OMA 30: 30 Colours

Through the ages, paint has been used to protect surfaces, to enhance the appearance of simple materials or to provide decoration for aesthetic pleasure.

Over the past century, the coatings industry has devoted considerable time and effort to creating as many different colours as possible, in a wide variety of textures and in as many different product forms as required. Despite all this work, the natural colours of materials and the colours of paints remain fundamentally different, a fact which has often led to a degree of ideological friction.

The key topic addressed during the most recent phase of the New Colours for a New Century project was therefore ‘Stretching the possibilities of colour in paint’.

We are honoured that Rem Koolhaas and his colleagues at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture were willing to share their ideas with us and create the thirty colours featured in this book.

— M. Roosebloom, President, Decorative Coatings, Akzo Nobel

Blaricum, Netherlands, V+K Publishing, 1999