Colors of the World: The Geography of Color

A fascinating book for architects, designers and urban planners, this volume uses more than 600 color photographs to demonstrate how""each country, each region, each city and village"" employs a unique color palette for its buildings. According to the Lencloses, whose book Colors of France received the International Color Design Award of 1983-4, these colors are derived both from a region's environment and its culture. Certainly, the visual argument for these conclusions is compelling: the chrome green house of Russia's Suzdal are markedly different from the sand-colored dwellings of Alegria, and both of these areas eschew the ochre pinks of Rajasthan, India, and the blacks of New York's Greenwich Village. Though the authors' dense, jargon-filled captions will probably interest only specialists, their photographs should appeal to a wider audience.