^Fig1 The White House, Washington DC
Let’s
admit it, architects are suspicious—if not a little scared—of colour. How else
to explain the default contemporary architect’s preference for exposed finishes
such as concrete, brick, COR-TEN steel, stone, and wood? Perhaps this is
because an architect’s choice of applied colour may often seem one of the most
subjective—and hence least defensible—decisions to be made over the course of a
project.* Indeed, applied colour seldom
performs from a technical standpoint, and it is the architect’s taste, pure and
simple, which is often on the line whenever a specific colour is proposed to the
client. Or perhaps architects’ mistrust of applied colour owes something to the
profession’s well-known controlling tendencies and the fact that colour is one
of the most mutable aspects of a building; better, we architects are
instructed, to focus on “important” and “architectural” decisions such as form,
space, materials, program, and organization. Indeed, it is far easier for a
future owner to repaint a wall than it is to move it.
Nevertheless,
the power of paint cannot be ignored. In fact, under the right circumstances architectural
color can prove strikingly effective, trumping architectural style and form in
its ability to communicate through clear and simple terms. This phenomenon is demonstrated
by three official residences of heads of state: the White House in Washington,
D.C, the Pink House (La Casa Rosada)
in Buenos Aires, and the Blue House (Cheongwadae) in
Seoul—three iconic projects popularly defined far more by their exterior color than
by any formal or stylistic architectural characteristics.
The
oldest and probably best-known example of these is America’s White House
(Figure 1). Initially completed in 1800 following a revolution that cast off
British colonial rule, the White House was originally referred to in more
grandly descriptive terms as the “President’s Palace,” “Presidential Mansion,” “Executive
Mansion,” and “President’s House,” though by 1811 the public had begun to refer
to the building by its distinctive exterior paint finish, a white mixture of
lime, rice glue, casein, and lead over a sandstone façade. In 1901 President
Theodore Roosevelt had “White House—Washington” engraved on the President’s
stationery, thus making the name official.
There
are at least two prevailing explanations for the choice of white paint, one with
overt political and symbolic overtones and the other focusing on technical
performance. The former claims that after the 1814 burning of Washington, D.C.
during the War of 1812 and the subsequent repair and completion of the White
House, the gray President’s house was painted white to mask—and, presumably, to
erase the memory of—fire damage caused by British troops. While the inherent
themes of erasure and renewal are no doubt appealing, this story is little more
than a myth as the building had been referred to in writing before the war as
the “White House”.
The
performative explanation, on the other hand, is that the White House was given
its distinctive exterior whitewash in 1798 to protect the sandstone façade from
winter freezing. While perhaps more likely from a chronological standpoint,
this explanation remains somewhat unsatisfying in its framing of the choice of
colour as a purely technical decision. Perhaps a third hybrid explanation is therefore
worth considering. In the late 18th century the polychromy of ancient
Greek and Roman architecture was not yet widely known, and Classical
architecture was imagined to have been marked by a platonic whiteness. In post-Revolution
America at the birth of a new Republic that modeled itself on Classical Rome
and Greece, white buildings would have carried a particularly potent associative
power. Thus, if the sandstone President’s house had to be painted to protect
its exterior—and even if it didn’t—what better choice of colour than white?
^Fig2, Casa Rosada, Buenos Aires
Competing
symbolic and technical explanations for the choice of paint accompany another
famous executive residence, Argentina’s Pink House (Figure 2). Today, the Pink
House serves as the official executive mansion and office of Argentina’s
President, though the President typically lives elsewhere. As a building, the
Pink House’s history is a complicated one, with origins going back to a
fortification built during the colonial period. The fortification was largely
demolished and replaced by a Customs House by the mid-19th century,
which was in turn adopted as the Government House and Presidential offices by
President Bartolomé Mitre in the 1860s. Under Mitre’s successor, Domingo
Sarmiento, the building’s exterior was significantly modified and painted pink,
and a grand central Post Office was built next door. The new Post Office so
overshadowed the older Government House, however, that in the 1880s President
Julio Roca had the latter redesigned and rebuilt to match the former in
appearance and scale. These two buildings were joined together in 1898 by a
central arch and the whole collection was again painted pink to match the
original Government House.
As
with the White House, the stories for why President Sarmiento—an advocate of
democracy in a nation with a recent history of colonial and autocratic rule—originally
had the former Customs House painted pink fall into two categories,
political/symbolic and technical. Perhaps the most appealing though likely apocryphal
version is the political one, that pink paint was chosen by Sarmiento to
symbolically unify Argentina’s two competing political factions at the time,
whose colors were respectively red and white. The somewhat less appealing technical
explanation is that the original paint mixture contained ox blood to improve
durability. Ultimately, it is difficult to say what the true reason was for the
choice of colour. However, perhaps any explanation matters less than the fact
that when the later President Roca significantly redesigned and expanded the
executive residence and offices in the 1880s, so iconic had been the initial
selection of pink that the entire new building was painted the same colour.
^Fig3, Blue House, Seoul
Probably
one of the least well-known of these projects is the Blue House, a collection
of buildings which comprise the headquarters for South Korea’s executive branch
and official Presidential residence (Figure 3). The site of the Blue House has
been associated with Korea’s leaders since at least the 10th
century, and by the 14th century it had become the rear garden of
the Royal Palace (Gyeongbokgung). Most
of the historic Palace buildings were demolished during the Japanese occupation
in the first half of the 20th century, and in 1939 the Japanese
built a residence and office for the colonial Governor-General on the site of rear
garden, named the “Presidential Residence” (Gyeongmudae).
Following
the Second World War and Korean liberation, President Syngman Rhee of the new
Republic of Korea adopted the Presidential Residence as his official executive
residence and office. With the ouster of the autocratic Rhee and establishment
of a more democratic government in 1960, however, the newly-elected President
Yun Bo-seon changed the name of the Presidential complex to Cheongwadae—“pavilion of blue tiles” or
simply “the blue house”—in reference to the 150,000 traditional azure tiles
covering the roof of one of the few existing pre-Japanese buildings on-site.
This constituted an official effort to disassociate the President’s offices and
residence from both the era of Japanese colonial rule and the autocratic Rhee
regime. Like the American and Argentine precedents, this anecdote demonstrates
colour’s ability to neutralize power associations and to strive for more general,
enduring associations, in the Korean case even transcending any particular
party or form of government.
Unlike
the White House or the Pink House however, the Blue Houses’s eponymous roof—a
hallmark feature of traditional Korean architecture—had long been in existence
without warranting public notice or name. It would appear the Blue House therefore
illustrates a different association between color and architectural identity
when compared to the White House or Pink House, which both gradually acquired
popular and later official names in response to their bold colors, as in the
Korean example the name was officially constructed.
Could it be that by the mid-20th century a new convention had emerged
for naming executive residences?
^Fig4, White House In Various Colours, The Iconic Potency of Pigment
In
any event, the three case studies above demonstrate colour’s ability to
communicate at a level more basic and universal than architectural form or
style. Nevertheless, a certain anxiety still accompanies the painting of buildings.
In the case of the White House and Pink House, this anxiety manifests itself in
the need to either retroactively explain and justify the choice of color
through a symbolic/political story or a seemingly rational technical requirement,
neither of which can alone satisfactorily and fully answer the question.
Interestingly, in the case of the Blue House any reason for the initial choice
of color seems largely unimportant, and instead it is the decision to associate
the executive office with a colour in the first place that is the issue. It is
also worth noting that all three executive residences acquired their
identities—and popular names derived from these identities—during periods of strongly
democratic leadership. In the case of the United States this occurred following
a war for liberation and the emergence of a new nation. In the case of both
Argentina and South Korea, this coincided with the rise of democracy-leaning
leaders following successive periods of colonial and autocratic rule. In all
three cases, there was a need to clear the slate and start anew, and in a new
democracy without the unifying symbolism and trappings of a single monarch,
party, or religion, it would seem that color itself assumes a particular
potency. Given the demonstrated ability of colour to supplant architectural form
as a communicator of power, perhaps architects are right to fear the paintbrush.
However, by doing so they relinquish an effective yet simple tool. After all, what
better way to establish a new order than by quite literally painting (or re-painting)
the house?
* In
this sense, for contemporary architects applied colour oftentimes falls under a
similar category as ornament, incompatible with a design approach that equates
structural and material expression (or “honesty”) with morality.
Post by Jacob Reidel, Architect and Editor of CLOG Magazine
