White.
Birch bark is white. The contrast with the landscape not yet green and no longer white is stark. This was taken in early April 2017 in Helsinki, from the park behind the congress and event venue Finlandia Hall towards the Linnunlaulu cliffs.
As a bonus picture (taken mid-November 2017), another birch, in a less bright shade of white and one corner of Finlandia Hall (completed 1971), designed by the architect Alvar Aalto (1898–1976), who is still, over 40 years after his death held in a very high regard about the aesthetics of his work.
However his acoustics design and construction technical choices have been criticised. The façade of Finlandia Hall is made of white Carrara marble from Italy. The marble plates will bend with time because of the climate and they have to be replaced every 20–30 years. They’ve been replaced once so far, in 1998–1999.
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I love how you caught the second tree in part sun/part shadow. Really adds to the drama of the scene.
I love the Dodecahedra in the background of the first picture.
“This is not a usual playground, it’s barbarian playground!” (if it were a dungeons and dragons-world :D)
The light in the 2nd shot is extraordinary, but I love the tree in the first.
Thank you, all!
The first is totally birch-oriented at the expense of other elements.
Lovely. Birch trees can be quite striking.
Joseph Zowghi @ 5
They can and there are many easily seen individual differences on the trunks of birches.
Here the multi-layered paper-like part of the birch bark (tuohi in Finnish and näver in Swedish, birch is koivu and björk respectively) is mostly white, sometimes reddish on young birches. There is a blog post in this blog about the birch bark art of the Ojibwe.
That first tree is indeed quite striking. Tree barks are an endless source of wonder for me, they are all so unique and distinctive.