Some places seem to have decided that beige simply isn’t an option.
Entire streets glow in turquoise, yellow, pink and red.
Fishing villages reflect themselves in impossibly blue harbours.
Old houses wear layers of faded paint that somehow become more beautiful with age.
Doors are purple.
Walls are orange.
Window frames are blue.
Flowers spill over balconies as though the buildings weren’t colourful enough already.
And naturally, we started wondering about the dogs who live there.
Because if you lived somewhere like Burano, Willemstad or Old Havana, surely you couldn’t put a boring brown dog house in the backyard.
So we’re travelling again.
This time we’re visiting ten remarkably colourful places around the world and imagining a dog house that belongs in each one.
Not replicas.
Not tourist souvenirs.
Just little pieces of architecture inspired by the colour, character and buildings around them.
And as always, the dog house is only part of the photograph.
The place matters just as much.
Burano, Italy — No Such Thing as Too Much Colour
Burano doesn’t appear particularly interested in restraint.
Along its canals, houses sit shoulder to shoulder in extraordinary shades of blue, yellow, green, orange, purple and red.
So our Burano dog house doesn’t try to calm things down.
It joins in.
A tiny house beside the canal is painted an unapologetically saturated colour with contrasting trim, a tiled roof and details borrowed from the wonderfully simple architecture surrounding it.
A dog rests outside while laundry hangs between buildings and small boats sit along the canal.
Behind everything is a neighbourhood that looks as though someone opened an enormous box of crayons.
Normally we’d worry that a bright dog house might dominate the photograph.
In Burano, it has competition.
Willemstad, Curaçao — Caribbean Colour
There is colourful architecture.
And then there is Willemstad.
Along the waterfront, elaborate Dutch colonial façades appear in pink, yellow, turquoise, orange and blue beneath an enormous Caribbean sky.
Our dog house borrows those wonderful proportions.
It has a little decorative roofline, crisp white trim and a colour that would seem outrageous almost anywhere else.
Here, it fits right in.
Beyond it are the unmistakable buildings of Willemstad, bright blue water and perhaps a boat moving through the harbour.
The sunlight is strong.
The colours are stronger.
And somewhere in the middle of it all is one exceptionally well-dressed little house for a dog.
Old Havana, Cuba — Beautifully Faded
Havana gives us a completely different kind of colour.
Nothing needs to look freshly painted.
In fact, we’d rather it didn’t.
Our little Cuban dog house wears layers of faded turquoise, pale yellow or dusty pink. Paint has disappeared around the edges. Wood shows through in places.
There might be tiny shutters beside the entrance and old patterned tile beneath it.
The dog rests in the shade.
Behind it, Havana continues the story with weathered colonial buildings, balconies, laundry, tropical plants and perhaps the unmistakable shape of an old car parked farther down the street.
This isn’t perfect colour.
It’s colour with history.
And that’s considerably more interesting.
Portree, Isle of Skye — Colour Against the Grey
Scotland doesn’t need Caribbean sunshine to make colour work.
Portree proves it.
Along the harbour, a row of brightly painted buildings stands against dark water, green hills and skies that can change personality several times before lunch.
Our dog house borrows one of those rich harbour colours.
Perhaps blue.
Perhaps yellow.
Perhaps a deep red.
Its architecture remains simple and sturdy, because this is still the Isle of Skye and weather isn’t theoretical here.
A shaggy dog sits nearby.
Fishing boats rest in the harbour.
Dark hills rise behind the village.
And the brighter the little house becomes, the more dramatic everything around it seems.
Sometimes colour works best when the sky refuses to cooperate.
The Greek Islands — Blue, White and Bougainvillea
Technically, white shouldn’t qualify as particularly colourful.
Then Greece adds blue.
And bougainvillea.
And the Aegean Sea.
Suddenly there isn’t much left to argue about.
Our Greek dog house is almost entirely whitewashed, its simple walls glowing in Mediterranean sunlight.
The roof or door carries that unmistakable deep blue.
Pink bougainvillea tumbles nearby.
A dog has sensibly found the coolest patch of shade available.
Beyond it, white buildings descend toward intensely blue water beneath an equally blue sky.
There are more colours elsewhere in this collection.
Few combinations are more recognizable.
Copenhagen, Denmark — Colour With Restraint
Copenhagen approaches colour differently.
Even along the wonderfully colourful waterfront of Nyhavn, there is a certain Scandinavian order to everything.
Ochre.
Rust.
Red.
Blue.
Green.
Colourful, certainly.
Chaotic, never.
Our Copenhagen dog house follows the same philosophy.
The shape is beautifully simple. The proportions are precise. The construction looks almost suspiciously good for something intended for a dog.
Then we paint it.
A rich Scandinavian red or warm ochre gives the little structure personality without losing the clean design.
Behind it, colourful waterfront buildings, historic boats and bicycles provide the unmistakable Copenhagen setting.
Even the colourful dog house somehow looks organized.
Chefchaouen, Morocco — Into the Blue
There are blue houses.
There are blue streets.
And then there is Chefchaouen.
Here, blue seems to have escaped from the paintbrush and taken over almost everything.
Walls shift from pale powder blue to turquoise, cobalt and indigo.
Steps are blue.
Doors are blue.
Alleys are blue.
Our dog house is blue too.
But rather than simply painting a box, we borrow from the surrounding architecture: a small arched entrance, textured walls and subtle traditional details.
A dog rests beside it in a narrow lane.
Plants spill from pots.
Stone steps disappear between buildings.
And layer after layer of blue fills the photograph.
For once, making the dog house stand out isn’t the challenge.
Making it disappear into the colour might be.
Bo-Kaap, Cape Town — Absolutely No Beige
Some neighbourhoods use colour as decoration.
Bo-Kaap seems to use it as an architectural language.
Pink sits beside lime green.
Turquoise meets orange.
Purple somehow works beside yellow.
Our dog house gets exactly the same confidence.
It might be vivid turquoise with brilliant white trim, or coral pink beside a yellow wall.
The shape takes subtle cues from the neighbourhood rather than becoming a miniature copy of a particular building.
A dog sits outside.
The colourful street climbs behind it.
And farther away, Cape Town’s mountainous landscape reminds us that this isn’t a studio set built for our increasingly ridiculous dog-house project.
People actually get to live somewhere this colourful.
Lucky dogs.
Cartagena, Colombia — Colour in the Tropics
Cartagena doesn’t do colour quietly either.
Colonial walls glow yellow, blue, coral and pink beneath the tropical sun.
Massive wooden doors punctuate the streets.
Balconies overflow with flowers.
Our Cartagena dog house borrows from all of it.
The walls are richly coloured.
The entrance is framed like a tiny old doorway.
Perhaps a miniature tiled roof provides deep shade from the sun.
Nearby, a dog stretches out on cool stone while flowers and vines soften the edges of the little structure.
Behind it, the real city takes over.
Balconies.
Old walls.
Colourful façades.
Palm leaves.
And the wonderfully imperfect textures that come from buildings that have been standing far longer than our dog house ever will.
Lunenburg, Nova Scotia — Canada’s Contribution
We couldn’t travel around the world’s colourful places without coming home for at least one.
And Lunenburg earns its place.
The Nova Scotia town climbs above its harbour in red, blue, yellow, green and white.
Church spires rise above the rooftops.
Fishing boats and sailing vessels sit along the waterfront.
The Atlantic is never far away.
Our little dog house joins the harbour.
Clapboard siding carries one of Lunenburg’s confident colours, while crisp contrasting trim and a weathered shingle roof make it feel as though it has always belonged beside the wharf.
A dog rests nearby among rope, buoys, flowers and fishing gear.
Behind it, colourful buildings climb the hillside.
We’ve already discovered that Canada can build a pretty good dog house.
Apparently we can bring some colour too.
Ten Dog Houses. A Rather Large Paint Box.
Put these ten houses beside one another and very little matches.
One is weathered by Havana.
Another practically glows beside the Caribbean.
One sits beneath Scottish clouds.
Another disappears into an alley filled with Moroccan blue.
There is Scandinavian restraint, Mediterranean simplicity, Italian exuberance and Maritime charm.
And that’s exactly what makes this interesting.
Colour isn’t universal.
Every place uses it differently.
Sometimes it’s bright and freshly painted.
Sometimes it’s faded by decades of sun and weather.
Sometimes it comes from flowers, doors and shutters.
Sometimes an entire neighbourhood seems to have collectively agreed that subtlety is overrated.
Our imaginary dog houses simply follow along.
Because perhaps designing a dog house inspired by somewhere extraordinary works the same way it did when we travelled across Canada.
Don’t start with the dog house.
Look at the place first.
Then build something that belongs there.
And fortunately for us, we’ve barely opened the paint box.
