Cities are concentrated residential areas for human beings. The so-called urban color refers to the sum of the perceived colors of all exposed objects in urban public space (the interior decoration of urban underground facilities and ground buildings has nothing to do with urban color; The facade of the ground building is hidden, so its color cannot be perceived, and it does not constitute urban color. Urban color consists of natural color and artificial color (or cultural color). Exposed land (including dirt roads), rocks, lawns, trees, rivers, beaches and the sky in cities are all natural colors. All buildings on the ground, hardened square sidewalks, vehicles, street facilities, pedestrian clothing, etc. The city is full of artificial products, and all of them are artificial pigments. In the composition of urban artificial color, it can be divided into fixed color and flowing color, permanent color and temporary color according to the nature of the object. All kinds of permanent public buildings, bridges, street squares, urban sculptures, etc. Constitute a fixed permanent color in the city; In the city, vehicles and other means of transportation and pedestrians' clothing constitute flowing colors; City advertisements, signboards, street signs, newsstands, street lamps, neon lights, windows and window sills constitute temporary colors. At the same time, because color is produced by light refraction, the primary colors of various objects will change according to the surface texture of their materials, the degree of light exposure and the influence of environmental colors. Therefore, urban colors can also be divided into single primary colors and visual effect colors. The same yellow building, whether it is built by the sea or behind the mountain, whether it exists independently or inserted in the cracks, has very different color effects.
Therefore, urban color is a systematic and complete urban color planning and design, and all components of urban color should be analyzed and planned uniformly to determine the main color system or auxiliary color system. Then determine the permanent reference colors of various buildings and other objects, and then determine the flowing colors including city advertisements and public transport vehicles, including temporary colors such as street decorations and window sills. In view of the current situation of urban planning anomie in China, this paper mainly studies the fixed color of urban buildings and the coordination between fixed color and natural color.
The Significance of Urban Color Planning and Design
Why should our city, especially a famous historical and cultural city, pay attention to color planning and design? To sum up, there are the following points:
First of all, urban color is an important part of the quality of urban human settlements.
Everyone loves beauty. Marx believed that color is the most popular form of beauty. Therefore, color is an important part of urban beauty and an important factor affecting the quality of life of urban residents. Psychological research has long noticed the influence of color on people's mental health, and there are many vivid cases to prove the influence of urban color on residents' psychology. A few years ago, there was a "color commotion" among the citizens of Tokyo, Japan. Many citizens feel dizzy and restless in front of gorgeous and high-color buses and taxis, as well as psychedelic neon lights, colorful advertisements and dazzling glass curtain walls. Therefore, they severely criticized it, forcing the Tokyo municipal authorities to try to correct the color deviation and eliminate the anxiety and anxiety of the citizens. An interesting thing happened in England: there is a black bridge where people commit suicide every year; Later, the bridge was painted blue all day, and the number of suicides decreased significantly; Then people painted the bridge pink, and there were no suicides. The psychological effect of urban colors on people can be seen from this (Chen: Describe the city with healthy and beautiful colors, People's Daily, 04 05, 2002).
Heidegger, a western philosopher, famously said that human beings live poetically on the earth. Now, in Germany, Austria, France, the Netherlands and other countries, this sentence has partially become a reality. Their country is like this, and so is their city. Although most of their cities have gone through hundreds of years, and the quality of their ordinary buildings is by no means higher than ours, their cities still give people the feeling of elegance, warmth, comfort and cultural significance. This is directly related to the planning and control of urban environmental tone: walking on the streets of these cities, people do not feel chaotic and dazzling colors, and there are no huge advertisements to disturb their sight. Simple and harmonious colors give people a pleasing feeling, which in itself constitutes a part of their elegant and civilized life. It can be seen that while controlling noise and air pollution, we must attach great importance to urban color to beautify and optimize the quality of urban living environment.
Second, urban color is an important carrier of urban history and culture.
Urban color is as long as urban history, and color itself has accumulated the history of the city. Among them, some colors reflect the political or economic culture of the city, such as the contrast between the golden roof of the imperial city and the taupe roof of the residential houses, which is a portrayal of the supremacy of imperial power in China feudal society; The dignified lead-gray buildings on the Bund in Shanghai reveal the majesty of the international financial capital. Some of them are the result of natural selection of urban architecture, such as white walls and gray tiles in southern China and red walls and yellow tiles in German cities, all of which are traditional colors of cities. Regardless of white walls and gray tiles or yellow walls and red tiles, these TINT, which conform to the aesthetic laws, are not only the crystallization of different ethnic aesthetic interests, but also form different cultural traditions. Like European cities, if you only look at their churches, it seems that there are many similarities. But if you look at the color of residential buildings, whether it is Venice or Amsterdam, people can tell at a glance; Even if its exterior wall paint is new, its color is historical. Therefore, if a city destroys traditional colors at will, it is equivalent to cutting off history and revealing a pale face. This is the sorrow of many famous historical and cultural cities in China: from the appearance alone, people can't draw the conclusion that Beijing is as long as Paris; The car shop is on the street of Suzhou, so people will never feel the characteristics of the famous city in the south of the Yangtze River or the water city in China. Therefore, for a famous historical and cultural city, to continue its historical context, it is necessary to maintain its urban characteristics like protecting cultural heritage.
Third, urban color is the embodiment of modern urban civilization.
Urban color has a long history, but urban color design and planning is a modern topic. Why is this happening? The key is that traditional cities have developed and grown up in a state of cultural isolation and relatively backward productivity. The color of urban buildings is greatly limited by building materials and construction technology. It is impossible for people to use some expensive materials just for color. Therefore, the color of most cities is reflected by the inherent color of building materials, such as red or gray bricks; Or made of cheap and easily available materials, such as yellow or white paint. What's more, for people who live in it, I don't know that buildings in other nationalities or regions will have other colors. In this passive choice, although aesthetic law plays a potential role, it may not reflect human civilization consciousness. Modern urban construction is different. Due to the strong economic strength and the invention and popularization of new materials, new technologies and new processes, people can control the colors of buildings and other urban facilities at will. Modern media and convenient transportation have broken down cultural barriers, and people can imitate each other and even form the so-called architectural fashion trend. It is in this context that how people who have gained color freedom control their own city colors and keep up with fashion has become a civilized problem. Today, it is not difficult to put on all kinds of luxurious coats for a city or a new city, as long as you have money; However, it is not easy to form a harmonious and elegant tone in the new urban area, which requires city leaders, architects and owners to have high cultural literacy. It's like reform and opening up. After we bid farewell to the era of blue-gray clothes, how to choose clothes styles to reflect people's cultural taste is a truth. Although the new rich lady is bejeweled, she always gives people a feeling of being uneducated; Although female college students are plain and elegant, they reveal bookishness. A famous painter came back from America and lamented that Shanghai had changed. Many people don't understand. In fact, just as city people think that red clothes and green pants are "dirt" for rural people, how can we say that a city painted with colorful and messy colors is not a kind of "dirt"? So, as an American architect said: Let me look at your city, and I can see what the residents of this city are pursuing culturally. The color of a city really shows the spirit of the city and the level of modern civilization all the time.
Fourthly, urban color is also an important means to correct the disorderly state of urban buildings.
Realistically speaking, the most serious problem in China's urban construction at present is not the color of the city; The main reason for the problem of urban color is not the color itself: the key is the anomie of urban architectural planning. Due to the lack of strict control over the volume, height, style, materials and environmental coordination of new buildings, many super-large and super-high-rise buildings have sprung up everywhere, and pseudo-classical styles coexist with modern and post-modern buildings, which has caused fatal and irreparable damage to the urban landscape. For example, walking from Beijing West Railway Station to Chang 'an Avenue, the huge buildings that hit us head-on stand side by side, and all kinds of strange colors oppress people's vision and even make people feel a sense of fear. The sequela brought by this out-of-control architectural planning is obviously not solved by urban color design. But from another point of view, it is precisely because it is difficult for us to unify the existing buildings in terms of volume, height and style today, so what we can do is to make color planning, so that some chaotic buildings can get some unity in color as far as possible. According to psychological experiments, among the two visual components of "shape" and "color", the sensitivity of human beings to color is 80%, and the sensitivity to shape is about 20%. Color is the first factor that affects the senses. Therefore, looking for problems from the perspective of urban color, taking necessary measures to change some possible urban colors and standardizing the colors of new buildings can, to a certain extent, repair the urban landscape that has been seriously damaged due to out-of-control urban planning. This is what I mean by "better late than never". Principles of urban color planning and design
So, how to plan and design the color of the city? Here, first of all, we need to clarify a concept.
When it comes to urban colors, many people have a colorful illusion, that is, red, yellow, blue, green and purple. Urban colors are to decorate buildings and dress up cities with all kinds of "most beautiful" colors. In fact, there is no distinction between beauty and ugliness in color itself. The so-called color beauty lies in the collocation of color and color and color and environment. The color that people visually think is the most beautiful may be the ugliest color if it appears in the wrong place or the collocation ratio is not harmonious. For example, green, as the embodiment of plant life, is always the most beautiful color in the city. No matter how chaotic the color of the building is, as long as it is covered with green vegetation, it will turn ugliness into beauty. But if the whole city is painted green, it may make people have gloomy associations, which is the law of color psychology. For example, big red and big green is a taboo in color application, but "a little red among all greens" is a beautiful picture. For another example, "five colors are blind", and messy colors are easy to cause visual pollution; But if the color is too monotonous and dull, it will also cause visual fatigue. Therefore, just as there is no certain rule in the use of color in painting, there is no invariable rule in the use of urban color. Here, I can only elaborate a few basic principles:
1, highlighting the principles of urban natural beauty and humanistic beauty.
The aesthetic feeling of people's color comes from the historical process of "nature comes from people" and from the cultivation of people by nature. For human beings, the original color of nature is always easy to accept, even the most beautiful. Therefore, the color of the city can never compete with nature, but should try to protect the outstanding natural colors, especially the natural colors of trees, grasslands, rivers, oceans and even rocks. The newly-built Qingdao coastal pedestrian walkway, with yellow-brown logs as the framework, not only reflects the respect for nature, but also blends it into the scenery of Yu Haibin, which is a very successful case. There are many natural reefs on the sidewalks of Hong Kong Road and Donghai Road in Qingdao, which constitute a unique landscape of the city. This is also a wise move worthy of recognition. When planning the old city of Qingdao, all roads leading to the sea are open, which not only draws lessons from the natural scenery, but also integrates the color of the sea into the city. However, many roads leading to the sea in the eastern new district are blocked, and the city lacks the most beautiful colors, which is regrettable.
Western sages say that the most beautiful monkeys are ugly to human beings, and people always regard people as the first aesthetic object. Therefore, in urban color design, we should try our best to make a large area of color unobtrusive and gorgeous to highlight the beauty of people. The most beautiful scenery on the streets of Paris is fashionable girls. The floors and walls of Paris are simple and elegant gray and beige, which highlights the color beauty of the floating population. In many of our cities, commercial streets are often colorful from the soles of their feet to the top of their heads: bright red tiles under their feet and flying flags above their heads; On the outer wall of the shop, there are large posters of goods; Beside the sidewalk, there are also light box advertisements; Walking, people's colors and beauty are almost submerged. This can only make people sigh that we don't know how to respect and highlight the beauty of people.
2. The principle of continuing the historical context of the city.
Once the urban color is formed through historical accumulation, it becomes the carrier of urban culture and constantly tells the historical and cultural significance of the city. Therefore, in order to continue the context of the city, historical and cultural cities and ancient cities should try their best to maintain their traditional colors to show the authenticity of their history and culture. If the original features of the city have been destroyed, at least the buildings around historical buildings and cultural sites must be in harmony with the colors of ancient buildings. The old city of Frankfurt was severely damaged in World War II, so we should pay attention to this coordination around some existing ancient buildings, such as using beige as exterior wall paint to form a small color environment. It is said that the protection of the old city around Huangchenggen in Beijing has begun to pay attention to this, which is gratifying. Otherwise, the Imperial Capital will be submerged in a more magnificent glass curtain wall building, and the historical context of Beijing will be completely destroyed.
3. Follow the principle of distinguishing urban functions.
Just as people's clothing should obey people's identity, urban color should also obey the function of the city. This contains two meanings: one refers to the overall function of the city, and the other refers to the zoning function of the city. Commercial cities and cultural or tourist cities should naturally have different colors, and big cities and small cities should also have different color principles. For a commercial metropolis like Hong Kong, urban colors are subordinate to commercial purposes, and people can tolerate them even if the colors are a little confusing. However, for famous cultural cities like Paris and Vienna, if their city colors are chaotic, it will do great damage to the city image. Milan, as the earliest financial center in Italy, has a very dignified color in the old city, while Venice, as a tourist city, has a much more lively color in the old city, which is irreplaceable. Relatively speaking, some tourist towns in Europe have bright colors, which leave a distinct impression on tourists. In the big cities of Europe, the architectural colors are relatively elegant, and a sense of tranquility is pursued to avoid "noise" caused by hot colors.
From the perspective of urban regional division, the color of municipal administrative center (or square) should generally be dignified; The color of the business circle can be more active; The color of the residential area should be simple and elegant; The colors of tourist areas should be strong and harmonious. These principles are the general principles of urban color planning, such as separating residential areas from commercial streets by appropriate color means: there should be no advertisements in residential areas, which is an important means to implement functional color differentiation in urban areas. Similarly, the color of urban single buildings should also obey their functions. Large-scale infrastructure, such as overpass, has a strong sense of quantity and is close to natural colors, so it is unnecessary to draw it so self-defeating. For example, high-rise office buildings should not use frivolous colors, while temporary public facilities such as street telephone booths and bus shelters can use relatively bright colors. As long as we can formulate and strictly implement the color control standards of various districts including hue, lightness and saturation of buildings, we can gradually solve the problem of chaotic and mediocre urban colors.
4. The harmonious principle of urban color.
Harmony is the core principle of color application and urban color. The color here includes all the components of urban color: natural and artificial; Fixed and mobile; Permanent, temporary, etc. Harmony here requires the unity or coordination of urban colors in changes and differences. If there is no change and difference in color, there will be no harmony; But if the changes and differences are too great, there will be no harmony. The coordination of urban color includes two aspects, one is the coordination between artificial color and natural color or urban natural environment color, and the other is the coordination between artificial color and artificial color or urban architectural environment color.
The color of a city should first be in harmony with the color of the natural environment. The colors of cities embraced by green forests or blue oceans should naturally be different from those of inland cities or megacities. In a small town surrounded by green, even if colors are used boldly, it will not destroy the harmony of urban colors. European tourist towns, such as Innsbruck and Salzburg, have bright architectural colors, which is also the reason: the outside of the town is often surrounded by large green rivers and mountains, or white snow in winter, so that the warm red tone of urban street scenes is easier to find a balance. And cities in the ocean, if the color is too dull, the city will lose its vitality. Therefore, although Venice is dominated by warm red, it does not give people the feeling of noisy colors, but is full of vitality. In short, in the case of natural colors, try to make them form the background color of the city and make cultural colors obey natural colors, which is a shortcut to make urban colors harmonious. The color of the old city of Qingdao is a model. The so-called "red tiles, green trees, blue sea and blue sky", of which only "red tiles" are artificial colors, and the rest are natural colors. These natural colors are not unique to Qingdao, but the natural wealth shared by all coastal cities. Why can Qingdao "lust after its own" natural colors? It is in the planning of the old city of Qingdao that the natural color of Qingdao is skillfully used for reference and the harmony between artificial color and natural color is realized.
In big cities or new urban areas without natural colors or specific traditional colors, the main color of the city should be neutral. Then, it is necessary to divide functional areas and building structures, and carry out color matching around the main color. Generally speaking, the color of the facade of a large building should be close to the main color, leaving room for color change and giving architectural details (windows, doorways, signboards, etc.). ) presents opportunities for change. Especially for buildings with huge volume and complex structure, unified colors should be applied to make them dissolve in the overall composition of urban colors; For small building communities with similar structures (such as apartment buildings), by changing the colors of balconies, doors and windows, the whole group of buildings will have a sense of vitality, rhythm or rhythm visually. New buildings in the city must take care of the color environment of the surrounding buildings. If the original architectural colors are not harmonious, we should use architectural colors that can neutralize color conflicts or form excessive colors, and we must not create new colors and add chaos. But no matter what the theme of urban color is, the hardened ground must be close to the natural color, the color of slate and stone brick, so as to avoid the weightlessness of urban color structure and the destruction of color harmony and unity due to the extensive use of colored floor tiles.
The trend that should be opposed in the implementation of urban color at present
Based on the above principles, I think the following three tendencies must be opposed and stopped in the implementation of urban color at present:
1, against the commercial tendency of urban color
At present, one of the main sources of urban color confusion is the commercial application of urban color. This is highlighted in the use of color in urban advertising. A large area of brightly colored light boxes, banners or balloon advertisements are irregularly placed on the roofs, fa? ades or street squares of urban buildings, and even some landmark buildings are covered with colorful advertisements, cutting the colors of the whole city into pieces, which are strange and chaotic. In particular, the simple light box advertisements at the entrance of shops have different shapes and strange colors, which not only destroy the colors of the original buildings, but also cause serious noise pollution, giving people a noisy and nervous impression and making pedestrians impetuous and dizzy. Therefore, legislation should be made to gradually limit the color of advertisements, and shops should advocate artistic signboards instead of light box shops.
2. Oppose the hegemonic tendency of urban color discourse.
Because color itself is a language that can convey some information, many new buildings are competing for the discourse hegemony of color. Some powerful units or enterprises make a big fuss about architectural color. They do not consider the coordination of urban colors, but choose the most fashionable decorative materials or the most vivid colors to decorate the exterior of the building from the psychological point of view of showing potential and showing your value. As a result, some golden glass curtain wall buildings will stand proudly in gray buildings; Some green glazed tiles decorate buildings, and they are also among the silver tall buildings. Some real estate developers, in order to show their own style, painted high-rise apartment buildings in red, green, yellow, blue and purple, vying to stand in the city center. Because of the huge size of these buildings, the consequences of color pollution are particularly serious, and legislative intervention must be made as soon as possible.
3. Oppose the tendency of urban color to catch up with fashion.
Due to the lack of special research, advocacy and planning on urban colors, I think the architectural colors that catch up with fashion are the main reasons for the confusion of urban colors. In most cases, the leaders, architects and building owners of urban construction are not motivated by commercial purposes or power, but just to catch up with the new trend or do imitation shows, making the city color messy. Innovation is not equal to beauty, and economic strength is not equal to cultural development. Architecture has the characteristics of the times, but blindly following the trend of architectural fashion itself is contrary to the aesthetic and cultural essence of architecture. Similarly, the fashion tendency of architecture and even the whole city color is also contrary to the aesthetic and cultural nature of urban color. Unfortunately, for a long time, we didn't understand this. Since the reform and opening up in the 1980s, the earliest places and countries people went to were Hong Kong, Japan and the United States. Taking the highly commercialized urban buildings and colors in these regions and countries as models is like copying viaducts everywhere (almost all European cities rely on tunnels to solve traffic problems). The color of our city has also entered a misunderstanding. After imitating each other, domestic cities have formed various fashion trends.
Colored bricks on the ground are a typical example. It seems that it started in Dalian, Japan (I have seen red floor tiles in Japanese cities) and then spread in China. I paid great attention to Europe twice, but I didn't find any city's sidewalks or squares paved with colored floor tiles (their sidewalks and squares are either mushroom stones with a history of hundreds of years or the simplest cement floor tiles). Colored sidewalks not only destroy the harmony of urban colors, but also quickly turn into big faces, dirty and ugly because they are difficult to clean, just blackening the face of the city. Glass curtain walls are another example. As we all know, glass curtain wall may cause light pollution, but the color pollution it causes is relatively more serious. Because of the difference of hue and chromaticity caused by the material itself, it is difficult to coordinate with the color of traditional buildings. Therefore, there is no glass curtain wall building in the old city of Paris, which is the objective basis for their urban color to continue. And our glass curtain wall building can be inserted into any area, and one such building may destroy the color of the whole street. Glass curtain wall is the fatal factor of "hopelessness" of traditional commercial streets in Beijing and Shanghai.
White tiles are characteristic building materials in China. As the representative of southern nouveau riche culture, it quickly spread to the whole country and became fashionable, which is indeed a tragedy in the history of China architectural culture. Regardless of the functional modeling environment, all white bricks can only give people the feeling of anemia. The key is not white itself, but this white brick with high brightness and strong reflection. In the summer sunshine, white is harsh, and in the bleak winter, white is chilly, which never gives people a pleasing feeling. It is difficult to coordinate with the colors of other cities, and the damage it causes will never be recovered-because its fatal feature is that it will never become "old", and even its ugly color cannot be concealed by three-dimensional green. Therefore, where this white pollution goes, the traditional urban landscape will be destroyed there. Fortunately, the current white fashion trend has become a thing of the past, but new decoration materials and new architectural colors may be taking shape. Only when every city has found its own color feeling and established the confidence of urban culture, will this fashion be despised, and then, the planning, design and protection of our urban colors will really have hope.