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The color of white

Oh my...
There we go again. I came across this page at dwell.com where Fred A. Bernstein says:

I’ve always been vaguely embarrassed by color, associating pastels with kitsch and primaries with kindergarten. I’m not even sure I agree with Meier, who claimed, in his Pritzker Prize acceptance speech, that he likes white “because within it you can see all the colors of the rainbow.” I like white because within it I can’t see all the colors of the rainbow.

stadthaus.jpg
For your education, Fred, here’s a picture of a Richard Meier building. I measured some of the colors I found on the building in the picture and put them at the bottom. Incidentally: I didn’t spot any white. This is a picture with ‘normal’ lighting. Things can get really drastic when the lighting gets more dramatic. Below you’ll find an example, which I grabbed from Richard Meier’s website.
richard_meier.png
Here’s a question for you, Fred: Why does Richard Meier publish only color images of his work?
To choose a white or grey surface for a building is as much a color choice as any other. Look at the work of Le Corbusier. He used brightly painted surfaces alongside bare concrete. I somehow don’t think that was because he ran out of paint...

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This weblog is an attempt to transmit some of 20+ years of professional color experience.
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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on August 13, 2007 2:20 PM.

The previous post in this blog was The pink White House.

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