Perspective - October 2015

All the colours of the wind

Fighting the tide of today's trendy neutrals and too-often drab beiges and greiges, we focus on colour this month, with a variety of projects and people celebrating the notion that there are 50 shades of every colour possible, not just grey.
From the shimmering tiles of davidclover's Butterfly House (page 64) to the solid surfaces of the Boris Vian Library (page 62), designers explore the full spectrum of the rainbow. Have a drink at Joe's Bar (page 66), bed down for the night at Generator Paris (page 72), or have a bite to eat the Lemongrass restaurant (page 50) — life can be a rainbow.

Now, amid the 21st century's consumerist frenzy, it is a brave man who ventures the opinion that perhaps we need to stop. Well, perhaps pretty much everything. Aaron Betsky, dean of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture at Taliesin and one of the curators of the 2015 Bi-City Biennale of UrbanismArchitecture (see page 88) cuts straight to the chase: "This Biennale makes a simple argument: we have enough stuff. We have enough buildings, enough objects, and enough images. We certainly have enough cities and built-up areas. We do not need to make or build any more. What we need to do is to reuse, rethink, and reimagine what we already have."

Will next month's Biennale effect the change he hopes for? Maybe not immediately, but it may well be that circumstance, passion or fashion will swing the pendulum his way.

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