Calzada Fox has launched its Colour for Cities manifesto; a challenge to architects, developers and local authorities to consider all aspects of colour in the pursuit of a built environment that is more considerate of people and the planet.
Established in 2018 by Carolina Calzada-Oliveira and Justine Fox, Calzada Fox is a collaborative colour consultancy with an approach that goes beyond aesthetics combining colour psychology, trend forecasting and consumer insight across many sectors on bespoke initiatives from research to installations, training and publications.
With two out of every three people expected to be living in cities by 2050, colour seems to be the last consideration in urban development with concessions predominantly being made through ‘colourful’ art interventions, silo-ed greening initiatives or superficial graphic colour ‘pops’ applied to the surfaces of corporate developments. The Colour for Cities manifesto explores some of the challenges arising from the rapid development of urban environments and calls for holistic, collaborative and considered thinking about the role of colour in city making, with the aim of improving the quality of lived experience and our ability to tackle climate change.
Different cultures understand colour in different ways through deep rooted traditions and collective perceptions. Calzada Fox believes that a new approach to urban placemaking, informed by historic and current data, materials, geography and demographics, can improve the emotional connections surrounding place, and help overcome the dislocation or loss of geographic identity caused by global homogenisation. The Colour for Cities manifesto also calls for a consideration of material colour to help mediate density, create long-term sustainability through building and space performance and create harmonious social balance via culturally inclusive and positively intuitive cities.
The first initiative to emerge from the manifesto is The Contactless Playground; an affordable, all weather and Covid-safe play experience that can be incorporated into temporary accommodation areas. The playground has been designed with the well-being and mental health of young people in mind and seeks to offer a solution to the current challenges affecting young people in urban environments with little or poor access to quality outdoor space.
In England alone, more than 127,000 children in 86,000 households are currently housed in temporary accommodation, a situation which has worsened since the start of the pandemic. Justine Fox of Calzada Fox said “We were inspired to create the contactless playground by a story we heard during lockdown of a family whose only access to outdoor space was to take their kids for a walk around the local bus station. Lockdown has increased inequality in our society and we hope that local authorities and developers will embrace this pragmatic idea to offer quality play-space for the many families and children who live in compromised space.“
Where traditional playground equipment focuses on physical interaction with the structure, the Contactless Playground innovates play behaviour through colour theory and applied colour psychology, finding new ways to encourage activity, agility and positive identity, and putting the child at the centre of their own experience. Designed for easy manufacture and fast assembly, the component based Contactless Playground can be deployed by local authorities to alleviate the challenges of temporary accommodation, brighten up unloved areas or create additional space for communities during lockdown.
