Inspiring façades and natural pigments to brighten your day

The use of colour in the West is often pretty lackluster, especially in the streets and on the façades of buildings. When visiting the Medinas of North Africa and ‘Calles’ of Mexico and Central America, this becomes even more apparent; the juxtaposition of shades and tones and the sheer brightness of the colours is enough to put a smile on anyone’s face. So much so, that wandering through the cities and towns feels like free colour therapy.

While bright colours can look different in cooler climates with cloudier skies, we can surely do better than the drab creams and pale blues/greys that we’re accustomed to. Even if painting a full façade seems a bit extreme, I guarantee that painting a garden wall, a side passage, or even an old shed, will cheer you and your neighbors up no end. Here’s some inspiration:

Chefchaouen, Morocco

The Blue Pearl, as Chefchaouen is known, is one of the most dramatic architectural uses of colour in the world. Jewish refugees are said to have introduced the tradition in the 1930s, the blue representing the sky and heaven. Walking through the streets, you see all shades of blue: turquoise, aquamarine, cobalt, and indigo. The walls and pavements have a special luminescence due to the combination of natural pigments and lime wash. The use of these pigments also gives the colours softness, a quality that is not often found in synthetic mass-produced paint.

To create a little piece of Chefchaouen, you could either take a trip to Morocco and bring back a bag of natural pigment (about $15 per kilo, and a good excuse for a holiday), or find a supplier of natural paints. For example, Little Greene  is just about to release their new range, ‘Blue’, which includes 21 beautiful shades.

Campeche, Mexico

The UNESCO heritage listed colonial town of Campeche in Mexico also provides wonderful inspiration. The perfectly restored historical center is awash with bright colours that match the sunny weather and hospitality of the people. Many of the houses are painted in earth-based colours, presumably a legacy of the Mayan use of Tezontle, a rich red clay used to clad buildings. In modern day Campeche, the rich reds, and yellow ochres are interspersed with an approved palate of pastel blues, greens, and pinks. No two houses of the same colour are found next to each other, giving each street its own character. While almost as bright as a city can get, the colours of colonial Mexico are not gaudy or fake. The pigments pack a punch, but they also have a chalky matt quality.

To create a bright Campeche-inspired wall, check out Pittsburgh Paints hacienda style colour palette, which includes 18 shades based on research of Mexican colonial buildings.

Leon, Nicaragua

The third inspiration is the laid-back city of Leon, in Nicaragua. While not as polished or as bright as Chefchaouen or Campeche, Leon is a melting pot of Nicaraguan life and its crumbly streets contain some wonderful hues.

Less ordered and formal than many colonial cities, blues, greys, pinks and rusts are used to contrast walls, doors, and window frames. Façades are often in need of touch-up, with the flaky paint revealing past colour preferences and giving the city a shabby, lived-in feel.

Leon’s streets seem so ‘on trend’, it can be difficult to believe that what your seeing is actually a traditional colour palette. To recreate the look, Farrow and Ball’s key colour trends of 2015 ‘Pink Ground’ and ‘Breakfast Room Green’ are ideal, as is their decorating theme, ‘Dark and Dramatic’.

The death of a design hotel

 

If you occasionally flick through glossy magazines or travel brochures (even the dog-eared versions in doctors waiting rooms) you’ll know that the images and descriptions of far-flung destinations are meant to take you away from the banality of the everyday. The architecturally designed buildings and carefully staged interiors are without washing up, wonky tables or baby sick. As readers, we are transported to a world of luxurious leisure, or in the case of The Guardian Weekend magazine, ethically minded austerity chic. Hip, boutique or design hotels give those with the appropriate income a chance to experience this world – a place where even if you make a mess someone else will clean it up, a place so well-designed that you feel like you’re living inside a work of art.

As much as anyone, and perhaps more than most, I’m seduced by quirky glamorous interiors. I justify this to myself by thinking that I’m gathering design tips, and I am, but I also like being in places where the aesthetics allow me to escape. So much so, that five years ago I visited Hotel Basico in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, (above) to have a couple of drinks and look around. Designed by Hector Galvan, Basico was contained within a modernist building, its design inspired by the 1950s style of Mexican oil-rigs, typography used by Mexican taxis companies, and Nana’s houses (www.coolhunter.com). In the rooms of the hotel exposed pipe work was fitted with fire hydrant style taps, baths were industrial size, beds were on large platforms, and curtains were made of rubber. Nana touches of bright plant pots and blankets softened the aesthetic. Each room was decorated with a black inner tube – I’m not really sure why – but it seemed to go with the look the Cool Hunter website described as inspired by ‘Mexico’s rustic petroleum industry’ and that they deemed as ‘construction-worker chic’.

 

While these descriptions are hilarious and sum up everything that is wrong with design writing, it would be a great state of affairs if, due to more sustainable technologies, the petroleum industry was only useful for its industrial aesthetic. Maybe Basico and Cool Hunter were trying to activate change? Sadly it seems we are not there yet.

 

Anyway, on my first visit, Basico didn’t really live up to the photographs, but I did quite like ‘construction-worker chic’. The 1950’s modern aesthetic made it light and airy, and the use of industrial materials created a quirky environment. Basico also managed to be glamorous. As Alice T Friedman[i] has argued, mid-century modern architecture reflects a fascination with glamour through futuristic luxury, sleek lines and gleaming facades. So the glamour of Basico may have been created by its references to the 1950s, as well as its modernist architecture. Well, those things, and all the beautiful people sipping cocktails on the roof terrace.

 

A month ago I went back to Playa del Carmen and couldn’t believe my eyes. ‘Construction-worker chic’ was more like ‘in need of construction work’. The façade was grimy and the windows were dressed with the type of grubby blinds normally found in ageing office buildings and taxi ranks. The plants on the terraces were unkempt and a solid metal gate shut off the once attractive foyer. I was so surprised that I questioned my memory. I asked a waiter in the restaurant across the street if it used to be a hotel. He didn’t know, but asked his manager. Yes, it used to be Basico, but now it is ‘una discoteca. It opens at weekends’. I didn’t get a chance to go in, but it looked pretty grim.

  

Something about this experience was shocking. Maybe I’m getting old, but five years doesn’t seem that long for things to change so dramatically. Playa del Carmen hadn’t become less fashionable, in fact my friend told me it had become the destination of choice for Mexican hipsters. The death of this design hotel fascinated me. Not because I wanted to know why it had happened, but because it symbolised something that I think it is important for us to recognise: the failure of glamour. The dreams and experiences of the glamorous good life used by the design, tourism and promotion industries are fleeting (if ever experienced at all). Glamour is also always accompanied by failure, even if it is not visible to us. In this instance the spectacle of consumer society written about by Guy Debord[ii] really did ring true. I was a spectator who had been woken up after being drugged by spectacular images. Perhaps then, we would all be a little more reflective about the pleasures and pains that consumer culture provides if more attention was drawn to the unsettling nature of the failure of glamour.

[i] Friedman, A. T. (2010) American Glamour and Evolution of Modern Architecture.

[ii] Debord, G. (1967) The Society of Spectacle.