Half-Timber As Ab Art
Just an abstract close-up of the outside-wall structure and colors of an old home in Alsace.
I had heard that the Alsatians have used bright colors in connection with half-timbered architecture for centuries.
Apparently, this is not the quite the case. Bright colors only began to be used in the late 1800s. Before then, white or ochre plaster and natural or dark-stained timbers were the norm.
Below is a translation into English (by Google) of a quote summarizing an apparently authoritative French source on brightly-colored buildings in Alsace. .
But first, I personally like the bright-colored houses. I find most modern private homes and small multi-family dwellings terribly drab. Where I live, new construction with exterior plaster the color of mud is in vogue. If bright colors are currently an architectural no-no, then I prefer white to mud.
Quote: "Denis Steinmetz then turns to the planned kitsch of the vineyard towns whose variegation is used more for commercial promotion than for real enhancement of a historic heritage. A more consensual solution, that adopted by Wissembourg or Strasbourg, the city by which the "scandal" of color had broken out and which, today, without denying the polychromy, tends towards a happy harmony.
The transition from systematic white or ochre to the use of the whole palette of colors has thus become an inevitable fact of society. Alsace does not have the privilege of it, any more than other European regions. The main thing is to control the phenomenon, to respect the harmony of what must remain one of the most beautiful regions of Europe."
For the complete text, see:
Location: Village of Blotzheim, Alsace FR.
In my album: Dan's Old Architecture.
Half-Timber As Ab Art
Just an abstract close-up of the outside-wall structure and colors of an old home in Alsace.
I had heard that the Alsatians have used bright colors in connection with half-timbered architecture for centuries.
Apparently, this is not the quite the case. Bright colors only began to be used in the late 1800s. Before then, white or ochre plaster and natural or dark-stained timbers were the norm.
Below is a translation into English (by Google) of a quote summarizing an apparently authoritative French source on brightly-colored buildings in Alsace. .
But first, I personally like the bright-colored houses. I find most modern private homes and small multi-family dwellings terribly drab. Where I live, new construction with exterior plaster the color of mud is in vogue. If bright colors are currently an architectural no-no, then I prefer white to mud.
Quote: "Denis Steinmetz then turns to the planned kitsch of the vineyard towns whose variegation is used more for commercial promotion than for real enhancement of a historic heritage. A more consensual solution, that adopted by Wissembourg or Strasbourg, the city by which the "scandal" of color had broken out and which, today, without denying the polychromy, tends towards a happy harmony.
The transition from systematic white or ochre to the use of the whole palette of colors has thus become an inevitable fact of society. Alsace does not have the privilege of it, any more than other European regions. The main thing is to control the phenomenon, to respect the harmony of what must remain one of the most beautiful regions of Europe."
For the complete text, see:
Location: Village of Blotzheim, Alsace FR.
In my album: Dan's Old Architecture.