Archinect - News

Snøhetta completes new cultural and education facility in Norway inspired by Indigenous design practices

2024-08-23T19:48:00-04:00

A new cultural and educational hub that draws from the heritage and traditional building practices of the Sámi peoples, an Indigenous group in Norway, designed by Snøhetta, in collaboration with Norwegian practice 70°N architecture and artist Joar Nango, has officially opened.

Image: Lars Petter Pettersen/Snøhetta

Called Čoarvemátta, the project takes its name from the Sámi words for horn and root, after the innermost and strongest part of reindeer antlers. The shared facility creates space for the Sámi National Theater Beaivváš and the Sámi High School and Reindeer Herding School.

Image: Lars Petter Pettersen/Snøhetta

The building is located in Kautokeino, a municipality in the middle of Finnmarksvidda, Norway’s largest and northernmost plateau. Čoarvemátta’s design responds to its environment as all the structure’s façades relate to the various landscape spaces that surround them.

Image: Lars Petter Pettersen/Snøhetta

The two-story building sits low in the landscape with proportions...

Your next role could be designing signage and wayfinding with Pentagram

2024-06-14T14:29:00-04:00

Following our previous look at an opening for an Architect at Shigeru Ban Architects, we are using this week’s edition of our Job Highlights series to explore an open role on Archinect Jobs for a Signage & Wayfinding Project Manager at Pentagram.

The role, based in New York, calls for an individual to “execute signage, wayfinding, and environmental design projects,” including “understand design intent and translate schematic design into fully developed design intent documents.” Among the requirements for the role are 2-4 years of experience in Environmental Graphic Design, Interior Design, and Architecture in a similar role, alongside proficiency in CAD and 3D modeling programs, Adobe CC, Keynote, Google apps, and Microsoft Office.

Visual identity for Maker Mile - Pentagram's Astrid Stavro and team. Image courtesy of Pentagram.

Why the role interests us

The open role at the Pentagram offers us the opportunity to explore some of the high-profile projects to recently appear in our edit...

Take a look inside the Las Vegas Sphere's interior and lighting designs

2023-12-22T14:05:00-05:00

New York-based design studio ICRAVE has shared a special look inside its interior, wayfinding, and lighting design work on the headline-grabbing new Sphere entertainment venue in Las Vegas.

Besides its 580,000-square-foot fully programmable exterior LED facade and the 160,000-square interior display for 17,500 guests, Sphere features another 300,000 square feet of interior space spread across eight levels.

Cross section rendering of Sphere. Image courtesy Sphere Entertainment

The lighting strategy for its lobby, VIP clubs, food and beverage spaces, and other hospitality suites was designed to mimic the geometry of the venue (now the world’s largest spherical structure) and insists on stage lighting to further communicate its purpose to the world.

Photo: Rich Fury, courtesy Sphere Entertainment

“We needed the surrounding spaces to live up to the promise of what’s inside the bowl and to ensure...

CannonDesign is pitching in to help acclimate migrants to NYC

2023-05-15T14:52:00-04:00

A new project from CannonDesign aimed at helping migrants who were relocated to Brooklyn’s Red Hook Cruise Terminal in the past year is providing hope to advocates for inclusive design as the city grapples with a vexing crisis that’s only expected to grow with the end of Title 42.

The project was initiated by Blue Cottage of CannonDesign team member Kimberly Silver, a resident of Red Hook, who, in reaction to Councilwoman Gale Brewer’s charge to do more, worked with fellow CannonDesign staffers Steffany Brady, Dylan Coonrad, and Abbey Furlow to strategize a set of wayfinding design solutions that can help better orient them to the neighborhood and city. Together, they say three core “functions” can be achieved as a result of the project.

Using Silver’s observations of the area, TRANSIT activates street surfaces and other barriers surrounding the terminal with clear trail marker-like visual wayfinding directions to the subway and nearby bus stations.

Image courtesy CannonDesign

NEIGH...

Wayfinding as a career in improving accessibility in architecture

2022-10-12T11:59:00-04:00

Following last week’s look at an opening for a Structural Steel Specialist at the AISC, we are using this week’s edition of our Job Highlights series to explore a role for a Wayfinding Designer at Mijksenaar USA.

The successful candidate will join the firm’s New York City office, working on “complex wayfinding systems around the world” with a particular focus on transportation facilities, cities, museums, and hospitals. The role, which requires a minimum three years’ experience in wayfinding, architecture, or information design, calls for someone with strong skills in graphic design, 3D design, technical design, and creative thinking.

Why the role interests us

The themes of graphic design and wayfinding are already familiar to our Job Highlights series. Back in March, we used a signage and wayfinding position at Pentagram to investigate the connection between environmental graphic design a...

Congress approves AIA-recommended upgrades aimed at making the people's house more accessible and democratic

2022-07-25T19:58:00-04:00

The House Select Committee on Congressional Modernization has approved select recommendations first provided to that body by the American Institute of Architects (AIA) during a recent hearing on March 17.

A slate of proposals for updating Congressional office space was originally put forth in testimony by Quinn Evans Senior Associate Katie Irwin, AIA, who advised that “we can be good stewards of these historic spaces while sensitively integrating modern updates to facilitate the technology-fueled pace of work.”

Among the total 29 adopted proposals were the following (from Irwin):

Flex hearing space: The House should identify and develop a space that can be used to hold hearings with alternative seating formats such as a roundtable-style.
Flexible and modern member office templates: The CAO should provide a broad menu of furniture options and templates for member office space that considers modern and flexible design and function concepts.
Portal for all reservable space: The House sho...

Scott Brownrigg's Rhondda Tunnel will transform a disused railway portal into the world's longest digital art space

2022-07-15T11:30:00-04:00

An imposing new cultural project will transform what was once a railway link in the Welsh countryside into what London-based studio Scott Browrigg says will be the world’s longest digital art space once it is completed in a few years.

By remaking the last vestiges of a 130-year-old abandoned rail tunnel formerly pegged to become a walking path and bike trail, the new arts-centered scheme will deliver an in-demand tourist destination that connects the two communities of Blaencwm and Blaengwynfi located at either end.

Image courtesy Scott Brownrigg

One might say this is a real windfall for the critically-important (especially in terms of an exhibition settings) area of wayfinding. The design made the cut for the recently-announced 2022 WAF shortlist in the Future Project: Culture category and will strive for a BREEAM Excellent rating, according to the firm.

To the east, the tunnel’s entrance will be defined by either a land art referencing hotel, while in its west, on the Blaengwynfi s...

Environmental graphic design and its history with architecture highlights the value of cross-disciplinary expertise

2022-03-16T10:05:00-04:00

Architecture as a practice lends itself to fruitful collaborations with adjacent disciplines such as graphic design. When married in a project, the results often exude an exciting blend of color, style, scale, and unique aesthetics. There are plenty of examples to reference from if we look back at architecture's history with graphic design and its sub-disciplines like wayfinding, signage design, and environmental graphic design.

Take the iconic works of graphic designer Deborah Sussman and her collaborations with many architects like Frank Gehry or Barabara Stauffer Solomon and her work at Sea Ranch in the 1960s. While these are merely two of my favorite examples of the relationship between architecture and graphic design, we can see this marriage of disciplines used by architecture firms around the globe. So why discuss such a topic that has become commonplace within design industries?

Design consultancies like Pentagram and other independently run design practices like Isometric S...

Philadelphia's planned SEPTA wayfinding redesign is gaining traction online

2021-09-18T09:00:00-04:00

So far, Philly’s proposed wayfinding makeover has won praise from transit advocates around the country. The proposal draws from international best practices for transit navigability, and reflects similar changes in Seattle and San Francisco as big cities grapple with how to lure riders back to mass transportation.

Philadelphia's transit system is the country’s seventh-largest and is often the subject of criticism over its wayfinding and disorienting layout. The $40 million redesign is going to be rolled out gradually and will be fully unveiled sometime in 2022.

A planned four-mile addition to the King of Prussia rail line is also coming thanks to unused federal COVID funding. SEPTA says the extension is one of five projects that will boost economic recovery in the area by 50%.

Bloomberg CityLab has more on the initial reception here.

There's more to architecture than having vision. How one man's loss is transforming perspectives

2019-01-14T16:58:00-05:00

For many architects, much of one's work depends upon the visual possibilities where space can transform. Often overlooked, many designers forget what it is like to design buildings and structures for the blind or hearing impaired. Universal accessibility and inclusive design methods are being discussed more and more within the architecture community. Educators, advocates and architects like Chris Downey use their experience and skillsets to transform the perspectives of architecture for the visually impaired.

Chris Downey speaking to architecture students at the University of Arkansas Image © uark.edu

he main lobby at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ Polytrauma and Blind Rehabilitation Center in Palo Alto, Calif., one of Downey’s first major projects after he lost his sight. Photograph courtesy of John Boerger Image © ncsu.edu

In a recent 60 Minutes interview with Leslie Stahl, Downey shares with the public how the loss of his sight helped him become more aware of what it mea...

Mayor Eric Garcetti seeks artist to help reduce L.A.'s pedestrian fatalities

2015-10-29T15:49:00-04:00

Spiffing up materials the city puts out to promote safe driving “is definitely not what this is about,” Reynolds said. “It's going much deeper into the way we think about designing the streets. Art has the power to get people to sit up and pay attention and jolt them out of their normal ways of thinking. We can infuse unexpected elements into the design of the streets and the way of moving through the streets.”

For more on the (changing) art of street navigation:

• What Do Pedestrian Traffic Icons Say About Your Culture?

• Los Angeles has Created the Perfect Parking Sign

• Seeking identity through city fonts

• From California to Texas, car culture is losing its monopoly

Chris Downey on designing inclusive "multisensory" environments for the visually impaired

2015-07-06T18:40:00-04:00

Many people view GPS and similar emerging interior-wayfnding technologies as a way to 'solve the blind wayfnding challenge.'...Architects still need to be better multisensory placemakers to design and create effective environments for the blind and visually impaired.

Chris Downey, whose story as a blind practicing architect was recently documented in the AIA's "Look Up" campaign this past May, dishes in on his own experiences with embossing printers, wayfinding devices, and graphic input tools, and other emerging technologies that have the potential to vastly improve how architects — both visually impaired or not — will work. However, he also warns about relying too much on those technologies and that architects must uphold the responsibility of designing effective environments that are accessible to everyone of all abilities.

Previously:

AIA launches second video in "Look Up" campaign featuring a blind architect

Los Angeles has Created the Perfect Parking Sign

2015-04-06T15:11:00-04:00

In the quest to make parking suck less, there are apps that help you find a space, and meters where you can pay with a swipe of your credit card. But LA has launched a simple, low-tech solution to make parking better: Well-designed signage that offers no ambiguity whatsoever when it comes to where you can park, when you can park there, and how much it will cost.

Signs from the near future

2014-06-05T14:44:00-04:00

A new Tumblr showcases predictions of signage in our future.

What Do Pedestrian Traffic Icons Say About Your Culture?

2013-10-15T14:03:00-04:00

From the sparsely dotted Chinese walking man to the top-hat-wearing, cane-bearing Dane, almost a hundred “walking men” are displayed life-size on banners that line the sidewalk. “It’s important to me that they are on human scale because they really represent us,” said Ms. Barkai. Only rarely are the icons depicted as women, she noted. Of the hundreds of images in her collection, Ms. Barkai has only “about six or seven women, mostly from European countries.”

Editor's Picks #323

2013-07-09T12:56:00-04:00

News

Benjamin Paulker interviewed Frank Gehry for Foreign Policy regarding his first project in the Arab World. sameolddoctor was amused "It is funny that Gehry thinks of himself as a humanitarian" but pvbeeber wondered "Not sure why everyone is giving him such a hard time. What other architects working in the Middle East would hire a human rights lawyer to make sure that workers are treated fairly? Gehry's also one of the few starchitects who bothers to pay his interns".

citizen took exception to the "Epiphanies from Frank Gehry" title "I'm not giving FOG a hard time. Bully for him...I'm giving the Archinect editors --with whom I generally concur, but who often title these little pieces ridiculously-- the hard time". However as Ryan Griffin noted "citizen.... the title given to this page is the title of the article to which it is referring..."

Christopher Hawthorne reviewed the new architecture exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art - concluding "When architects de...

Macy's introduces indoor GPS navigation

2012-11-08T11:28:00-05:00

Macy’s has added a new feature to its iPhone app that provides indoor turn-by-turn directions for its massive flagship location in New York City’s Herald Square, courtesy of Meridian, the software startup behind an indoor GPS platform.

Is indoor GPS navigation the new wayfinding?

Since launching last year, Meridian has worked with a handful of prominent institutions to build indoor mapping systems from the ground up, including the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the Venetian hotel and casino in Las Vegas. The service uses a unique combination of GPS and WiFi data to pinpoint the precise location of the smartphone user indoors. By opening up its SDK to developers, Meridian should see plenty more locations incorporate this technology.