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The development of iron and steel as building materials required the use of paint for protection, providing opportunities for colour. One early recorded example is that of Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace, erected in Hyde Park by the architect Owen Jones for the World Exhibition in 1851. As Superintendent of Works Jones chose blue and white for the exterior of the cast-iron structure, and red, yellow and blue with white for the interior; arranging the latter on the roof trusses to give subtle effects of 'optical mixing'. Although the Crystal Palace was not strictly regarded as architecture, any more than the great train sheds and exhibition and market halls that were erected during the period, it provided a catalyst for the uses of colour.
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Bridges needed even more protection, and it was common to paint them in red oxide of lead - a colour that still persists on the Forth railway bridge in Scotland. Proposals to use gold to commemorate the Gold Rush, for the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco (1849) were abandoned in favour of red oxide. The rusty redness blends well with actual rust, as well as 'the natural rust of the earth', as well as contrasting effectively with the blues of water and the greens of vegetation. |
As a good landscape colour, it has been exploited in a controlled way as 'COR-TEN STEEL' on the exposed framing of buildings. For long bridges, increasingly, labour-saving methods of wrapping the structural members and cables in natural metallic fabrics, are being developed. |
City bridges present a different problem, which relates more to the human scale of the pedestrian than that of the landscape. They probide, typically, opportunities for three ways of using colour: to emphasise the structure, to establish colour associations with the elements on either side (whether buildings or trees), and to reflect historical associations. Combinations of these objects were achieved remarkably well in London under the direction of a special design office set up by the Greater London Council: a situation which no longer prevails.
References:
LANCASTER , M.L. (1984) Britain in View: Colour & the Landscape. Colour in Towns & Cities: Bridges
LANCASTER, M.L. (1996) Colourscape. From Evolution to Revolution, A Colour Strategy for the Thames. |
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