Material Matters I

It has always fascinated me how we perceive things differently from a distance. Figurative paintings for instance appear seemingly realistic from some 3 feet away but when stepping closer, we notice that the subjects aren’t actually painted realistically. Painters who work close to their canvases mastered abstract stroke and color techniques that create an illusion in order to meet our familiar perception of reality. Similarly familiar to this phenomenon are makeup artists who learn to apply makeup to performers with exaggerated facial features in order to increase the visibility for the audience. Or another example that left great impression on me is from a children’s book ‘Jim Knopf’ by Michael Ende in which appears a quasi giant, a character that occurs extremely tall from far away yet shrinks with decreasing distance and eventually reaches regular height when being close by.

Architects may as well take advantage of this far sight effect and explore similar techniques in designs, particularly when it comes to the exterior skin of buildings, the materials, modular, scale, textures, colors, joints and connections.

Eero Saarinen’s terminal at Dulles International Airport for instance appears white from the distance, like exposed white concrete. Well, the concrete is actually grey. The surface however is bush hammered and exposes white aggregates - a last minute fix to remedy the poorly executed architectural concrete. From the distance the sprinkled aggregates become increasingly dominant over the grey background and make the building appear white. What a wonderful effect.

Or the other day I came across a close up photograph of the shell from the Sydney Opera by Danish architect Jørn Utzon. I always pictured white tiles and a grey hairline pattern. Well, the photograph revealed how wide the joints actually are in order to appear as grey hair lines in the greater picture - they are inches wide and black.

Musing about this topic I tried to remember the color of the Eiffel Tower? I have been up there many times and yet I couldn’t quite remember the actual paint color. I thought it was red but it might be as well brown or grey? And yet no matter what color it may be, in context with the Parisian skyline, the tower actually appears colorless.