Work in Progress

Back to the Roots

Colour designs then and now

The ColorDesignStudio was established in 1974. At that time, the department was still called "Farbe am Bau" (Colour in Construction). The first colour designs were created by hand. A lot has happened since then, but the core business has remained the same: architectural colour design.

In the 1970s, manual design production was still standard: Initially, the facades and the individual construction elements (roof, plinths, cornices, window panes, etc.) were glued from cut colour sheets. Window frames and shadow edges were then laboriously redrawn. The finished design was presented on black cardboard. After the range of shades had expanded, not all shades were available as large-format colour sheets. As a result, the presentation technique changed. The gluing phase was followed by the phase of colouring in. Designs were laminated onto white cardboard and painted with original colours (Muresko). But this phase also passed: computers were first used in the early 1990s.

Design representation using gluing technique and painted with original colours - typical in the 1970s and 1980s.

First computer visualisations of interiors and facades in the 90s

The classic form of visualisation is usually done in 2D. Since 2014, there has been photorealistic image processing, which is created in the self-developed design software SPECTRUM. And for complex architecture, it is possible to construct buildings in three dimensions and present the designs as renderings from different perspectives. And what does the future hold: will we perhaps print out colour designs three-dimensionally? Come and visit again in 10 years' time...

More about the colour and material concepts of the ColorDesignStudio can be found here:
http://www.caparol.de/service/farbdesign.html