Novelty: FSB + Les Couleurs® Le Corbusier

Colour evokes emotion, creating atmosphere and providing orientation. It accentuates a detail or blends it harmoniously into the space.

Sometimes we only perceive colour subconsciously, sometimes it commands attention. At best, when used masterfully, it allows a building, a room or an object to truly shine.

The market offers a plethora of colour systems with an almost infinite range of shades. Being spoilt for choice only makes things harder. A vibrant mise-en-scène is no guarantee that the colour scheme actually works.

With Le Corbusier’s Polychromie Architecturale, FSB offers a variety of shades for selected products, ensuring that planners invariably achieve the perfect colour match. If it appeals, it is certainly the right choice.

Starting in the 1930s and taking his inspiration from music and painting, architect Le Corbusier developed two collections, with 13 keyboards composed of 63 colours.

Based on the colours of nature, the system is the result of his search for principles, invariables and mechanisms in the impact of colour. Le Corbusier’s perception of built space included its colour scheme. Le Corbusier held that “Colour is as powerful a tool in architecture as the ground plan and the section.

Or rather: polychromy, a component of the ground plan and the section itself.” He was opposed to the purely decorative use of colour. The wall plane as a carrier of colour may have a certain autonomy, but it remains part of an intact space.

Colour can enhance the identity of individual rooms, accentuate spatial relationships and, not least, make large buildings less overpowering. Façades in sienna establish their dimensions, light blue and white let rows of elements recede, while pale green façades fade into the vegetation.

With his chromatic and achromatic tones, and varying brightness values, Le Corbusier created a polychromy that accommodates the needs of architecture and those it houses.

We consider our fittings for doors and windows, and ergonomic systems for those with reduced mobility, to be useful tools, acting as extensions of the human hand.

Using them is a tactile experience shaped by form and materiality. But as touch begins in the mind, they are also a treat for the eye. Clearly, then, using the colours especially created by Le Corbusier for the world of architecture gives this experience the final flourish.

Inspired by the Art Nouveau philosophy that views a house and its interior design as a Gesamtkunstwerk or all-encompassing work of art, FSB embraces stylistic coherence when transposing fundamental architectural and conceptual principles in a building.

Just like choosing the right colour(s), a door handle should always be selected in the context of the surrounding architecture and furnishings.

The space’s idiom finds expression in the handle’s design, transforming it into a harmonious part of the whole or consciously creating a contrast. We call it “architecture en miniature”. The exclusive partnership of FSB + Les Couleurs® Le Corbusier opens up completely new perspectives for realising individual concepts – and introduces ideas that planners would previously have thought impossible.

Freedom + security

Colour has a formative influence on architecture. The responsibility associated with selection and commitment is correspondingly high. With the Architectural Polychromy, planners have the freedom to realize individual color concepts and always be on the safe side. Harmony succeeds in no time and the use of different colors or brightness levels leads to consistent results.

All-embracing cohesion beyond doors and windows

Les Couleurs® Le Corbusier has established a partner network of go-to, exclusive brands to ensure colour schemes are consistent across products and trades. A beautiful couple and not only on par in terms of design: Our door handle FSB 1267 and the JUNG switch LS 990, both in color LC 32041 - and both at an installation height of 1050 mm.

Material

For over 140 years, FSB has been capitalising on the benefits of metal. We have enhanced our processing of this material by adopting a mix of manual and industrial methods, allowing the design of our products to emerge from the metal to optimum effect. Our unrivalled production quality and surface finish are down to our processes, many of which are patented. Not only do these features catch the eye, they are immediately obvious to the touch. The products in our Les Couleurs® Le Corbusier collection are made of aluminium, then given a coloured powder coating in a solvent-free process.

Form

At FSB, “good form” emerged in the 1950s and exudes a timeless elegance: Johannes Potente developed his seminal design that is moulded to the hand – still a classic today. Since the 1980s, our “Four-point guide to good grip” has served as a benchmark for devising tools to act as extensions of the hand at the human-architecture interface. Working with top-notch architects and designers, this expertise has led to highly effective solutions in terms of both form and function that literally epitomise the concept of “architecture en miniature”.

Colour

First and foremost, FSB’s colours are resplendent in natural-looking finishes of stainless steel, aluminium and bronze. Moreover, we asked ourselves, what chromatic and achromatic shades would be ideal for use in architecture? And Le Corbusier’s Polychromie Architecturale passes with flying colours. The system with its 63 curated shades provides a complete and harmonious colour scheme for architectural projects. Used selectively and creatively, these hues shape the concept of our products and their impact in the space.