Novelty: FSB + Les Couleurs® Le Corbusier®

Colour evokes emotion, cre­at­ing at­mos­phere and pro­vid­ing ori­en­ta­tion. It ac­cen­tu­ates a detail or blends it har­mo­niously into the space.

Some­times we only per­ceive colour sub­con­sciously, some­times it com­mands at­ten­tion. At best, when used mas­ter­fully, it allows a build­ing, a room or an object to truly shine.

The market offers a plethora of colour systems with an almost in­fi­nite range of shades. Being spoilt for choice only makes things harder. A vibrant mise-en-scène is no guar­an­tee that the colour scheme ac­tu­ally works.

With Le Cor­busier’s Poly­chromie Ar­chi­tec­turale, FSB offers a variety of shades for se­lected prod­ucts, en­sur­ing that plan­ners in­vari­ably achieve the perfect colour match. If it appeals, it is cer­tainly the right choice.

Start­ing in the 1930s and taking his in­spi­ra­tion from music and paint­ing, ar­chi­tect Le Cor­busier de­vel­oped two col­lec­tions, with 13 key­boards com­posed of 63 colours.

Based on the colours of nature, the system is the result of his search for prin­ci­ples, in­vari­ables and mech­a­nisms in the impact of colour. Le Cor­busier’s per­cep­tion of built space in­cluded its colour scheme. Le Cor­busier held that “Colour is as pow­er­ful a tool in ar­chi­tec­ture as the ground plan and the section.

Or rather: poly­chromy, a com­po­nent of the ground plan and the section itself.” He was opposed to the purely dec­o­ra­tive use of colour. The wall plane as a carrier of colour may have a certain au­ton­omy, but it remains part of an intact space.

Colour can enhance the iden­tity of in­di­vid­ual rooms, ac­cen­tu­ate spatial re­la­tion­ships and, not least, make large build­ings less over­pow­er­ing. Façades in sienna es­tab­lish their di­men­sions, light blue and white let rows of el­e­ments recede, while pale green façades fade into the veg­e­ta­tion.

With his chro­matic and achro­matic tones, and varying bright­ness values, Le Cor­busier created a poly­chromy that ac­com­mo­dates the needs of ar­chi­tec­ture and those it houses.

We con­sider our fit­tings for doors and windows to be useful tools, acting as ex­ten­sions of the human hand.

Using them is a tactile ex­pe­ri­ence shaped by form and ma­te­ri­al­ity. But as touch begins in the mind, they are also a treat for the eye. Clearly, then, using the colours es­pe­cially created by Le Cor­busier for the world of ar­chi­tec­ture gives this ex­pe­ri­ence the final flour­ish.

In­spired by the Art Nouveau phi­los­o­phy that views a house and its in­te­rior design as a Gesamtkunst­werk or all-en­com­pass­ing work of art, FSB em­braces styl­is­tic co­her­ence when trans­pos­ing fun­da­men­tal ar­chi­tec­tural and con­cep­tual prin­ci­ples in a build­ing.

Just like choos­ing the right colour(s), a door handle should always be se­lected in the context of the sur­round­ing ar­chi­tec­ture and fur­nish­ings.

The space’s idiom finds ex­pres­sion in the handle’s design, trans­form­ing it into a har­mo­nious part of the whole or con­sciously cre­at­ing a con­trast. We call it “ar­chi­tec­ture en minia­ture”. The ex­clu­sive part­ner­ship of FSB + Les Couleurs® Le Cor­busier® opens up com­pletely new per­spec­tives for re­al­is­ing in­di­vid­ual con­cepts – and in­tro­duces ideas that plan­ners would pre­vi­ously have thought im­pos­si­ble.

Freedom + se­cu­rity

Colour has a for­ma­tive in­flu­ence on ar­chi­tec­ture. The re­spon­si­bil­ity as­so­ci­ated with se­lec­tion and com­mit­ment is cor­re­spond­ingly high. With the Ar­chi­tec­tural Poly­chromy, plan­ners have the freedom to realize in­di­vid­ual color con­cepts and always be on the safe side. Harmony suc­ceeds in no time and the use of dif­fer­ent colors or bright­ness levels leads to con­sis­tent results.

All-em­brac­ing co­he­sion beyond doors and windows

Les Couleurs® Le Cor­busier® has es­tab­lished a partner network of go-to, ex­clu­sive brands to ensure colour schemes are con­sis­tent across prod­ucts and trades. A beau­ti­ful couple and not only on par in terms of design: Our door handle FSB 1267 and the JUNG switch LS 990, both in color LC 32041 - and both at an in­stal­la­tion height of 1050 mm.

Ma­te­r­ial

For over 140 years, FSB has been cap­i­tal­is­ing on the ben­e­fits of metal. We have en­hanced our pro­cess­ing of this ma­te­r­ial by adopt­ing a mix of manual and in­dus­trial methods, al­low­ing the design of our prod­ucts to emerge from the metal to optimum effect. Our un­ri­valled pro­duc­tion quality and surface finish are down to our processes, many of which are patented. Not only do these fea­tures catch the eye, they are im­me­di­ately obvious to the touch. The prod­ucts in our Les Couleurs® Le Cor­busier® col­lec­tion are made of alu­minium, then given a coloured powder coating in a sol­vent-free process.

Form

At FSB, “good form” emerged in the 1950s and exudes a time­less el­e­gance: Jo­hannes Potente de­vel­oped his seminal design that is moulded to the hand – still a classic today. Since the 1980s, our “Four-point guide to good grip” has served as a bench­mark for de­vis­ing tools to act as ex­ten­sions of the hand at the hu­man-ar­chi­tec­ture in­ter­face. Working with top-notch ar­chi­tects and de­sign­ers, this ex­per­tise has led to highly ef­fec­tive so­lu­tions in terms of both form and func­tion that lit­er­ally epit­o­mise the concept of “ar­chi­tec­ture en minia­ture”.

Colour

First and fore­most, FSB’s colours are re­splen­dent in nat­ural-look­ing fin­ishes of stain­less steel, alu­minium and bronze. More­over, we asked our­selves, what chro­matic and achro­matic shades would be ideal for use in ar­chi­tec­ture? And Le Cor­busier’s Poly­chromie Ar­chi­tec­turale passes with flying colours. The system with its 63 curated shades pro­vides a com­plete and har­mo­nious colour scheme for ar­chi­tec­tural pro­jects. Used se­lec­tively and cre­atively, these hues shape the concept of our prod­ucts and their impact in the space.

Get more in­for­ma­tion about our diverse product range in a per­sonal con­ver­sa­tion.

Alessa Kaiser
Head of project and order center
alessa.​kaiser@​fsb.​de
+49 5272 608-200

Further in­for­ma­tion about Les Couleurs® and its creator Le Cor­busier, back­ground to the cre­ation and use of the color key­boards as well as in­ter­est­ing facts about the ex­clu­sive partner network can be found here: