Werner Ulrich's Home Page:  Picture of the Month

 Now "Ulrich's Bimonthly"

October 2003

Mediterranean Colors  In the Alpine and Northern parts of Europe, as elsewhere in the Northern hemisphere, the autumnal explosion of colors – alas! – announces its very contrary: gray months to come, during which not only the colors of nature but also outdoor life become attenuated to a minimum. Rather than reinforcing this nostalgic side of the season with one of those typical autumn pictures, I prefer to associate its warm colors with the Mediterranean way of life. Many Swiss people like to spend an autumn vacation at the Mediterranean Sea – a wonderful way of driving away any feelings of nostalgia and, at the same time, of taking in a good reserve of sun and colors for the winter half year. This is exactly what my wife and I did a year ago.

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My October picture (a computer-painted derivative of an analogue photograph) stands for a happy autumn vacation that we spent in the region of Bormes-les-Mimosas at the French Côte d'Azur. What a peaceful place to rest and relax! What a harmony of colors! The medieval architecture of this town is so simple and unpretentious, yet it hides a deep secret, one that today's architects and planners do not seem to understand any longer: the secret of designing a built environment that makes us feel good. What, I wonder, have our architects and planners missed on the way? Can it be that the technical sophistication of their professional training is making them blind for the secret? If this is so, is there any reason to assume that other professions fare better in this respect? What does this tell us, then, about our contemporary, science-based notion of professional competence?

„The capacity for control made possible by the empirical sciences is not to be confused with the capacity for enlightened action.”

Jurgen Habermas ("Technical Progress and the Social Life-World," 1968)

Last updated 17 May 2010 (layout) and 10 May 2010 (text and picture; first published 1 Oct 2003)
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