Volcanic Dark sets the weight of the palette in urgency and appetite, and Barragán Pink is the swatch that breaks rank: a single pink that stops the set reading as one note. Volcanic Dark to Desert Light spans 78 points of lightness, so the palette can carry its own hierarchy without reaching for a second one. Volcanic Dark is the loudest thing in the set and every swatch beside it is warm too, which gives the palette no way to cool a page down and no colour to rest an eye on.
Volcanic Dark a deep oxblood or garnet, red aged into authority rather than warning.
Barragán Pink reads as compassion and warmth stripped of red's urgency, playful in high saturation, tender in low.
Mexican Gold a citrus-bright orange: enthusiasm, playfulness, an unmistakable call to attention.
Lava Stone a brick or clay red, more grounded than alarming, heat without the siren.
Desert Light a peach or apricot tint, all the friendliness of orange with none of the volume.
Kenneth Frampton's theoretical weapon against placeless universalism - Álvaro Siza writing Portuguese light into every concrete wall, Glenn Murcutt threading corrugated iron through Australian bush, local material and climate elevated as resistance.
Explore the full Critical Regionalism style guideIts decade on the timeline · 1980s