On a regular basis a new color collection of 30 colors created by a famous architect or designer appears under this title. The collection appears in the form of a document that goes into more detail about this personal color choice. The immediate motivation was the approaching year 2000 and the changing role of color.
The entire paint industry has been working hard on as large as possible color collections over the past fifty years in particular. An enormous range of colors is available to everyone, the latest supplement to this being the spectrophotometer. And now that it is possible to create almost all colors in paint, the choice of color is not so much a technical matter but more a question of vision and taste.
What then could be more interesting than asking top architects and designers to put together a small collection based on their vision - people with a wealth of international experience in the field of color application. When creating the collection what is involved is not only the palette, but above all providing the background to the color. With this personal vision on color we hope to add a new and interesting dimension to it.
As first in the queue of top designers we found the Italian architect and designer Alessandro Mendini willing to create a collection for us. His collection was introduced in May 1997 in Utrecht.
In the autumn of 1998 the second collection appeared, created by the English architect Sir Norman Foster, winner of The Pritzker Architecture Prize 1999.
The third collection is created by Rem Koolhaas, winner of The Pritzker Architecture Prize 2000.
The collection "The 30 colors of Rem Koolhaas" has been published in the spring of 2000.
All these collections appeared in books and in the form of a practical swatch.