Archinect - News

Brooklyn’s historic Domino Sugar Factory restoration lights up with signs of progress

2022-12-28T13:29:00-05:00

A beloved monument returned to the Brooklyn skyline without pomp or circumstance last night when the Domino Sugar sign was quietly relit atop the Thomas Havemeyer building’s new barrel vaulted glass roof, illuminating the Williamsburg waterfront for the first time in eight years. It also marked one last milestone in 2022 for redevelopment at the former refinery, which was last open to the public in 2014

Meanwhile, PAU’s portion of the $250 million Domino Sugar Factory project is nearing completion with the placement of the structural steelwork required to support the 27,000-square-foot glass addition slotted into its 140-year-old interior.

Image © Wes Tarca

New York YIMBY also reported that construction of the reinforced concrete core is complete as well. The tree-lined and column-free office portion is yet to be fully leased in spite of the space’s considerable marketability. The full restoration is expected to be ready sometime in the next year.

People are having fun with IKEA's sofa planner — and the SOFFA SANS font is born

2019-07-03T14:00:00-04:00

Ikea has released a free font called Soffa Sans, inspired by all the memes born from its online “Design your own sofa” planner. The tool allows for customers to design the layouts and configurations of Ikea’s couches, from the Vimle sectionals to the Vallentuna modular sofa series. Once it was discovered that the planner allowed for basically any configuration with no limit to the cost, it inspired some Sims-like creativity from users.

The SOFFA SANS font was developed in partnership with UK agency Proximity London and is available for download here.

Some of the examples people used the sofa planner as a block-y drawing tool (which inspired the font) below.

pic.twitter.com/o75DdhB3D5
— forever (@perspectivator) June 23, 2019 there are 2 types of people. those who walk to the center, and those who hop. pic.twitter.com/HDe8n8HPip
— Morgan (Mostly Garbage, Partially 2 Day Old Bread) (@MeButInPogForm) June 23, 2019 If someone could give me £2,105.00, I'd put it to good use pic.twitter.com/XfXkrSUrtt
— Bamboolean (@bamboolean) June 23, 2019 I call this the "married but don't like each other." pic.twitter.com/uVo9auGKy0
— The Jenneral (@thejenneral) June 24, 2019 Sofa Bot 3000 welcomes you to his comfort party. pic.twitter.com/ofcQTxfzrM
— Sean (@seanlacey) June 24, 2019 Let's be honest, it was only ever going to end one way....... pic.twitter.com/7RbflIXgQ7
— James McLaughlin (@JS_McLaughlin) July 3, 2019...

Seeking identity through city fonts

2015-01-20T13:53:00-05:00

Decimated by manufacturing losses, some smaller cities are turning for help to an unlikely group of people: typeface designers. Can new fonts really breathe life into the postindustrial city? [...] Type has a lot of effect on the atmosphere of a place, he says, calling it “the voice of the city”: “I think cities that don’t have this very dynamic energy, they don’t feel the need to change their identity.”

Can a Font Help a City Make a Comeback?

2012-03-08T13:26:00-05:00

Around the world, only a few hundred people make a living as fulltime typeface designers. Two of them happen to live in Chattanooga, Tennessee, population 167,000, where they've embarked on an ambitious project to distill the city's artistic and entrepreneurial spirit into a font called Chatype. The goal is to help the city and its businesses forge a distinct and cohesive identity through custom typeface [...].