Heartwood sets the weight of the palette in warmth and creativity, and Glulam is the swatch that breaks rank: a single brown that stops the set reading as one note. Heartwood to Light Wood spans 80 points of lightness, so the palette can carry its own hierarchy without reaching for a second one. Heartwood 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.
Heartwood a deep rust or umber, orange's heat banked into something earthy and lived-in.
Glulam grounds a palette: stability, reliability, the color of wood, soil, and things built to last.
CLT Face signals warmth, approachability, and creative energy, friendlier than red, louder than yellow.
Pale Timber signals warmth, approachability, and creative energy, friendlier than red, louder than yellow.
Light Wood a peach or apricot tint, all the friendliness of orange with none of the volume.
No single doctrine - the live edge of global practice where Diébédo Francis Kéré builds with compressed earth and Kengo Kuma weaves timber lattices, both answering the same question: what should architecture do right now?
Explore the full Contemporary Architecture style guideIts decade on the timeline · 2000s