Idea // Surfaces in Color

(First in a series of little design exercises and doodles, mostly impromptu, to test ideas and to gauge reactions)

I've had my eye on a building near my office for some time - the Sobu Flats apartment complex (map). I don't know much about it other than it was originally built in the 1950's by Julian LeCraw & Co. as a retirement home and recently converted to small apartments. Interestingly, the revamp was done by Hiro Isogai, the former head of the interiors department at my current firm. The building is one of the few Mid-Century Modern multi-family housing developments that I know of in Atlanta.

I really enjoy the classic ribbon window motif and clean horizontal geometries, but the building is missing something...color. White and dark grey on the exterior comprise a very sterile palette that reminds me of a hospital (especially since the building is organized in wings, similar to Aalto's Paimio Sanatorium, but even that has colored awnings). So over lunch I sketched up some potential color schemes, one warm and one cool. Interventions like this - simple additions of color or surface embellishment - will become important tools for architects as we reinvent the practice to fit the demands of the economy and society. Tell me what you think! One of the key questions is: does the addition of color/text add or detract from the inherent character of the building? Does it turn it from a elegantly composed Modernist building devoid of color into a colorful contemporary monstrosity, or is it now a more exciting building that brings energy to stuffy old Buckhead?