What’s with all the thoughtless whitewashing?

-Super subtle or faded out drawings

-Digital and printed drawings with white backgrounds

-White models

-White walls and ceilings in buildings

-White cabinets, faded and white furniture

Maybe sometimes appropriate, but I suspect this is thoughtless and a problematic and outdated norm, as norms normally are…

Can we trace whitewashing to the early 20th century and Modernism’s fears of dirt, disease and tuberculosis? Should we worry about these associations between colour, darkness and impurity? Corb explicitly writes of purifying and cleaning the air and house of tuberculosis in his Vers une architecture. But David Gissen warns that what is rejected on an aesthetic level has to do with deeper historic biases and a culture of distinguishment. We should think carefully on who and what these rejected aspects of our environment were associated with; and why privileged members of a culture had the desire to distance themselves.

In “In Praise of Shadows” Jun'ichirō Tanizaki notices a similar “cleansing” trend in Japan’s modernization. He argues against this casting off of darkness claiming it is a forgetting of histories, narratives, atmospheres, art, emotions, proximities, tactile envelopments within space; against forgetting. In casting off colours and shadows we are discarding parts of our culture and certain experiences.

What’s your favourite colourful or shadowy space and why?