Colorful buildings are a great way to break up the monotony of boring, old brick structures. That’s why we love these colorful buildings. They’re fun, they’re creative, and they just make everyone feel happy!Â
The architects that designed the 5 buildings below have harnessed their creative might to prove that a multicolored building can not only catch ones attention, but make a powerful statement in the process.
The Chapel by A21 Studio
The competition-winning Ho Chi Minh City Community Center was designed by Vo Trong Nghia Architects and is located on a former vacant lot in the outskirts of Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City. Imbued with fluorescent details, the steel-frame structure is lightweight and easy to assemble. In 2014, the World Architecture Festival bestowed on the community center the title Building of the Year.
The Chapel is a community space for the youth in a new urban area. In order to adapt multiple operations and deal with short-term rental rates, a steel portal frame supported by a single tree-shaped column was employed. In addition, the decorator covered the windows with colorful curtains and used natural materials to boost the entire space.
Environmental Education Center El Captivador by CrystalZoo
The CrystalZoo firm designed this education center in the hinterlands of Alicante, Spain. Its Mediterranean vernacular architecture is adapted from the riurau house, a primitive dwelling and it creates an organic addition to the landscape. The design elegantly unfolds like a labyrinth with sophisticated, vibrant effect.
The visual experience complements the functional intention, inviting visitors to engage with Mediterranean history from the outset. The City Council of La Nucia, in collaboration with the University of Alicante, has brought environmental awareness to the forefront of cultural ideology by engineering a balance between environmental awareness and structural intelligence in CrystalZoo.
Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision by Willem Jan Neutelings and Michiel Riedijk
Hilversum, located southeast of Amsterdam, is known as the epicenter of the Dutch television industry. The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, a structure wrapped in colorful cast-glass panels, is home to the national broadcasting archives.
The architects have surrounded the building’s exterior in a luxurious skin of cast-glass panels, their most gorgeous work to date. Yet beneath the glittering surfaces they have fashioned a serious critique of the world saturated in advertising and marketing images, and reaffirmed architecture’s heroic stature.
Kuggen Building by Wingårdh Arkitektkontor
The Kuggen Building, designed by Swedish architecture firm Wingborg Ekman, is set against a backdrop of the waters of the adjacent Fyris River and the city of Gothenburg in Sweden. This building consists of six different shades of red and two shades of green, which are wrapped around the structure to stunning effect.
The building’s glazed terracotta panels change colors depending on the viewer’s angle and the changing daylight conditions. In some places, they appear red like an industrial paint associated with wharfs and harbors. These colors meet contrasting green patches reminiscent of autumn leaves. The changing light and character of these details alter the building’s appearance throughout the day.
Sugamo Shinkin Bank by Emmanuelle Moureaux
Emmanuelle Moureaux is known for her use of color. In the Sugamo Shinkin Bank in Nakaaoki, Japan, trees miraculously sprout from paint-chip-encased planters that evoke depth, vibrancy, and expression. The pixelated grid in the Nakaaoki residence, designed by architect Shigeru Ban, is an excellent addition to Ban’s Pantone-inspired oeuvre.
Taking its unique location as inspiration, the façade is designed to be rhythmical in order to change expressions as people see from different angles. Colors appear in and out from the rhythmical repetition of cubes, like musical notes playing a rainbow melody. The façade is composed of cubes, which are arranged in different rows. The exterior of these cubes is painted in different colors, so that the colors appear, disappear or overlap as the direction of view changes. The Flower Tower is made of 12 cubes. Each cube has a small garden inside, where seasonal changes in nature are expressed by seasonal flowers like marigolds and lavenders and growing trees such as olive trees.
