Fifty shades of white

the proposed new Apple 'campus' by Foster Associates. City of Cupertino

“There was a very surreal moment during the development of those glass fins,” recalls a former Foster employee. “There was a $30m mock-up made of a whole section of the facade, with five versions of the fin in different shades of white. The Apple guys were looking at them for ages, saying one's a bit too blue, the other's a bit more cream – but they all looked identical to the naked eye.”

Like Oliver Wainwright, it would seem, I have my reservations about both Apple and Lord Norman Foster, but, as for the whites, I have been there before them. Some years ago I did a job for a London architect, a little less stellar than the good lord, who was fitting out his own stairway and kitchen with shelving and cupboards. Unlike Apple, his intention was not to get the 'right' white (how can it be right when each is different from itself in different lights?), but to use the subtle differentiation of several different shades of white in the same job. The picture does not really do it justice. It is true of course that the one white will look different in different parts of the room, but a single range of, for example, cupboard fronts will all look the same, thus giving the justification for differentiating them with different shades to echo the effect of varying light.