Image: Design Soda
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Last month I was delighted to attend the Mapleton Crescent SW18 Supper Club hosted by Pocket Living at Flotsum & Jetsam on Wandsworth Common, with a side order of colour psychology! The evening was in celebration of Pocket Living’s latest development, in central Wandsworth which builds on their solid portfolio offering Londonders compact but accessible apartments which don’t compromise on design. Mapleton Crescent is an 18 storey development of affordable apartments uniquely clad in beautiful undulating green glazed ceramic tiles which have a really arresting beauty on the towns landscape.
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Images: Design Soda
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Now you probably know that colour is my bag, so when an evening that includes a talk with Pantone is on the cards I’m not likely to miss it! But actually I am also slightly invested in Wandsworth’s changing landscape as I grew up in this enclave of South London, my parents still live in our family home there and I’ve passed the new tower several times during construction and wondered just what its beautiful facade was made of. It was so interesting to hear the story and the craft that went into the design of these tiles. Inspired by historical Art Deco in the area, the Faience ceramic tiles were a product of the collaboration between architects Metropolitan Workshop and ceramasist Loraine Rutt who spent many laborious hours getting the colour just right. So, as you may infer, colour is very important to Pocket Living too. The tiles that decorate Mapleton Crescent are a shade of green-blue that reflect the colour of The Wandle river it is set beside, mirroring the aspects of nature the building lives alongside. The tiles when viewed close up have a beautiful translucency which catches in the light and mimics the play of light on water. The effect of colour on our landscape has such a powerful impact, and I love this kind of architecture that is bold and elegantly hued.
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The Art Deco lines of the architectural model of Mapleton Cresent produced by architect firm Metropolitan Workshop for Pocket Living.
Image: Pocket Living
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Colour is for me, the core of feeling, it’s what I look for in homes, textile design, composition and on the landscape. We all have very different attitudes to colour, some people thrive on the bold tones of comic book primary colours, others cocoon in jewel like dark tones of infinite depth, and for many quiet tones of grey or neutrals still hold the greatest allure. One thing is for sure, we are all a lot more colour conscious these days, we speak colour much more knowingly and colour confidence is a part of the mainstream from how we dress through to how we decorate. Over recent years paint sellers tell us that we have become more likely to make brave choices in the home and colour has become one of the modern touchstones of individuality. Alongside this, companies that speak about the meaning behind our colour trends have become a part of the modern milieu themselves and we are used to hearing generations deconstructed in colour – millennial pink anyone?
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Tile samples from the initial stage of designing Mapleton Crescent’s faience tiles.
Image: Pocket Living
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Of course our colour choices don’t exist in a vacuum, things that we believe are unique choices are often (frighteningly) a mirror of general mood, and this is where world leading colour institute Pantone come in observing and reinterpreting our choices. Pantone are self confessed colour nerds who describe themselves as dedicated to analysing colour down to its DNA. So what are the colours of now and next? Do you have an inkling of what’s coming our way in 2019? Pantone do, and if you stay through til end of piece I will tell you what they are working on for next year – quick, all rush to the end so you can see if the tester pot you are currently considering is ahead of the curve or way off the mark!
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Glazing samples from ceramicist Loraine Rutt.
Image: Lorraine Rutt
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The colour picked by Pantone for last year, which is showing no signs of disappearing any time soon, was a shade of green called Greenery which sits on the yellower end of the spectrum and draws on the colours found on fresh spring leaves. I personally love green, the cooler green-blue spectrum is where my taste naturally sits and it was exactly this shade which was voted the worlds favourite colour in G.F Smiths worldwide search last year. Colour can unlock the restorative potential of our homes and green is a great colour to use for this. According to Pantone’s Abigail Bruce “green is nature’s version of a stress reliever. It provides nourishment, it’s a colour for connecting, seeking people who share our values”. I’ve always thought of green as a very sociable colour, a welcoming shade that doesn’t command your attention or distract. To be honest, the exact shade Greenery isn’t completely in my comfort zone but the deeper greens or those with a hint of mint have always been my favourites, how much I wouldn’t give for the bathroom (top right) below!
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Sources: Clockwise from top left: Green Terrazzo surface by CasaMood via Archiproducts // Mapleton Cresent by Pocket Living // Heritage apartment in Venice by Marcante-Testa via Yellow Trace // Aesop store, Milan, via DesignBoom // A Room with a view via FrenchByDesign Blog // Space by Moli Studio, viaFrenchByDesign Blog
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Our last three living rooms have been in the hinterland of green-blue painted in Teresa’s Green by Farrow & Ball which you can see below, I love how fresh and tranquil this colour feels. Abigail made reference to the spa-like quality of green, alongside its power to invigorate, it’s a hard line to get just right and I can see how the process of developing the tiles for Mapleton Crescent was so painstaking, finding a colour which is elegant and unobtrusive, conscious of its surroundings and environment but also daring and inventive is quite a tall order! Abigail describes the use of green in architecture (as Pocket Living have done with Mapleton Crescent) as “bold, renewing, assertive, refreshing”. I love the use of colour on buildings and get very bored of the more pedestrian structures that go up all the time on our modern landscape. Considering how much more frequent the use of colour is within the home these days, it surprises me that so little is used in modern architecture. I absolutely love the faience tiles on the new development from Pocket Living and how the craftsmanship involved in the process behind the design reflects the history of the area, dotted as it was by mills and workshops in Victorian Times. The design takes up the mantle of tradition from London tube stations and are actually used a lot more frequently than you may think. I’m sure we can all visualise their heavy use throughout Portugal where patterned tiles take up relief, but did you know that many of New York’s skyscrapers are also made with this material?
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Image: Design Soda
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So, what’s next on our colour filled landscape I hear you ask(!). Well, the future is blue by the looks of things. Staying within the cooler range (following greenery and this years ultra-violet) Pantone are predicting a colour that they are currently calling Focus – a mid range cool blue, and it’s a colour I really like, it’s very similar to a colour that we currently live with and love in our cocktail room. I love hearing the reasoning behind the predictions and this one is based on the observation that living through crazy times where everything is in flux, and we are presented with infinite choices, we are more likely to be drawn to colours that help us to cut through the clutter and see what’s important.
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Bedroom Interior of the new Mapleton Crescent development
Mapleton Crescent facade.
Images: Pocket Living
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Pantone’s keywords for the cultural landscape in 2018 are: innovative, imaginative, unique. Abigail talked of our need to define ourselves as individuals in the modern climate. What I think refernces a turn away from collectivism during a period of polarising politics. Anyone who’s seen Adam Curtis’ Hypernormalisation (which by the way if you haven’t, you really must) will know where this is coming from. We seem to define ourselves along more libertarian lines these days and uniqueness and individual experience both seem to rank highly in projections of self. Abigail made note that we are becoming an experience economy within Pantone’s analysis and this Blue also represents the desire to discover, to indulge in experiences that allow us to slow the momentum of modern life. Similarly, I think green does that too. But, looking past this social deconstruction, tell me what do you think of blue as the colour for 2019? Is it written in stone or do you think there’s still room for it to alter? I’d love to know your thoughts. Blue has been on the radar for a while, I wonder if 2019 is its year, for now I’m still sticking firmly to green!
This post is a collaboration with Pocket Living, as ever all opinions are honest and my own.
“The Pocket Living mission is to help city makers make London their home. Their Pocket homes provide compact one bedroom affordable homes for young Londoners local to the development, whilst their larger two and three bedroom Pocket Edition homes are available to all.
A limited number of Pocket Edition homes are still available at Mapleton Crescent SW18! To find out more visit mapletoncrescentsw18.com or call 020 7291 3683 to arrange a visit to their newly launched show home”
