Page 63 - Between light and shade

Light, transparency and reflection

the Chief Executive of Petrofina at the time, that I
owe the development of “pure grey” acrylic paints
by its subsidiary Sigma Coatings, in 1998. This is
not always as straightforward as it may seem, as
black is only produced by a mixture of colours,
which it is hard to calibrate 58 (and we know how
much Rothko profited from this!). When these
paints were finally ready, I proposed them to Hen-
drik Seghers, for whom I was renovating Castle
Groenhof in Malderen [01/532, Fig. 59] at the time
and he wrote: “maar dit zijn kleurspiegels!”, and
how right he was!

As a result, I chose these “coloured mirrors”
to suit the wall and room in question; a very
dark grey in the stairwell to highlight a splendid
Rubens, an almost black grey in the only survi-
ving Louis XVI style room to make the wood-
work and its light grey mouldings shimmer,
greys bordering on white in the bedrooms, etc.
he was equally convinced when I proposed pain-
ting the facades in a grey with 60% black 59. It

58 There is no doubt that the invention of the blackest of black, a
colour that absorbs 99.965% of light, a paint made up of a forest
of carbon nanotubes perpendicular to its surface, whether this
is by the Belgian artist Frederic de Wilde (2010) or by Vanta-
black (2015), (for Vertical Aligned Nano Tube Arrays-Black)
must be used in construction.

59 A large screen of louvre slats with photovoltaic cells following
the sun’s trajectory protects the added terraces on the front of
the Southern facades. A series of long borosilicate glass tubes
containing solar thermal sensors form the pergola on the flat
roof.
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