In Greenland they had a system to encode what purpose a building had. For example, if you were in a medical emergency, you would look for a yellow building.
> Red buildings signified churches, schools, teachers’ or ministers’ houses. Yellow colours were assigned to hospitals, doctors, and health care personnel. Green was at first the symbol for radio communication and later became the colour of telecommunications. The colour blue was often reserved for fish factories. Police stations were black.
Is there a reason why they used those specific colors? I don't understand why a hospital would be yellow or a police station would be black by default. My guess would be white and blue, respectively.
Snow in the air is probably a bigger problem than snow on the ground, blizzards with 20m or less visibility aren't that uncommon far north, really easy to get lost and die during those since the snow also blots out the terrain unlike fog.
Imagine trying to find a hospital under these conditions, vibrant color coding helps save lives then:
I live in one of the colourful houses in Clifton wood. We have a local WhatsApp group and one of the residents posted this a few months back:
“A couple of people claim they were the first to paint Cliftonwood houses a bright colour in the 70’s, one being our ex-mayor George Ferguson. But the wonderful late Joan from Cliftonwood Cres told me that was ‘codswallop’. Also when we moved in here fifteen years ago, we were told there were five colours allowed for the houses and that was that .” Others then disputed it and said there was never a 5 colour rule and quoted Annie Scott (who was an architect) started the trend.
I’ve also heard it said that this area was popular popular with artists and the rebellious types back in the day vs the more posh types in Clifton on top of the hill. There are some photos of the harbour from back when it was a working harbour, before the houses were painted, and it looks far less appealing (https://www.instagram.com/p/CyMNzAXIOY-/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFl...). If you do end up on Instagram search for Bristol harbour to see what it’s like now.
> the more posh types in Clifton on top of the hill
In the 70s Clifton wasn't really posh either. Like many cities at the time the affluent had moved out to the suburbs (e.g. across the Downs or Gorge). Difficult to believe now, of course.
I really wish they'd do this everywhere. In the town I live in there are a lot of houses and shops that are just exceptionally grim to look at. Everything is dilapidated, rotting, grey and pebbledashed. I can't help but think that, even if it's not fixing the root causes of why everything is shit, it would at least make things a bit less miserable and maybe give people a bit of joy and pride again for a pretty low cost. I'm pretty sure they did this exact same thing in a favela or slum somewhere and most of the residents agreed that it substantially improved life in the neighbourhood.
Meanwhile in Edinburgh there was a lot of drama because one of the residents painted their door - and apparently that didn't suit the conservative area!
If the parent commenter is British then the use of “it’s not a crime” is an idiom and usually not to be taken literally. Basically a short hand for “not a big deal, shouldn’t have a ramifications for them”.
How am I supposed to know the parent commenter's nationality?
The parent comment also opined on a scenario in which the person's actions (paint, then ask permission) landed them an official letter and threat of fine, which seems like "a big deal" to some people.
You’re not supposed to know that - I’m just guessing by the use of that phrase tbh. I was just trying to be helpful and explain a cultural difference that might explain the use of a word that hadn’t been used before.
Just wait until the area gentrifies a little more and all of the houses get rendered, painted pure white, black UPVC windows put in and the whole front garden turned into an asphalt car park.
I was going to come here to say, why aren't more places more colourful. In this day in age though, it is obvious: everything is manufactured and manufactured finishes typically offer limited options for colour. It's not like we live in the days of wood, or even steel, that had to be regularly repainted to protect it from the elements.
I live in Japan and over here pretty much every small city and town is like you describe. But the saddest thing is that even brand new houses are incredibly ugly. Like seriously, who in their sane mind paints a house in black?
As you say, a bit of color would not fix the underlying problems, but it would make life a bit more enjoyable.
I am not sure how the law is in my home country, Spain, but being a hot country, nobody is so stupid as to build a black house. Which is another funny thing, Japan is also a very hot country.
During the lockdowns the Barbican was a nice area to walk through
There are far worse buildings on the South bank of the Thames, I walk it a lot - the IBK building + ITV studios, the weird brutalist buildings near Blackfriars bridge are pretty ugly (the new '1 blackfriars' is built in the shape of a massive sarcophagus/ coffin from some angles).
There's the weird concrete pub on the others side which is pretty ugly too.
On the other hand I think those are fantastic. The Barbican is my favourite building/complex in the city. Much nicer than any of the dozens of glass boxes.
I like some aspects of it - the greenery, the glasshouses, the fact that you have flats and theatres etc intermingled. I just don't like the unending slabs of grey. It's so depressing.
Some of these photos are just around the corner from my house. Weird to see them in Hacker News.
Some of the people who own houses in my area have started hacking off the painted cement and brought the houses back to plain brick. Even some of the ones who had murals painted on them for Upfest (mentioned in the article), it seems a more conservative feel has started taking over. I think it’s sad to see the colours disappearing.
Is this due to the stage Bristol has reached in the gentrification cycle?
It's been a vibrant alternative town, but from what I understand, this made it desirable to more and more people moved in, especially as London (and I guess Brighton) became completely out of reach for most people on normal incomes. What follows is probably a more conservative, less colourful mindset...
I suspect a lot of the back to brick is actually more phase one of dealing with damp. Once its dried out a lot of houses in my area then go and get coloured insulating render. So it's not even paint anymore but the actual material is coloured.
Don't worry, Banksy is always waiting to strike just around the corner to spice up the place. Although then there is the risk of someone removing the wall and selling it. Also I noticed his latest thing got immediately scribbled over..
Honestly though the bright colours are mostly on the highly visible houses on hillsides, as soon as you get into the thick of the houses, even up in fancy Clifton it all turns a lot less colourful for 99%. Not that there's anything wrong with that, I think people just like having their house as part of the view, and contribute their little bit, just so they can say "I'm the pink one on the end" - I would :D
Painting houses like this is quite common in Wales, near the sea particularly. See places like Tenby. Bristol being very close to Wales means it does have more cultural crossover than the rest of the UK, I wonder if that has anything to do with it.
Tobermory, on Mull in Scotland, is a well known (UK) example of colourful houses - it is shoreside too. It's probably that in most tightly packed housing there's no vista, only on the shore does that become possible and so the use of colour enhances the visual amenity.
By which I mean, the Mediterranean coast has loads of colourful seaside towns The Amalfi coast (see Vernazza for an amazing example, or the other four Cinque Terre, or Pixar's Luca for a well-observed only slightly exaggerated version), Menton in France is very colourful, Venice has very colourful bits…
Roman houses, much like their now-white statues, were very colourful, so I suspect they spread their love of coloured plaster wherever they settled. Though I am not an historian (IANAH).
A couple of other peculiar colourful facts about Bristol:
* Ex-mayor George Ferguson (mentioned in the article) always wears red trousers, except when Bristol won the European Green Capital 2015 he wore green trousers in celebration.
What about the Vicious Chicken Of Bristol??? Any truth to that?
"Narrator: Sir Bedevere the Wise was the first to become one of King Arthur's Knights. But other illustrious names were soon to follow: Sir Lancelot the Brave, Sir Gallahad the Pure, Sir Robin the Not-Quite-So-Brave-As-Sir-Lancelot — who had nearly fought the Dragon of Angnor, who had nearly stood up to the Vicious Chicken of Bristol, and who had personally wet himself at the Battle of Badon Hill — and the aptly named Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Film. Together they formed a band whose names and deeds were to be retold throughout the centuries: the Knights of the Round Table."
I found the article interesting as someone born and raised in Latin America. It's not uncommon to see colorful houses here and street art. It leads me to wonder if areas with houses painted in bright colors are noteworthy at a global scale.
Newfie here. Newfoundland dropped the NLFD abbreviation for just NL about 20 years or so ago.
I’ve always heard that we painted the houses with whatever paint was on hand because the wind is strong that it strips away every couple of years. And we’re not a rich group of people, so whatever paint you have is the right paint!
My grandfather used to remark on the houses “they were crap when the went up, but somehow lasted 50 years, so I guess they’re heritage now”.
On the note of our acronym: After being a territory of Brittan, Newfoundland was its own country for a brief period of time. Much earlier before this point, Brittan conquered Labrador from the french (which used to be called "New France"), and the ownership over the land was disputed between Quebec and the self-governing colony of Newfoundland for quite some time. The dispute lasted into the mid 1920's, leaving the upper portion of the land in Newfoundland control. Some islands remain to this day under French governance, such as Saint Pierre & Miquelon. When we joined Canada in 1949, we retained Labrador, but were still named Newfoundland, having the acronym NFLD. In the early 2000's we decided to change the name to Newfoundland and Labrador to better reflect our province, and as part of this change, redefined the acronym as NL.
I was in Newfoundland in July and I noticed a few interesting things:
- The houses tended to be colorful
- Almost all the buildings I saw looked like they were just painted, I did see a couple buildings with peeling paint, but I think they were abandoned
- I personally saw around 10 different people in the middle of painting their houses just driving along in remote rural areas, all in the span of about a week. Where I live (in California), I only see this about once every 5 years.
- Paint stores are widespread, even in small rural towns where there are hardly any businesses at all
I don't know why the people of Newfoundland love painting their buildings so much, but it really makes the place look nice.
Atlantic Canadian here Newfoundland is famous for that. Not so much here in PEI but I think there are some bright buildings near the shore of fishing villages.
This is the second Bristol post I’ve seen on HN in as many days. And quite right too! It’s a fab little city that I always enjoy visiting. It’s big enough to have lots going on, without being oppressively Big like London or Birmingham.
For more Bristol, I highly recommend the BBC comedy-drama series The Outlaws.
As an aside, they were filming the latest series of The Outlaws at the same time as the annual St Werburghs City Farm Fair was due to run. The income from the fair is one of the biggest sources of income for the City Farm charity, so Outlaws paid the Farm the same amount they normally got from the Fair. Probably a good deal for the Farm as it takes a huge amount of effort to run the fair (but they also staged a delayed fair a few weeks ago too!).
Honourable mention to Windmill Hill City Farm on the other side of town too.
I moved out of the UK almost 20 years ago. If I was ever to move back (not right now...) Bristol would be top of the list for potential homes for exactly those reasons. And of course it was the birth place of trip-hop.
I've just moved back to Bristol (grew up here) and delighted to see this on HN.
Since this post is likely to be a good honeypot: can anybody recommend any good tech meetups here? I run an energy tech company and looking to meet like-minded folk
PyData Bristol often has good talks. It used to be hosted in the Ovo building (the energy company), but travels around. https://www.meetup.com/PyData-Bristol/
Also SWUX https://www.meetup.com/swux-meetup-com/ which is UX (so not technically tech), but has an excellent tech-adjacent community, and lot of members who work for tech companies even if they're not techies themselves.
They are called palms in that region but are Cordyline australis from New Zealand where they are called cabbage trees and are everywhere. They do quite well in colder New Zealand climate regions. If you are unlucky to live next door to a mature cabbage tree planted along the neighbours fence, you will spend your life picking up fallen leaves, which cannot be put in our green waste bins, on general refuse, because they don't decompose easily (18 months under careful ideal composting conditions, years otherwise).
Its not uncommon to find a giant pile of cabbage tree leaves behind someone's house because they have been meaning for years to take them to the rubbish dump. Every so often someone asks on reddit what they should do with their pile.
Another interesting face is they can live to 400+ years although often they can rot internally after 100.
Canary date palms (phoenix canariensis) can and do grow in southern England, although they don't fruit. Immature date palms need to be protected in winter, this is often achieved by bundling and tying the fronds together.
Right, let's dig into the authoritative source of all knowledge ... Wikipedia! According to that:
"Riviera is an Italian word that originates from the ancient Ligurian territory of Italy"
So the French region that Torbay riffs on is also itself riffing on an Italian region.
and: "The Côte d'Azur (coast of azure) is a nickname given by France to the County of Nice after its annexation in 1860, because the climate was similar to that of the north of Italy,"
When you look at it like that: English/Devon/Torbay Riviera is simply following a proud European tradition. Riviera is simply a generic term (originates from Italian) for a region with a specific climate. If you read further through the WP article it seems that Brits were involved in the original use of the term and that explains why we would designate a similarly named region here.
> So the French region that Torbay riffs on is also itself riffing on an Italian region.
Maybe nitpicking but the French Riviera is just the (now) French side of the "original" Riviera. It's not a reference to a different place.
Nice used to be part of Liguria before the 1860 annexation and the English simply kept refering to it as Riviera (while the French, including locals, only call it Côte d'Azur).
Our parent is almost certainly a Devonian. My mum was born in Dartmouth. I went to school in Newton Abbot. I understand why using the term Riviera might look a bit naff for Torbay - hence the cringe.
Riviera is still an Italian term, regardless of where it is applied - France or Inglaterra.
I have this vague, hand-wavy impression it's somewhat common in coastal communities.
I spent some time looking for a term for a particular house style and can't seem to find it. There's a particular style of small house with big windows and shutters typically found in beach vacation towns and they tend to be colorful.
The island town of Burano, Italy, is another place known for colorful houses. They were originally said to help sailors at sea, but they are now protected by law and to change the color you must apply to the government for approval.
Please don't embed Instragram posts into your article, just put the actual photo in with a link to the post!
I am blocking all meta crap and the photos are not showing...I'm sure I'm not the only one who does that.
Thanks!
I'd really have to disagree with you there! I've lived in Bristol for 4 years, having previously spent 8 years in London - people are I know are happy here and find it difficult to leave. I've never lived in such an uplifting, diverse, creative place as I do now (Easton, BS5).
Also worth mentioning (response to a comment above) that there's a lot of colourful houses and murals all over the city, not just on the bits you see on postcards...!
As a foreigner, Bristolians were the most congenial and welcoming neighbours I have had through out my time in the UK, and I moved around a fair bit in the past decades.
I still have very good friends (and memories) in Bristol.
Nothing but positive things to say from the city and from big hearted Bristolians. Like you say there really is a positive energy about the place. Truly gert lush!
I’m not really sure why you say that. Bristol is an expensive city, and certainly has its faults - public transport is certainly not great, for example. But I think in general, not a bad place to be.
That's weird. I lived there for like 15 years and found it to be a lovely city. Some of the outskirts were rough and poor, but the town centre was always pretty nice.
> Red buildings signified churches, schools, teachers’ or ministers’ houses. Yellow colours were assigned to hospitals, doctors, and health care personnel. Green was at first the symbol for radio communication and later became the colour of telecommunications. The colour blue was often reserved for fish factories. Police stations were black.
https://www.polar-quest.com/blog/greenland/the-backstory-of-...