On the Outside Colors
The colors of Tusen Takk, like everything else, were chosen trusting a sense of intuition as to what’s right. Patricia and I had long conversations late into the night with Peter Bohlin and Jeff Jones, the principle BCJ architects. Color chips and color systems were looked at, along with color samples I worked up of a wide variety of brightly colored stains on maple, cedar, cypress and Douglas fir, the woods we were using inside and outside the buildings. Resistance to fading and the ability to come back and re-coat were taken into account. But in the end, all of the color choices were made on what seemed right, the hue and saturation that fit that specific material on that specific surface in that specific location.
I think the end result is both cheerful to the spirit and playful to the eye. For instance:
we chose Corten steel over shiny aluminum for the outer wrap metal panels of the painting studio because it was warmer, less hard edge, and would blend in with the forest landscape as it continues to rust
the outside painting wall in the courtyard is cypress stained turquoise with an old oxidized copper gutter hammered into an edging between the stone and what will be grass lawn - I salvaged a bunch of gutters years ago thinking they could be used for some art project - what better use than this huge piece of artwork, Tusen Takk!
the front door is cypress stained an orange-red
the outside front painting studio wall is cement board painted bright blue, and
the roof-supporting poles outside the wood shop (“Not one thick pole, but two thin poles, that’s what’s going to work here,” insisted Peter during the design phase of the project ) were painted chrome yellow (which helps a person to see them so they never back a vehicle into them and collapse the roof,” said me, always the safety guy whose job it once was to reduce risk (can’t help it).
