modernist interior evokes images of white, black, stainless steel, clear glass and an overall minimalistic sleekness. But it turns out that Corbu, in fact, used lots of well-placed splashes of color that were designed around the materials specified for a given space. The paints are mineral-based which gives them a rich quality missing in most mass-produced paints of the present day and also makes them very eco-friendly. Sometimes is easy (and sheek) being green. The paints are distributed in the US through Aronson's in NYC. I am thinking a nice Yves Klein ultramarine blue would look great in the living room.

Thanks to the NYTimes for the cool find.

Gehry's Green Gripes: A Good Trend Gone Wrong

City Center in Las Vegas - LEED Gold?

You will not often find me praising Frank Gehry, save perhaps in an occasional acknowledgment of his brilliance in the siting of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, but his recent, much-criticized commentary on the state of green building and the US industry's narrow focus on LEED has given me cause. Designing and building for a sustainable future require so much more than a checklist. In an open letter in defense of Gehry, Fred Bernstein, using the monstrous City Center development as a prime example, argues Gehry's point supremely well - "...the question is political. If there were robust public debate, Americans might decide that projects like City Center pose environmental costs that far outweigh their benefits. Zoning regulations, taxes, and other tools of government could then be used to stop such projects. LEED, by contrast, cannot stop wasteful projects from being built, nor does it attempt to." I hope Gehry's "Starchitect" status can help keep this very important issue fresh and encourage a continued and open debate on responsible, sustainable development.

'The Hijacking of 'Modern''

Schermerhorn Symphony Center
Designed by David M. Schwarz Architects
Photo by Hedrich Blessing

Writing for Traditional Building Magazine clearly indicates a certain bias, but this is a very interesting debate and one that really should be brought forward into the mainstream architectural media - into the very publications that have propagated said hijacking.

http://traditional-building.com/clem_labine/