has anyone noticed that a large majority of buildings are painted either "depressing light blue" or grey? what is up with that????
how about brightening up the place a little!?
i hope nobody gets offended, but i just returned from a trip to switzerland (and previously lived there), and have a major complaint against the (in my opinion) ugly outside residential building colour.
Or neon orange or puke green
very much true. I hate the colours. Makes the buildings look older than they actually are. And with the winter weather, it really gets depressing even to look at them. Wish major major cities start a beautification project or something like that.
Our rental apartment block is terracotta colour, it is truly horrific and doesn't blend in with the countryside setting it is in at all. And there are 4 more blocks just like it close by. How it got past planning I don't know.
Not to mention that awful pale yellow ...
Our architect wanted to paint ours purple!
I've seen a couple of those around... Like a giant barbie's fun house.
I do wonder about the architects here - I'm yet to see a building here where everything lines up as it should. Most of the place will be well thought out, but there's always that random wall or material choice that brings thoughts of the designers standing in front a dart board to mind.
A new set of flats has just gone up in our town - and I, and everyone passing by, am left shaking our heads thinking -->
Now, building land in this town is very, very rare - and very expensive, in the ca 3-3500m2 range. At that price, one would think that something classically elegant, fitting into the surroundings, would be built. Afterall, given the price of land the flats are going to run well into the luxury range.
So what did the architects do?
Obviously the inspriation for this design was a Motel 6 - a long low rectangular box, with exterior metal stairs and doors to each flat are off a balcony. Just like a cheap motel. But the colors! The top floor is a pumicey-pink, the ground floor a mustard yellow, the window trim and exterior staircase are a 70s avocado green, and the balconies are white, grey and black frosty glass panels - running the entire length of the building, white-grey-black, white-grey-black, white-grey-black.
Seriously -
Given that this is a town where you can't put up a garden shed without a permit and signed permission from your neighbors, and your neighbors vote on what color geranium one is allowed to plant - how the Sam Hill did this monstrosity ever get planning permission? Perhaps someone with a warehouse full of leftover paint and building odds-and-ends sat on the committee...
If the current crop of architects have their way, Switzerland will look like a rust belt strip mall within the next few decades.
Oh dear! did you used to work for the BBC? Please don't tell anyone back home that Switzerland is not perfect. ;-)
When I first came to Switzerland I was surprised that the most people's rented buildings in Zürich are ugly, characterless, Eastern block, concrete, utilitarian constructions.
And even many of the older buildings with nice architecture are a miserable grey colour.
Yes, terracotta leaning towards bright red seems to be very fashionable.
There's a huge new red apartment building that has just had its scaffolding taken down next to the railway line between Baar and Zug. Quite impressive and shiny for now, but I just wonder what it will look like in 20 years' time when all the plastic (or whatever it is) has faded to pink...
Stephen, for me the best building colour is natural Pierre d'Hauterive - as in the older Neuchatel buildings. The lovely natural ochre of the iron limestone- very similar to Cotswolds or Rutland stone. Catches the sun lovely, doesn't it?
Our limestone built old farm has quite a bit of pink in it - love it too.
I think brightly coloured beach huts on the Norfolk (UK) coast, or coloured town houses in Cape Town or Marrakesh are wonderful- but those multi-coloured nee estates in Swiss suburbs look just daft. And those dreadful dark brown old chalets in the Alps - how dire (not- love them).
Ah ha! So I'm not the only one to notice that!
But I think we better keep it on the D-low... for fear that the architects here might all join forces and begin to paint ALL buildings hot pink (etc.) in an attempt to keep the pesky foreigners out.
We should sit all the Swiss architects down in a big hall and force them to watch Balamory ( Tobermory , Isle of Mull in real life).
From reading ex-pat Forums- it seems quite a few architects here are not Swiss at all, lol
I'll watch it if you provide the Malt - but agreed, a lovely place.
I'm afraid it has very little to do with the architects, it's much more what the clients consider appropriate for the townscape.
Can't argue with that. I lived in Dijon for a year and the stone is a very similar colour, really nice.
Good to see I'm not the only one who finds swiss architecture dreadful!! I never thought it mattered much to me until I came to Zurich! Even the old buildings that should look old and nice are bizarrely renovated to look brand new from the outside :/
Get into the cities or the old towns and you'll see some wonderful traditional Swiss architecture. However I have to agree that a lot of the new towns and suburbs have a purely functional architecture resembling that of eastern bloc architecture, but with a splash of colour.
To be honest it doesn't bother me, but I can see where the styles and colour schemes are not to anybody's everybody's taste.
In Switzerland the money is good but the buildings are too grey.
In Iceland, the buildings are colourful but the weather is crapp.
In Greece, the weather is nice but the houses are too white.
In England, people are perfect but the house isolation sucks.
In Germany, life is efficient but the windows are too square.
In Italy, people are nice but you don't get to anybody's house, they all live at their mother's place.
In Japan, it's fashionably minimalist but humidity rottens everything.
...
Feel free to complete the list.