Mexican images (top 3): J Pride
Kester Avenue (bottom 2): hereinvannuys
In Central and Latin America many buildings are colorful and joyous. The entire spectrum is used, and the result is that people live among works of art. Many of the communities are not rich, but life is lived more richly.
By contrast, a lot of sunny Los Angeles is miserably gloomy and colorless. There are exceptions in certain neighborhoods like Silver Lake and East Los Angeles.
But the Valley carries the dull, pale stamp of the Eisenhower years when much of this smoggy bowl was over-developed. Burbank is a classic example of an area where a fear of strong hues (on stucco and skin) keeps the housing stock safely bland. Here in Van Nuys, along Kester Street and many, many other streets, 1955 lives on….the facades are beige and tan and off white–or whatever is considered least offensive. In the land of the free, we are imprisoned by a lack of imagination in our environment.
Dunn-Edwards should pay painters to come and redo these drab buildings in vivid shades. “Pinte su casa. Pagaremos a pintor.” It would be a community service that might earn the venerable paint company the respect of thousands who wait outside their doors every morning hoping to get a day of work.
Why not use the artistic and craft skills of the recent immigrants to create life, color and happiness in our communities? Even if that life speaks another language?
Here in Van Nuys 
JZY, it’s ironic that Western architecture did not embrace color in buildings. It was the West that introduced vivid paints to the New World. Latin America and the Caribbean ran with it.
Perhaps it didn’t catch on because the Western elite saw that the natives in the Americas used it, and looked down on all their behavior as inferior. If any European countries had started that trend, brightly colored buildings would be the norm. Instead, the New World embraced color and the Europeans think it’s gauche.
It’s gone as far as homeowners’ associations enforcing blandness codes in neighborhoods. In the U.S., with all of its supposed freedoms and property that has more rights than people, it’s illegal to have a non-bland house.
My favorite send-up of this mentality was in “Edward Scissorhands,” where the filmmakers made the conformist ranch houses in warm spring colors. It’s hilarious if you think about it.
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Because immigrants are more relaxed about different color schemes, built-forms than your NIMBY neighbors; they “know” they are too “different”/”foreign”.
On the deisgn community, alas, many trained designers were exposed to a color-restrcted education. Cannonical Western architecture in history after the fall of Rome somehow have long avoided vivid bright color palettes. Even during the various revivals, colors that used to adorn the temples and public structures of the ancient world were forsaken- for one, the “new” old structures could then “fake” the real antiquity.
On the other hand, the drab, light pastel coloring of developments after developments you are mentioning here coincided a time phase when people ate mostly bland and boring food. Conformity was considered a necessary virtue. OUt of line proposals were read as signs of delinquency and defiance. Imagine what your next door church lady would say about you and your wife and kids under a glazed green tile roof and vermillion sidings.
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You’re absolutely right! Although I remember being a little girl and growing up in the Valley, and my mom and grandmother declaring an “eyesore” any building that wasn’t a “tasteful” shade of beige or white. I don’t share their sentiment, but I think there’s more to the lack of color than simply landlords not having the enthusiasm to paint …
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