Compose styles
Rather than blending styles toward a middle, this gives them roles. The first one carries the structure, the next comes in as the accent, and anything after that shows up in a single detail. Where they fight each other, it says so before you start.
How to divide the work
- Composition
- Follow High-Tech Architecture: Push structure and services to the perimeter, leaving the interior clear
- Type
- Set in High-Tech Architecture's manner (Give each service run its own color and use it for wayfinding), and let International Style's lettering (Align sans serif signs to the column grid, flush with the wall) appear only where you want the eye to catch.
- Material
- Ground in High-Tech Architecture's material (Exposed steel, gasketed glazing, ducts painted by system); bring in exactly one thing from International Style (Steel and concrete frame, white rendered planes, large sheets of glass).
- Colour
- Build on #dce1e2, #648090, #242b30 and admit one accent from #eeece5, #9ca3a5, #252729.
Where they fight
- High-Tech Architecture and International Style both belong to Modern Architecture, so the difference is small. Push the roles further apart than feels comfortable.
Caution
- High-Tech Architecture If cleaning and repainting the exposed steel and ducts stay out of the plan, grime and patch marks become the design within a few years.
- International Style A white box alone misses the structure, free plan, industrial materials and social program, and ornament stripped without tuned proportion and detail reads as cheapness, leaving openings with no reason for their position.
Image prompt
Produce four original images that take their structure from High-Tech Architecture (style, 1970s–) and their accent from International Style (style, 1920s–1960s). ## What to make Make the kind of thing High-Tech Architecture exists for: airports and exhibition halls needing long spans and easy future servicing, or factories and laboratories where showing the structure and pipework is the message. Choose one subject and hold it across all four. ## Structure comes from High-Tech Architecture - Exposed services - External structure - Metal and glass - Modules Composition: Push structure and services to the perimeter, leaving the interior clear. Type and lettering: Give each service run its own color and use it for wayfinding. ## Accent comes from International Style, used sparingly - Rectangular volumes - Glass planes - No ornament - The free plan Let one material quality come from it: Steel and concrete frame, white rendered planes, large sheets of glass. ## Colour and feeling Build the ground on #dce1e2, carry the structure in #648090 and #242b30, and let a single accent come from #9ca3a5. These are read off real works, so a direction rather than a fixed palette. Feeling to carry: technique, futurity, exhilaration, trust, calm. ## Where they fight - High-Tech Architecture and International Style both belong to Modern Architecture, so the difference is small. Push the roles further apart than feels comfortable. ## What goes wrong - High-Tech Architecture: If cleaning and repainting the exposed steel and ducts stay out of the plan, grime and patch marks become the design within a few years. - International Style: A white box alone misses the structure, free plan, industrial materials and social program, and ornament stripped without tuned proportion and detail reads as cheapness, leaving openings with no reason for their position. ## Across the four Keep the roles fixed in all four. Vary the framing, the scale and the arrangement so the set shows what this pairing can do rather than four versions of one picture. ## Constraints - Do not imitate, reference or name any specific artist, studio, brand, character or copyrighted work. - Do not reproduce the composition of an existing work. - Produce original compositions in the general period languages described above.
Related entries
- High-Tech Architecture 1970s– / Style / Modern Architecture
Ducts, structure, elevators and joints, all of them normally hidden, are pushed to the outside so that the building reads as an enormous machine.
- International Style 1920s–1960s / Style / Modern Architecture
Strips ornament and aims at a universal architectural language crossing borders: the box, the free plan, steel, concrete and glass.
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