#architecture rendering

[angelicasdigitaldiary]

Wednesday / Thursday

Third coffee of the day with a friend, which led to late night rendering in photoshop, early morning mandarin study, and evening walk.

[openhousedesigns]

Parametric Concept Pavilion with amazing lighting

[artbykla]

HaRe Hall Render - Green

May 2020

Hybrid hand drawing and digital render

Green is a color I love incorporating into building design. Green connects us to nature and calms the human mind. The right neutral shades also compliment skin tones beautifully. I'll admit, these were the thoughts in my mind when developing this color option, rather than a historic reasoning as with the red and blue options prior. Though after researching the history of Red in Victorian homes and Blue in Edwardian, I did wonder if there was any significance to the color Green in Victorian/Edwardian history?

The answer: yes! Green was a favored color in paints, wallpapers, and decorative products like artificial flowers. Victorians in an increasingly industrializing world romanticized nature's splendid beauty, a biophilia we can relate to today (cottagecore ain't nothing new). The cruel irony is how a biophilic craze became mass-produced with products that turned deadly. Friends, let me introduce you to the dark history of green paint pigments. This gets long, so read on if you're ready for a rabbit hole.

We have a wide selection of paint colors across the color wheel today, but it is actually really difficult to develop all these pigments. Green was a particular thorny color to get right. From at least Roman times to the 1700s, the most common tone used was Verdigris Green. This was a bluish green tone made from copper acetate1 (you know how copper turns blue-green with enough seawater exposure? Yeah, that.). Artists could then get to forest green by mixing with lead tin (a yellow pigment). Verdigris starts showing up in American homes around 1790s/early 1800s on house shutters2 and is used all throughout George Washington's Monticello residence3.

Blue-green is lovely in its own right, and mixing to get a more "pure" green isn't the worst thing in the world. The problem is... verdigris green would age and darken over time to a brown or black. Definitely not what the artist is going for!1

Well, in 1775, the perfect green colorant was developed by Carl Wilhelm Scheele, by "heating sodium carbonate, adding arsenious oxide, stirring until the mixture was dissolved, and then adding a copper sulfate to the final solution."4 The result? A dazzlingly deep and glowing green perfect for representing foliage.

Scheele's green was the star of product and interior design during the Victorian Era, at least in Great Britain and Europe5 (so far I've only found that it "may have been used in house paints" in America6). The Arts and Crafts movement at this time spawned many organic wallpapers depicting nature scenes using Scheele's Green:

Unfortunately, the green was as deadly as it was lovely. Look back at that mixing process. "Arsenious Oxide". Yes, THAT arsenic. Materials that touched skin regularly would usually leave the wearer with skin lesions4. Materials with the pigment in damp conditions would produce a toxic gas that could produce extreme nausea, cramps, and light-headedness. If you were exposed to enough of the gas (say, a worker at the Morris company making the wallpapers above), or were a child (in either a room papered in this green or a child laboror producing artificial flowers in the stuff), this also meant death.

Deadly green

It is hard to tell how quickly the public realized the dangers of this pigment. A German chemist named Leopold Gmelin began warning the public against Scheele's green as early as 1839, but William Morris didn't stop producing his popular wallpapers with arsenic-based paints until around 1875 (5). In paintings though, we could see a differing connotation in the color.

I find Edvard Munch's paintings of illness fascinating - especially with this lurid green at Death in the Sick Room, made even more stark in contrast with the warm tones of the floor and furniture. This use of green has such a difference in tone from the soft, nostalgic wallpaper patterns above.

In an earlier work, The Sick Child, the green haunts every dark space about this girl, and her arm even seems to be glowing with a floating spectre of green. Did he associate green with illness and death? Did everyone by this time? Was Munch... painting with Scheele's green?

Most likely, his paints did not include Scheele's Green, but a newer pigment at the time, the aptly named Emerald Green or Paris Green. This Emerald Green was developed in 1814 as a less harmful yet still brilliant and easy to produce green, and came to replace Scheele's Green. Investigation of Materials used by Edvard Munch7 noted this about The Sick Child: "copper and arsenic were found both in the green-blue layer at the top ... and in the green particle in the lower layers, probably indicating the presence of emerald green".

Yes, that's right, this green still uses arsenic. So much for safer. Neither pigment is in use today, but perhaps symbolically it was for the best that my client did not choose the green tone for his hall.

Citations:

1 http://www.webexhibits.org/pigments/intro/greens.html

2 Welsh, Frank S. "The Early American Palette." Paint in America, edited by Roger W. Moss, The Preservation Press, 1994, 68-85.

3 Mosca, Matthew J. "Paint Decoration at Mount Vernon: The Revival of Eighteenth-Century Techniques." Paint in America, edited by Roger W. Moss, The Preservation Press, 1994, 104-127.

4 Kelleher, Katy. "Scheele's Green, the Color of Fake Foliage and Death". The Paris Review. 2 May 2018, https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/05/02/scheeles-green-the-color-of-fake-foliage-and-death/, Accessed 30 Aug 2021.

5 Cale, Jessica. "Death in the Walls: How Scheele's Green Poisoned Victorian Britain." Dirty Sexy History, 30 Oct. 2016, https://dirtysexyhistory.com/2016/10/30/death-in-the-walls-how-scheeles-green-poisoned-victorian-britain/, Accessed 30 Aug. 2021.

6 Newman, Richard & Eugene Farrell. "House Paint Pigments: Composition and Use." Paint in America, edited by Roger W. Moss, The Preservation Press, 1994, 276-290.

7 Singer, B. & Aslaksby, Trond & Topalova-Casadiego, Biljana & Tveit, Eva. (2010). Investigation of Materials Used by Edvard Munch. Studies in Conservation. 55. 274-292. 10.1179/sic.2010.55.4.274.

[undeadmarina]

Finals are done.

Now I can sleep.

[arkitortured]

Hey there!!!! First off I really love your blog. Secondly, I'll be in my 2nd yr of architecture this year (hopefully). We've only used auto cad till now (just the basics) and I really wanted to learn photoshop/ 3d designing as I've got so much time, which I won't have when college resumes. I am completely clueless about these softwares. If you could give some advice on it as a student and the softwares you use? Thank you so much in advance. And your work is amazing.

Hi! Most firms will ask you to use Rhino or Maya depending on which country you’re from. But rhino is pretty straight forward, a good way to practice is to 3D model your previous designs. Look up tutorials on how to do certain shapes.

My recommendation is to study architectural collages. Rendering is great but you need to learn how to convey a concept in 2D before you move on to 3D

Congrats on making it to second year!

[scutcor]

University team project (2): conversion and extension of Uzina Filaret (Filaret electrical plant), Bucharest, Romania.

The XIXth century building was turned into a Technical Museum, got some extra space to host auxiliary facilities of the museum in two new, almost identical, buildings next to it, that blend in with the built environment of the surrounding residential area. 

The site of the Museum is the melting point of the residential neighbourhood and Carol Park, one of the oldest and most notorious public parks of Bucharest, a historical monument itself. 

[radiographista]

Radiographista 943, #ArchitectureSaturday

LVR, rendered by Rendertaxi 

Asunaro interior design by CANOMA Shinsuke Yokoyama 

Contemporary Residences 2015-1016, rendered by Jeffrey Faranial 

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[matthewcglover-blog]

Plans unveiled for London's first purpose-built design district