I got this job because of poor architectural design. Art to the rescue!

Colour in Architecture takes many forms and can be expressed or used in wildly different ways.

One of my earliest public commissions was the Darcy St + Laneway Activation in Parramatta. The project in question was commissioned by Parramatta Council for building assets they owned and planned to demolish. This project gave me the opportunity to destroy the buildings first, by using paint instead of a sledgehammer.

Trauma Informed Design shares many principles with Biophilic Design and as I learn more about both, it’s increasingly clear to me (and backed up by a growing body of scientific studies) that colour plays a central role in design for health and well-being. Human beings have evolved in close and complex relationship with the natural world, and our brains function better when stimulated and soothed by interaction with complex natural systems.

It’s not our eyes that see colour, it’s our brains. And we don’t see colour objectively, we see it through a lens of culture, memory, fashion, personal and social history; we see colours in relation to each other.

‘Warm Vessel’ is the name of a recent project in Darlinghurst, in which I was asked to propose a colour strategy for a small courtyard garden. This involved painting the back walls of the terrace house, the side boundary walls and the façade of the studio/garage that formed the rear boundary and enclosed the courtyard.

How often do we say to our clients, this might not work? A few days after a very bold colour concept had been accepted by our client, the architect called me and asked, “Sonia, how confident are you that this is actually going to work?”

There are colours that are inherently unsuitable for architecture, but white is not one of them, white is very useful.

As you may know - I am not a fan of stark whites. Whilst the colour white has its uses and place in architecture, I strongly object to its use as a ‘given’, or a default colour.

Sydney’s golden sandstone is the starting point for any contextually sensitive building colour palette in the city. Meaning, if you use white on a building in Sydney, make it a warm white. For black, make it a warm black.

Every plant is its own exquisite colour world ...

Where have all the colours gone?

National Carillon as Memorial for Lost Temperate Grasslands

I often get asked by architects; “how do you convince your clients to use particular colours, or to be bold with colour?”

When I design a mural, I am trying to make a work that responds to, and is inspired by the place, or the context of the mural – that is – the physical environment, the architecture itself, and the surrounding environment.

The colours for this refurbishment of a former Bourke Street Bakery, into Paper Bird (a modern Korean) restaurant in Potts Point, created a kind of inner world.

The opportunity offered by the semi underground space allowed us to create a self contained world, with a unique atmosphere.

I like to create colour palettes inspired by real things in the world.

A colour wheel is not in itself a design tool.

The ‘colour world’ is much more complex and beautiful.

Bondi Beach is big, lively, beautiful … and people certainly don’t go there to look at a ‘dunny’ block. So, for the North Bondi Public Amenities, colour was used to camouflage and harmonise the toilets with the environment rather than to make them stand out.

So many houses exhibit the same neutral colour schemes. Intended to be polite, they avoid scrutiny and arouse little passion. I believe generic colour schemes disengage the end user.

Wareemba Boogie Woogie mural connects different elements, bringing them together in a choreographed dance for the pure pleasure of those who live and visit there, it celebrates good neighbours and enriches a quiet suburban street corner.

In architecture, colour is often thought of as dangerous, because of its capacity to destroy the perception of form. It’s thought of as trivial, because of its association with decoration, with the primitive, and with the feminine.
 Colour is political.