What is the city color, how to determine the city color

City is a concentrated human settlement, the so-called city color, that is, the urban public **** space of all the exposed objects outside the perceived color sum (urban underground facilities and ground building interior decoration has nothing to do with the city color; the ground building is in a state of secrecy of the fa?ade, its color can not be perceived, also does not constitute the city color). City color consists of two parts: natural color and artificial color (or called cultural color). The bare land (including dirt roads), rocks, lawns, trees, rivers, waterfronts, and skies in the city are all natural colors. All buildings on the ground in the city, hardened square pavement, and transportation, street furniture, pedestrian clothing, etc., are artificial products, generated are artificial color. In the city artificial color composition, but also according to the nature of the object, divided into fixed color and flow color, permanent color and temporary color. The city's various permanent public civil buildings, bridges, streets and squares, urban sculpture, etc., constitutes a fixed permanent color; and urban vehicles and other means of transport, pedestrian clothing constitutes the flow of color; urban advertising, signage, street signs, kiosks, street lights, neon lights and windows, window furnishings, etc. constitutes a temporary color. At the same time, due to the color produced by light refraction, a variety of objects original color, according to the surface texture of its materials, the degree of light and the influence of environmental color changes, so the city color can also be divided into a single original color and visual effects of color. The same yellow building, is the sea and built, or back of the mountain and stand, is the independent existence, or interspersed in the construction, its color effect is very different.

Therefore, the city color is a systematic existence, complete urban color planning and design, should be all the city color composition factors unified analysis and planning, to determine the main color system or secondary color system. Then determine a variety of buildings and other objects of the permanent inherent base color, and then determine the flow of color, including urban advertising and public transport vehicles, including street decorations and window sill furnishings, and so on the temporary color. However, according to the current situation of China's urban planning failure, this paper mainly studies the fixed color of urban buildings, as well as the coordination between the fixed color and the natural color.

The significance of urban color planning and design

Why should our cities, especially the historical and cultural cities, pay attention to color planning and design? Summarized, there are the following points:

One, the city color is an important part of the quality of urban habitat

Love of beauty of all people, according to Marx's point of view, color is the most popular form of beauty. Therefore, color is an important part of urban beauty, but also an important factor affecting the quality of life of urban residents. Psychological research has long noted the impact of color on human mental health, and the impact of urban color on the psychology of the residents has been empirically demonstrated by many vivid cases. A few years ago, Tokyo, Japan, there has been a citizen's "color riot", many citizens in the face of bright, high-color buses, cabs, as well as the color of neon lights, colorful advertisements and blinding glass curtain walls, feel dizzy, irritable, and for this reason put forward a severe criticism, forcing the Tokyo municipal authorities Had to try to correct the color deviation, to eliminate the public's mind irritability and restlessness. Britain has also happened an interesting thing: there is a black bridge, every year there are some people there to commit suicide; later painted the bridge into the sky blue, the suicide of people significantly reduced; people then painted the bridge into pink, and since then there are no suicides. The psychological effect of the city's color on people can be seen here (Chen Aihe: "Give the city a healthy and beautiful color," People's Daily, 2002, 04, 05).

Western philosopher Heidegger famously said: human beings poetically inhabit the earth. Today, in Germany, Austria, France, the Netherlands and other countries, this saying has partly become a reality. This is true of their villages, and it is equally true of their cities. Although most of their cities have lasted for hundreds of years, and the quality of their ordinary buildings is by no means higher than ours, their cities still give people a sense of elegance, warmth, comfort, and full of cultural meaning. This is directly related to its urban environment, color tone planning and control: people walking on the streets of these cities, do not feel the clutter of harsh colors, not to mention the huge advertisements desperately harassing the line of sight. Simple and harmonious colors give people a pleasant feeling, which itself forms part of their elegant and civilized life. This shows that we must control noise and air pollution, like the same, attach great importance to the issue of urban color, in order to continue to beautify and optimize the quality of urban living environment.

Second, the city color is an important carrier of urban history and culture

City color is as old as the history of the city, and the color itself has accumulated the history of the city. Among them, some of the color is a reflection of the city's political or economic culture, like the imperial city of Beijing's golden roofs and residential gray and brown roof contrast, is a reflection of the supremacy of the Chinese feudal society; the Bund building in Shanghai, the heavy lead grey, the majesty of the international financial capital. Some of them are the result of natural selection of urban architecture, like the gray tiles and white walls of Jiangnan cities in China and the red tiles and yellow walls of German cities, which are the traditional colors of cities. Whether it is white walls and gray tiles or yellow walls and red tiles, these aesthetics in line with the law of color matching, not only is the crystallization of the aesthetic interests of different nationalities, but also the formation of different cultural traditions. Like European cities, if you only look at their churches, there seem to be many **** the same point. But if you look at the residential tone, whether it is Venice or Amsterdam, people will be instantly recognizable; even if its exterior paint is new, but its color is historical. Therefore, if a city arbitrarily destroys the traditional color tone, it is equal to cut off the history, exposing a pale face. This is exactly where the sadness of many historical and cultural cities in China lies: just from the appearance, people can't conclude that Beijing is as historical as Paris in any case; driving on the streets of Suzhou, people absolutely can't feel the characteristics of the famous city of Jiangnan or China's water city. Therefore, the historical and cultural cities, as the protection of cultural heritage to maintain its urban characteristics, in order to continue its historical lineage.

Third, the city color is the embodiment of the city's modern civilization

City color has long existed, but the city color design and planning is a modern subject. Why this situation? The key lies in the traditional city is in a culturally closed state, in the relatively backward situation of productivity development and growth. Urban building color by building materials, construction technology is very limited. It is impossible for people to use a certain expensive material just for the sake of color. Therefore, the color of most cities is either reflected by the inherent color of building materials, such as red or grey bricks and tiles; or determined by cheap and easily available materials, such as yellow or white paint. Moreover, the people who live in them do not know that the buildings of other nations or regions have alternative colors. In this kind of passive choice, although the aesthetic law potentially plays a role, but may not reflect the civilization of human consciousness. Modern urban construction is different, due to the strong economic strength to do support, but also due to new materials, new technologies, new technology invention and popularity, people have been able to arbitrarily control the color of the building and other urban facilities, equipment; and modern media and convenient transportation, but also to break down the cultural barriers, people can emulate each other, and even the formation of so-called architectural fashion trends. It is in this context that people who have gained the freedom of color, how to control the color of their city and not to catch up with the fashion has become a civilized issue. Today, want to give a city or a new urban area to put on various colors of luxury coat, not difficult, as long as the money on the line; but to let the new city to form a harmonious, elegant hue, but very not easy, it needs to city leaders, architects and owners have a high cultural cultivation. This is like the reform and opening up, we say goodbye to clothing after the blue and gray era, how to choose the style of clothing to reflect the cultural tastes of people is a reason. The new Mrs. Although covered in silk and satin jewelry, but always give a feeling of culture; female students, although a plain, but reveals a bookish. A famous painter returned from the United States, lamented that Shanghai has become dirt. Many people do not understand. In fact, just as the city people look at the country people wearing red jackets and green pants is "dirt", we were painted colorful, colorful mess of the city, how can we say that it is not a kind of "dirt"? Therefore, just as an American architect said, "Let me take a look at your city, and I will be able to tell what the city dwellers are seeking culturally. A city's color, indeed, at all times show the spirit of the city, the city's modern civilization level.

Fourth, the city color is also an important means of correcting the disordered state of urban architecture

Practically speaking, at present, the most serious problems in China's urban construction is not in the city color; city color problems, the main reason for the color itself is not in the color: the key to the city is the misbehavior of architectural planning. Due to the lack of strict control over the volume, height, style, texture and environmental coordination of new buildings, many oversized, super-high-rise buildings have sprung up everywhere, and pseudo-classical and modern, post-modern style buildings stand side by side, which have caused fatal, irreparable damage to the cityscape. For example, if you walk from Beijing West Railway Station to Chang'an Street, you will be greeted by gigantic buildings with all kinds of strange colors standing side by side, which oppresses people's vision and even makes people feel a certain sense of fear. This aftermath of architectural planning out of control, obviously not rely on urban color design can be resolved. But from another point of view, precisely because today we have been difficult from the volume, height, style of the existing buildings on the unity, so what we can do is to formulate color planning, so that some of the chaotic buildings in the possible circumstances, try to get some kind of unity in terms of color. Psychological tests have determined that among the two major components of vision, "shape" and "color", human sensitivity to color is 80%, and sensitivity to shape is about 20%, and color is the first element that affects the senses. Therefore, looking for problems from the perspective of urban color, taking the necessary measures to change certain urban colors that may be changed, and regulating the color of new buildings can, to a certain extent, repair the urban landscape that has been seriously damaged by the loss of control of urban planning. This is what I mean by "mending the fold after a sheep is lost". Principles of urban color planning and design

So, how to plan and design the color of the city? Here, first of all, a concept needs to be clarified.

Mention of urban color, many people will have the illusion that color is colorful, is red, yellow, blue, green and purple, urban color, is to use a variety of "the most beautiful" colors to decorate buildings, dress up the city. In fact, the color itself is not divided into beauty and ugliness, the so-called beauty of color, completely beautiful in the color and color, color and environment collocation. People visually think that the most beautiful color, if the place of appearance of the wrong, or with the proportion of disharmony, it may be the most ugly color. 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, as long as it is covered by green vegetation, it will turn ugly into beautiful. However, if the whole city is painted green, it may make people produce eerie and horrible associations, which is made by the law of color psychology. For example, big red and green is a taboo in the use of color, but "a little red in the midst of green" is a beautiful picture. For example, "color blinds the eye", color clutter is easy to produce visual pollution; but if the color is too monotonous, dull, the same will make people produce visual fatigue. Therefore, just as there are no certain rules for the use of color in painting, there are no stereotypical rules for the use of urban color. Here, I can only elaborate a few basic principles:

1, highlighting the natural beauty of the city, the principle of human beauty

The human sense of color beauty from its "natural to the human generation" in the course of history, from the nature of man's cultivation. For human beings, the original color of nature is always easy to accept, and even the most beautiful. Therefore, the color of the city should never compete with nature, but try to protect and highlight the natural color, especially the natural color of trees, grass, rivers, the sea, and even rocks. Qingdao's newly renovated coastal walkway, with a yellow-brown log structure, not only reflects the respect for nature, but also make it dissolve in the seaside scenery, is a very successful case. The preservation of many natural reefs on the sidewalks of Qingdao's Hong Kong Road and Donghai Road, which form a unique part of the city's landscape, is also a wise move that deserves to be recognized. Qingdao old city in the planning, all the roads to the sea are open, not only to the natural scenery, but also the color of the sea into the city, while the eastern new area, many of the roads to the sea is blocked, the city is missing a piece of the most beautiful color, which is regrettable.

Western philosophers say, the most beautiful monkey is also ugly to human beings, people always take people as the first aesthetic object. Therefore, in the city color design, try to make a large area of color is not flamboyant, not gaudy, in order to highlight the beauty of people. The most beautiful scenery on the streets of Paris is the fashion women, and the ground and walls of Paris are elegant gray, beige, which highlights the color of the flowing crowd of beauty. And many of our city's commercial streets, often from the soles of the feet to the top of the head, everywhere is the color of the competition: feet is bright red tiles, head is fluttering colorful flags; store facades, is a large commodity posters; sidewalks, but also stands a light box ads; walking in the middle of it, the color of the people, the beauty of the people, almost drowned out. This can only be lamented, we do not know how to respect and highlight the beauty of people.

2, the continuation of the city's historical lineage principle

City color once formed by the historical precipitation, it becomes the carrier of urban culture, and constantly tell the city's historical and cultural meanings. Therefore, the historical and cultural cities, ancient cities, in order to continue the city's culture, the city should try to maintain its traditional color, in order to show the authenticity of its history and culture. If the original style of the city has been destroyed, at least in the historical buildings, cultural monuments around the building, its color tone must be unified with the ancient building color tone. Frankfurt's old city was severely damaged in World War II, some of the existing buildings around the old buildings will pay attention to this kind of coordination, such as using beige as the exterior wall paint, forming a small environment of color. It is said that the protection of the old city of Beijing around the roots of the Imperial City, has begun to pay attention to this point, which is worth celebrating. Otherwise, the Imperial City was submerged in the more gilded glass curtain wall building complex, Beijing's historical lineage will be completely buried.

3, subject to the principle of urban functional differentiation

As people's clothing should be subject to the identity of people, the city's color should be subject to the function of the city. This contains two meanings: one refers to the overall function of the city, one refers to the function of the city's partition. A commercial city and a cultural or tourist city, its color should naturally be different, a big city and a small city, its color principles should also be different. For a commercial metropolis like Hong Kong, the city color is subordinate to the commercial purpose, even if the color is a bit chaotic, people can tolerate. But for such famous cultural cities as Paris and Vienna, if their city colors are chaotic, it will do great harm to the image of the city. Milan as Italy's earliest financial center, its old city color is very heavy, while Venice, as a tourist city, its old city color is much more lively, the two are not interchangeable. Relatively speaking, some of Europe's small tourist towns, its building colors are more colorful, leaving a vivid impression on tourists; and Europe's big cities, its building colors are more elegant, the pursuit of a sense of serenity, to avoid the color of fire and the formation of "noise".

From the urban area, the city administrative center (or square) of the color, generally should be some heavy; commercial area of the color, can be active; residential area of the color, should be some elegant; tourism area of the color, to emphasize the harmony of the eye. These principles are the general rules of urban color planning, such as the use of appropriate color means to separate residential areas and commercial districts: residential areas should not appear advertisements, is the implementation of functional color differentiation of urban areas is an important means. Similarly, the color of urban monolithic buildings should also be subordinate to its function. Such as overpasses and other large-scale infrastructure, its concrete color not only shows the sense of power, but also close to the natural color, there is no need to make a mess of painting. Like high-rise office buildings, it is not appropriate to use frivolous colors, and like the street phone booths, bus shelters and other temporary public **** facilities, you can use relatively bright colors. As long as we can develop, including building hue, brightness, saturation, including zoning color control standards and strictly enforced, can gradually solve the problem of urban color chaos and mediocrity.

4, the urban color composition of the principle of harmony

Harmony is the core principle of the use of color, but also the core principle of urban color. Here the color includes all the urban color composition factors: natural, artificial; fixed, mobile; permanent, temporary and so on. Harmony here, is the requirement of urban color in the changes, differences in the realization of unity or coordination. If there is no change in color, difference, there is no harmony; but change, difference is too large, there is no harmony. Coordination of urban color, including two aspects, one refers to the artificial color and natural color or with the city's natural environment color coordination, one refers to the artificial color and artificial color or with the urban built environment color coordination between.

City color should first be coordinated with the natural environment color, a city embraced by the green forest or blue ocean, its color should naturally be different from the inland city or mega-city. Green surrounded by small towns, the use of color even if a little bold, but also not to destroy the harmony of urban color. Small European tourist towns, such as Innsbruck, Salzburg's brightly colored buildings, the reason is also here: small towns are often surrounded by large green rivers and mountains, or winter snow, so that the warm red tones of the city streetscape, it will be easier to find a balance. The city in the ocean, if the color is too plain, the city will lose vitality, so, although Venice is dominated by warm red, but does not give people the feeling of color cacophony, but instead appears to be vibrant. In short, in the case of natural color, we should try to make it constitute the city's background color, so that the cultural color subordinate to the natural color, which is a shortcut to make the city color harmony. The color of Qingdao's old city is a good example. The so-called "red tiles, green trees, blue sea and blue sky", of which only the "red tiles" are artificial colors, the rest are all natural colors. These natural colors are not unique to Qingdao, but are the natural wealth of all coastal cities***. Why is Qingdao able to "covet" these natural colors for itself? It lies in the planning of Qingdao's old city, cleverly borrowed, the use of Qingdao's natural colors, to achieve a harmonious unity of artificial color and natural color.

In the absence or lack of natural colors in large cities or new urban areas, if there is no specific traditional color, the city's main color should be neutral, and then, sub-functional areas, sub-buildings, around the main color with color. In general, the color of large building facade should be close to the main color, leaving space for color changes, giving the architectural details (windows, doorways, signboards, etc.) the opportunity to render changes. Especially the huge volume, complex structure of the building, the application of uniform color, so that it dissolves in the overall composition of the city color; volume is small but the structure of the same building complex (such as apartment buildings), should be through the lanai, windows and doors of the color changes in the design, so that the whole group of buildings to produce a visual sense of vividness, rhythm or rhythm. New buildings in the city, must respond to the surrounding buildings have formed the color environment, if the original building color is very disharmonious, should be used to neutralize the color conflict or the formation of excessive color of the building color, but never new, and then make a new color, chaos on the added chaos. But no matter how the city's color palette, hardened ground must be close to the natural color, close to the slate, stone tile color, to avoid the use of large areas of colorful floor tiles to make the city color structure weightless, destroy the harmony of the color.

Current urban color implementation should be opposed to the tendency

Based on the above principles, I believe that the current implementation of urban color, we must oppose, stop the following three tendencies:

1, against the commercial tendency of urban color

Currently caused by the urban color confusion, a major source of urban color is the commercial use of color. This is highlighted in the use of urban advertising colors. Large areas of bright colors, chromaticity full of light boxes, banners or balloon ads, irregularly placed on the roofs of urban buildings, facades or street squares, and even some landmarks are also draped with flowers and green ads, the entire city color cuts the scattered, strange and disorderly. In particular, the store front simple light box advertising, different shapes, strange color protruding, not only destroyed the original color of the building, but also caused serious noise and color pollution, giving a person the impression of hustle and bustle and nervousness, so that the pedestrians are restless and inexplicable, God dizziness. Therefore, legislation should be gradually limited advertising color, store front should promote the art of signboard-based, instead of light box store sign.

2, against the urban color discourse hegemony tendency

Since the color itself is also a language, can convey some kind of information, many new buildings are competing for the hegemony of the color discourse. Some powerful units or enterprises have been making a big fuss over the colors of the buildings they own. They do not consider the coordination of the city's colors, but from the show of power to show the noble psychological point of view, choose the most fashionable decorative materials, or the brightest colors to decorate the building exterior. Thus, some golden glass curtain wall buildings will stand tall in the gray tone of the building group; some green glazed tile decoration building, also among the silver high-rise. Some real estate developers, in order to show their own grandeur, to build high-rise apartment buildings painted in several colors of red, green, yellow, blue and purple, competing in the city center. Because of these buildings itself is a large volume, they cause color pollution is particularly serious consequences, must be early legislation to intervene.

3, against the city color catching up with the fashionable tendency

Because of the lack of special research on urban color, advocacy and planning, I think, catching up with the architectural color fashion is the main cause of urban color confusion. In most cases, the person in charge of urban construction, architects and building owners, not for commercial purposes or power motives, just to catch up with the new trend or do imitation show, and make a mess of the city color. New does not mean beautiful, and a strong economy does not equal a developed culture. Architecture has the nature of the times, but blindly follow the imitation of the architectural fashion tendency itself, is against the architectural aesthetics and cultural nature. Similarly, the fashionable tendency of architecture and even the color of the whole city is also against the aesthetics of city color and cultural nature. Unfortunately, for a long time, we did not understand this point. Since the reform and opening up in the 1980s, the earliest and most people to go to the region and the United States, Hong Kong, Japan and the United States, these regions and countries highly commercialized city buildings and colors are considered as a model, like everywhere imitating the viaducts (European cities are almost always by the tunnel to solve the traffic problem), our city's color also into the wrong area, and through the domestic city of each other to imitate, then the formation of a variety of fashionable The color of our cities is also in the wrong place, and after the domestic cities imitate each other, all kinds of fashionable tendency.

The ground is a typical example of colorful tiles. It seems to be from Japan (in the Japanese city I have seen red tiles) to learn from the rise of Dalian and then spread in the country. I went to Europe twice, are very attentive, did not find any city sidewalks or squares are paved with colorful tiles (their sidewalks and squares, either to maintain hundreds of years of history of the mushroom stone, or the simplest cement tiles). Colored sidewalks, not only destroy the harmony of the city's colors, but also, because of cleaning difficulties quickly become a big flower face, dirty and ugly, precisely to the face of the city smeared black. Glass curtain wall is another example. Glass curtain wall may cause light pollution, which has been **** knowledge, but it caused by the color pollution is relatively more serious. Due to the material itself caused by the difference in tone, chroma, it is difficult to harmonize with the traditional architectural colors. Therefore, the old city of Paris can not see a glass curtain wall building, which is the objective basis for the continuation of their urban color. And our glass curtain wall buildings, can be inserted into any area, and one such building, it may be the color of the entire street to destroy. Whether it is Beijing or Shanghai's traditional commercial streets, the color of its color is "hopeless", the glass curtain wall is a fatal factor.

White magnetic tiles are the building materials of Chinese characteristics. It as a representative of the culture of the southern boomers, soon popularized the whole country to become fashionable, is indeed the history of China's architectural culture of sadness. Regardless of the functional modeling environment, all white tiles, can only give a person the feeling of anemia. The key is not in white itself, but this high brightness, reflective white brick, summer sun, white blinding, depressed winter, white cold, never give people a pleasant feeling. It is difficult to coordinate with other urban colors, and the trauma caused can never be restored - because one of its fatal characteristics is never become "old", and even through the three-dimensional green to hide its ugly color. Therefore, wherever this white pollution goes, the traditional cityscape is destroyed there. Fortunately, the current wave of white fashion has become a thing of the past, but new decoration materials, new building color fashion may be forming. Only when each city to find their own color feeling, set up a city of cultural confidence, this fashion will be despised, then, our city color planning and design and protection is really hopeful.