Eg 10 digital

NO. 10, 2014

NO. 10, 2014

eg EXPERIENTIAL GRAPHICS MAGAZINE WWW.SEGD.ORG

PEOPLE + PLACE DOUGLAS MORRIS

SEGD GLOBAL DESIGN AWARDS

BEST OF SHOW SYLVIA HARRIS 2014 SEGD FELLOW LAX MEDIASCAPE DESIGN AWARD

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CCBC Designer: Ayers Saint Gross (Baltimore, MD)

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SEGD BOARD OF DIRECTORS President Vice President Treasurer

Jill Ayers, Design360, New York John Lutz, Selbert Perkins Design, Chicago Gary Stemler, archetype, Minneapolis

Patrick Angelel, CREO Industrial Arts, Everett, Wash.

Steve Bayer, Daktronics, Brookings, S.D. Peter Dixon, Prophet, New York Moira Gemmill (Ex Officio), Victoria and Albert Museum, London Jody Graff (Ex Officio), Drexel University, Philadelphia Cynthia Hall (Ex Officio), Gensler, Seattle J. Graham Hanson, Graham Hanson Design, New York Edwin Hofmann, Limited Brands, Columbus, Ohio Alan Jacobson, ex;it, Philadelphia Amy Lukas (Past President), Infinite Scale, Salt Lake City Wayne McCutcheon (Past President), Entro, Toronto Bryan Meszaros, OpenEye, South Amboy, N.J. Stephen Minning, BrandCulture Communications, Sydney Dan Moalli, Technomedia, New York Steven Stamper, fd2s, Austin, Texas Julie Vogel, Kate Keating Associates, San Francisco Leslie Wolke, Leslie Wolke Consulting, Austin, Texas

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Publisher Clive Roux, CEO Editor-in-Chief Pat Matson Knapp pat@segd.org Executive Editor Ann Makowski Founding Editor Leslie Gallery Dilworth Design Wayne-William Creative Contributors Steve Aust, Jenny Reising, Jennifer Volland Executive and Editorial Offices 1900 L St., NW Suite 710 Washington, D.C. 20036 202.638.5555 www.segd.org Advertising Sales Kristin Bennani kristin@segd.org 202.713.0413 Editorial, Subscriptions, Reprints, Back Issues 202.638.5555 segd@segd.org eg magazine is the international journal of SEGD, the Society for Experiential Graphic Design. Opinions expressed editorially and by contributors are not necessarily those of SEGD. Advertisements appearing in eg magazine do not constitute or imply endorsement by SEGD or eg magazine.

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Connecting People with Place Welcome to the 2014 SEGD Global Design Awards issue. We’re always proud and delighted to present the winners of the only international design awards program focused specifically on visual communications in the built environment. This year, 450 entries came from all corners of the globe, and 32 projects are recognized here and on our new website, SEGD.org.

This year we added an important new facet to the program: a Best of Show winner that has earned the jury’s highest esteem and that exemplifies the converging field of EGD/ XGD. The inaugural Best in Show winner—an immersive media landscape at LAX’s new Tom Bradley International Terminal—reflects the rapidly changing nature of EGD and hints at why we are increasingly using the term XGD—Experiential Graphic Design. As digital technology advances into everyday communications, experiential graphic design is leading the way with innovative media applications that create memorable experiences and connect people with place.

The LAX project and other 2014 winners demonstrate how digital technology can be used to engage and excite users.

But in spite of the romance that digital technology can provide if well executed, good

design is still the most important criteria for success, says Alan Jacobson, 2014 Global Design Awards Chair and President and founder of Philadelphia-based experience design and strategy firm ex;it and J2 Design Partnership.

“While the digital world is creating experiences that we have never had before, the simplicity of beautiful type, color, and materials is as powerful as ever.” And he adds, “Functionality still rules. If the design isn’t solving the problem or making life a little better, it is just decoration.”

The jury selected 32 winning projects, including Best of Show, eight Honor awards, 23 Merit awards, and the inaugural Sylvia Harris Award, which recognizes a project that addresses accessibility of designs and enhancement of communication for projects in the public realm. The award was instituted in memory of the long-time SEGD member and advocate for user-centered design.

We hope you’ll enjoy—and be inspired by— the issue.

Clive Roux CEO

Subscriptions: US $80/year, International $125/year. Send US funds to eg magazine, SEGD, 1900 L St., NW, Suite 710, Washington, DC 20036.

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The 2014 SEGD Global Design Awards jury (l-r): Ceyda Artun, Anadolu University, Turkey (2013 SEGD Global Design Award winner); Ken Carbone, Carbone Smolan Agency; Zelda Harrison, branding and communications consultant; Alina Wheeler, author of Designing Brand Identity; Hilary Jay, Philadelphia Center for Architecture; Clifford Selbert, FSEGD, Selbert Perkins Design; Matthew Littell, Utile; Min Wang, China’s Central Academy of Fine Arts; and Alan Jacobson (Jury Chair), ex;it and J2 Design Partnership. eg magazine — 3

CONTENTS

SEGD FELLOW

BEST OF SHOW

22 New Frontier LAX’s new Tom Bradley International Terminal features an epic digital landscape that delights passengers, creates a new revenue model, and breaks fresh ground in architecturally integrated media.

10 Douglas Morris The co-founder of Poulin + Morris has built a legacy of refined design, meticulous standards, and perpetual investment in the next generation of designers.

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HONOR AWARDS

MERIT AWARDS

44 Victoria Revealed In a new exhibition at Kensington Palace, OPERA Amsterdam paints a compelling picture of Queen Victoria, literally in her own words.

50 Wayfinding: The Lingua Franca Brisbane’s new wayfinding system bridges the language gap for its growing Asian population.

56 Star Bright As part of its renovation, the Museum of the City of New York gets fresh new public spaces and a dazzling icon for a new age.

32 Bath to Basics A new wayfinding system for the city of Bath, England, puts a contemporary spin on its Roman and medieval heritage.

38 Face Time London architect Asif Khan pushes the boundaries of architecture with a “digital Mount Rushmore” that celebrates the power of the portrait.

60 Merit Badge A new treehouse exhibit reinforces the Boy Scouts’ environmental stewardship mission and turns sustainability into high adventure.

64 Retro Rx NBBJ Studio 7 prescribes an unexpected medium to draw attention to the work of a pediatric research facility.

70 Merit Awards From a Latvian museum to a corporate heritage exhibit, Merit Award winners connect people to place.

96 Sylvia Harris Award Sylvia Harris (1953-2011), founder and principal of Citizen Research & Design, was a passionate advocate of good design for the public good. The Sylvia Harris Award, given for the first time in 2014, honors her work and her legacy.

eg magazine — 5

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DOUGLAS MORRIS 10 — eg magazine

Time Warner (2004) Super-scaled typography wraps in a continuous band around the three glass facades of the Time Warner headquarters in New York. (Photo: Jeffrey Totaro)

Time Warner Center (2004) The EGD program for the 2.8-million-sq.-ft. mixed-use complex includes identification, wayfinding, and directional signs for all Time Warner areas. (Photo: Jeffrey Totaro)

Photo: Gloria Baker

Exacting Grace Douglas Morris has built a legacy of refined design, meticulous standards, and perpetual investment in the next generation of designers.

A

s a fresh graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, Douglas Morris’ first project was creating environmental graphics for the Emir’s palace in Kuwait. Perhaps that formed a permanent impression, because in the ensuing 30 years, the 2014 SEGD Fellow has become known for bringing a refined, elegant, and formal approach to his client’s environments. In a body of work intentionally eschewing a signature aesthetic, Morris and his partner Richard Poulin have focused on context and client needs rather than personal style.

“Since I first met Doug, I have admired the beauty and refinement of his work,” says Virginia Gehshan, FSEGD, Cloud Gehshan Associates. “It is simply gorgeous in its typography, use of materials, and sensitivity to context. His skills have greatly enhanced the body of work at Poulin + Morris, both in breadth and quality.

He is the type of designer who works

for perfection and seems to achieve it every time.”

Morris has brought the same rigor and discipline to running the business he co-founded and leads with Poulin and to mentoring in his field. Both in his office and as a past SEGD president, conference and awards program chair, and regional representative, Morris is known as much for his kindness and passion for design as for his exacting standards.

“Doug has always demonstrated, and in turn inspired, kindness,” says Debra Nichols, FSEGD, Debra Nichols Design. “It’s a kindness that fosters true camaraderie, a quality not always found in leadership styles. And it has perpetuated and strengthened the collegial, in fact familial, quality of mutual support and true affection among the SEGD community.”

Morris spoke recently with eg magazine about his work, his role models, and why he’d like to redesign social media.

eg magazine — 11

“We believe the office is a place to nurture young talent. It’s an educational environment. Everything we do is based on that, and we believe our job is to train and inspire the young designers who work here and then go on to start their own firms or work elsewhere. At the end of the day, that is as important as the actual projects we complete.”—Doug Morris

How did your design career get started?

I grew up in New York. I studied graphic design at the Rhode Island School of Design and after graduating, moved to Boston. I worked at a few small design firms there, but my career really started when I joined The Architects Collaborative, the Cambridge firm established by [Bauhaus founder] Walter Gropius.

After TAC, New York was pulling me back. I started looking for a job here in New York City and it was about that time that I met Sue Gould (Lebowitz Gould Design), Tracy Turner (Tracy Turner Design), and Chris Calori and David Vanden-Eynden (Calori & Vanden-Eynden Design Consultants).

It was Chris and Dave who gave me my first job in New York City.

How did Poulin + Morris come about?

Richard and I met at one of the last SEGD conferences held at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. Robert Probst (University of Cincinnati) introduced us at a cocktail party. That was in 1989, and we haven’t been apart since. A short while thereafter we went into business together. In 2013, we were married.

What is it like to be in a business partnership with your life partner?

thought of starting Poulin + Morris, some of our friends told us they could never work with their husband or wife. For us, it just works.

Who have been your biggest role models/influences?

I have three major role models: my two parents and Richard. My parents were very much a product of the 1950s, with very traditional beliefs about roles for men and women. So when I told them I wanted to pursue a career in the visual arts, they didn’t know what that meant. To find out, they did their research, asking other business professionals about what it was and what it entailed. They trusted me to make the right decisions. They made my education happen. RISD is very expensive but they figured out a way to pay for it. My mother actually went back into the workforce to help put me through college. They’ve been supportive all along.

Richard is my third role model.

From the moment we met there was a connection. It was like we had known each other our entire lives. From Richard, I learned that design comes from all around us. And I learned there are no limitations on creativity.

There are no limits on new ideas. And there are no limits on inspiration.

Now the four of us are best friends. We travel the world together.

We talk on the phone every few days.

We text all the time. We’re always laughing.

You know you’re in the right relationship, whether it’s professional How did you get involved in SEGD? or personal, when you just don’t get As a young designer, SEGD was an tired of each other and inspire each amazing knowledge resource for me. other all the time. When we first

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Ann Taylor Loft Times Square (2007) An undulating ribbon of 30,000+ flashing LED lights curving inside and out of Ann Taylor Loft’s storefront accentuates the flagship’s main entrance and adds to the vitality of Times Square. (Photo: Deborah Kushma)

Brooklyn Botanic Garden (2005) The entrance to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden consists of 12-ft.-high, curving stainless steel walls etched in a cherry tree leaf pattern. Sixteen-ft.wide gates feature a water-jet cut leaf pattern and offer views into the garden when the gates are closed. (Photo: Jeffrey Totaro)

Columbia Law School (1996) In the school’s three-story stainless steel-clad lobby, P+M integrated the primary identification statement with recognition of donors dating back to 1897. The lobby statement was part of a comprehensive EGD, donor recognition, and wayfinding program for the school’s renovation and expansion. (Photo: Jeff Goldberg/Esto)

Newseum (2008) For the museum dedicated to free speech, P+M excerpted the First Amendment on a 74-ft.-high limestone slab on the building’s glass façade.

The treatment accentuates large-scale typography as a bas-relief and permanently displays the First Amendment as a timeless element set in a modern context. (Photo: Jeffrey Totaro)

eg magazine — 13

WNYC Broadcast Studios (2009) P+M’s EGD program for WNYC was inspired by visual metaphors for sound. The 2,300-sq.-ft. auditorium features an undulating LED ticker that is visible to passersby. (Photo: Deborah Kushma)

When I first moved to Boston, I got involved in regional SEGD events.

Later I was the first regional rep for the New York chapter.

At some point I was asked to join an SEGD retreat in Chicago.

At the time we were talking about changing the name from Society of Environmental Graphic Designers to Society for Environmental Graphic Design. It was then that I felt I was brought into the fold of the organization. Later I was asked to chair the design competition, and for the first time, we had international jurists. I invited Erik Spiekermann, Garry Emery, and Paola Antonelli.

Then Patrick Gallagher asked me to join the SEGD Board of Directors.

I chaired the conference in Miami Beach and from there, became SEGD vice president and then president.

What was the first thing you ever designed? When did you know that you wanted to be a designer?

At The Architects Collaborative, my first project was for the Palace and Government Center in Kuwait.

This was the home of the Emir. TAC designed the architecture and I was responsible for the environmental graphics. For me, it was the first time I did many of the things that I do every day now. It was the first time I worked in the metric system. It was the first time I had to create my own documentation. It was the first time I gave client presentations.

Truth be told, though, that wasn’t my first design project.

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When I was 7 or 8 years old, I designed a book. My sister and I used to draw pictures on long car trips with our family. At some point I decided I needed to put them together in a book.

So I designed a cover, chapter pages, the whole thing. I remember how much fun it was, and the experience of putting it together. Without being able to put a name to it, I realized for the first time that I was going to be a designer. I’m surprised the book hasn’t shown up as blackmail material.

What do you see as the most important or landmark projects that have impacted the trajectory of your career?

The Kuwait palace would be one. 1585 Broadway, the Morgan Stanley world headquarters, was also important to me, because it was one of the first projects that Richard and I worked on together.

Time Warner, the CNN headquarters, and the Newseum were also significant milestones for me.

What do you consider your greatest professional achievement?

What legacy would you like to leave?

I’m most proud of our office, of the breadth of the work that we’ve created over almost 25 years. That works into the second part of the question, about legacy. One of the things we believe in most strongly here is that the office is a place to nurture young talent. It’s an educational environment. Everything we do is based on that and we believe our job is to train and inspire the young

Revel Hotel and Casino (2012) Drawing on the Atlantic City hotel’s modernist architectural vocabulary and proximity to the ocean, P+M developed EGD elements with fluid, curvilinear forms fabricated in translucent, shell-like materials. (Photo: Jeffrey Totaro)

Morgan Stanley World Headquarters (1995) A series of “supersigns” on the façade of Morgan Stanley’s world headquarters at 1585 Broadway brought a new brand identity to one of the world’s largest financial institutions. It also ushered in a new era of dynamic facades featuring architecturally integrated digital technology.

(Photo: Deborah Kushma)

designers who work here and then go on to start their own firms or work elsewhere. At the end of the day, that is as important as the actual projects we complete.

Fill in the blank. If I could just get my hands on _______________, I would totally redesign it. How and why?

Social media. You hear people complaining about it every day: what’s What would you want people up with these algorithms, it switched to say about your body of work? my screen off, it cut off my text. The I think there are design firms that social media venues I know aren’t are known for a style. You can often taking advantage of some basic visual recognize their work because of a connections that are very intuitive to certain aesthetic. When I look back users. I don’t think they function the on my work, I want to see nothing that way people want to use them. How do has a “style” to it. I want it all to be a they all work together and interact? reflection of the client, not of us.

Not well.

I suppose this is basically a What would you be doing wayfinding problem. Even though right now if you weren’t working as a it’s a completely different set of designer? problems than what we think of I think I would be a designer in a as wayfinding, that’s what it is: different way. One of the things I redesigning orientations and making always wanted to do since I was very the experience intuitive. young is set design. As an adult, one of the things I’d like to do is work for the Metropolitan Opera. It’s a place where music, dance, and theater all come together. That would be a great assignment, to design sets and backgrounds for the Met.

“What I know about Doug is how meticulous he is—and his work expresses that in its clarity and finesse. His delightful enthusiasm for design makes him a great ambassador for good design.”

—Sue Gould, FSEGD, Lebowitz Gould Design

What do you enjoy doing outside work?

I love new experiences. Whether that’s going to a show, a concert, a movie, visiting with friends and talking about new things, or having dinner at a new restaurant—new is exciting to me.

MSG Media Corporate Offices (2010) Large-scale murals in MSG Media’s New York offices layer bold colors, headline typography, and images to bring the broadcast company’s brand to life. (Photo: Bon Duke/Bon Duke Photography) eg magazine — 15

Target Field Station identiďŹ cation signage and interactive totems designer: Target Creative

Bringing design to life 9 635 G irard Ave n ue S o uth M in n e a p o l i s , M N 55 431 9 52 6 41 9 6 0 0

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Los Angeles International Airport’s (LAX) Tom Bradley International Terminal Integrated Environmental Media System

CONGRATS SEGD GLOBAL DESIGN AWARD WINNERS! 2014 Best of Show: Honor Award LAX Tom Bradley International Terminal: Integrated Environmental Media System Architectural Mediascape: Los Angeles Design and Program Development: MRA International, Sardi Design, Moment Factory, and Digital Kitchen Special Recognition: Fentress Architects, Smart Monkeys, Electrosonic Inc.

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3M Commercial Solutions is proud to support SEGD’s vision to educate, connect and inspire the design community.

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BEST OF SHOW Integrated Environmental Media System LAX Tom Bradley International Terminal

BEST OF SHOW Integrated Environmental Media System Los Angeles World Airports LAX Tom Bradley International Terminal

Terminal Architect Fentress Architects

Support Content Producer Digital Kitchen

Project Director, Media Program and Business Platform Development MRA International concept master plan, business strategy development, content strategy

Systems Designer and Technical Consultant Smart Monkeys

Design Director/Creative Producer Sardi Design environmental integration, materials palette, design intent

Systems Engineering and Integration Electrosonic Inc. LED and LCD Manufacturer Daktronics Photos Moment Factory

Executive Content Producer Moment Factory media feature design, content director

An overview of the Great Hall shows two of the seven epic digital media components in the $40 million Integrated Environmental Media System.

The Storyboard (left) is a digital take on the film industry staple. The 72-foottall Time Tower (right) is a modern interpretation of the classic train station clock.

New Frontier “Best of Show” goes to the epic digital landscape at LAX’s new Tom Bradley International Terminal. The experiential symphony delights passengers, creates a new revenue model, and breaks fresh ground in architecturally integrated media.

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WITH ITS NEW $1.9 BILLION Tom Bradley International Terminal at LAX, Los Angeles World Airports sought to blow the top off the world’s notions of a “typical” airport. Its ultimate goal was both simple and lofty: create a one-of-a-kind passenger experience.

Using the new Fentress Architects-designed, LEED-Silver certified building as its canvas, LAWA, place branding consultants MRA International, and experience design firm Sardi Design conceived of an epic digital landscape that would use media as architectural material—adding beauty, excitement, and the romance of travel back into

the airport journey. They worked with a team of digital content providers (including Moment Factory and Digital Kitchen) and technologists to create the $40 million Integrated Environmental Media System (IEMS).

An epic welcome

LAX is the country’s largest international gateway to Asia, welcoming more than 17 million international passengers a year. At the new terminal, a literal “Welcome!” is the first sign of the IEMS. After clearing immigration, arriving passengers head toward baggage claim via a two-story escalator that faces an epic 80-foot-tall by 26-foot-wide

The 80-ft.-tall Welcome Wall greets arriving passengers as they head toward baggage claim. High-definition imagery is accompanied by welcome greetings in languages keyed to the arriving flights.

eg magazine — 23

The Time Tower was conceived as a four-sided mediascape wrapped around an existing elevator core.

Here, it takes the form of the classic kitschy luggage tower found at many airports. The tower’s base of diffused glass is an interactive surface that responds to the gestures of passersby by triggering realtime visual effects.

“The system encompasses 12,000 square feet of displays, more than 20 million LEDS, and 105 million pixels or the equivalent of eight IMAX theaters.”

LED display. Heart-stopping high-definition videos sweep the screen—from a slow-motion California wave bubbling toward the sand to a close-up of a metal aircraft carapace reflecting the setting sun. Interlaced with these videos are greetings to the arriving passengers in their native languages, uniquely timed to each arriving flight.

The Welcome Wall is just one of seven iconic, architecturally scaled digital experiences that make up the IEMS. The cinematic landscapes are an ode to LA’s most celebrated industry. The statistics are almost as dazzling as the experiences themselves: in total, the system encompasses 12,000 square feet of displays, more than 20 million LEDS, and 105 million pixels or the equivalent of eight IMAX theaters.

Six more digital monuments were designed to captivate departing passengers. The Bon Voyage Wall is positioned to catch the eyes of outbound passengers as they collect themselves after security.

Here, the Time Tower displays a short film inspired by comedy actor/producer Harold Lloyd. Moment Factory built a full-scale model and shot liveaction film for the short. A functional clock face is also integrated into the tower.

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At roughly one-third the height of the Welcome Wall, it is an ample digital canvas to broadcast larger-than-life be Angelenos jumping and waving goodbye in super-slow motion.

Media as architecture

Why would an airport spend $40 million to design and launch such a massive and technically ambitious array of digital spectacles?

It began with a series of conversations between Mike Doucette (LAWA’s chief of airport planning), public relations executive Michael Collins, and Mike Rubin, founder of MRA International, a development consultancy specializing in destination and place branding. The fundamental question was, says Rubin, “Could we think about media in a way that both supports the passenger experience and creates a revenue platform?” LAWA’s Board and its Executive Director, Gina Marie Lindsey, made it clear the two goals were nearly equal, but that the passenger experience must be the primary guide for the media program.

The new terminal was already under construction, but the opportunity to define a revenue-generating strategy while enhancing the

visitor experience was too critical to ignore. So Rubin, Doucette, and architect Curtis Fentress brought Marcela Sardi, a designer of immersive experiences and a long-time collaborator with Rubin, into the project. Rubin’s role was to conceive the master plan for the entire media ecosystem. Sardi’s was to ensure the media integrated well with the architecture.

Meanwhile, Rubin worked with a large LAWA team to develop a business model for the IEMS. Rubin emphasized the importance of this effort early on: “Design is not just a physical expression. It’s an overall strategy that must address the sustainability of the experience and its evolution,” and in most cases, he adds, that means generating revenue to sustain it.

Rubin and the LAWA executive team crafted a sponsorship strategy that combines entitlement (naming and branding opportunities) and visitor engagement (ways that sponsors can provide a benefit or service to the passengers). A successful sponsorship “is one where the sponsor’s interest is in engaging with the audience not just to communicate their brand but to provide something of value, a connection, an experience, an enhancement that makes the brand memorable,” says Rubin.

A series of 28-ft.-tall pylons provide a transitional experience as passengers move toward the North or South concourses and their departure gates. The slender monoliths consist of vertically stacked LCD monitors with content keyed to the art traditions of destination cities.

Passenger movement triggers changing visual effects.

eg magazine — 25

The Storyboard is a 120-foot-long, digital version of the medium so commonly used in Los Angeles creative industries. The multiple LED screens, manufactured by Daktronics, were designed to be viewed from multiple angles. Both Moment Factory and Digital Kitchen created “ambient narratives” for the feature.

In the transition from the Great Hall to the North and South concourses, 10 slender, 28-foottall pylons composed of LCD screens march along the travelers’ path. Subtly animated by the movements of passersby, these portals display global artistic traditions from the airport’s key destination cities.

Content is king

Icons take shape

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Once the team determined the definition and location of the seven features, Rubin directed the content strategy while Sardi developed the materials palette and design intent for each.

The most spectacular of the landmarks is the Time Tower, a modern interpretation of the iconic clocks that set the pulse of the great train stations of the world. Rising 72 feet high in the terminal’s Great Hall like a clock tower in a village piazza, the Time Tower was conceived as a four-sided mediascape clad around an existing elevator core.

Floating above the Great Hall’s curved ceiling is the Storyboard, a 120-foot mosaic of screens inspired by the creative industries’ tool for visually expressing a narrative. The composition of eight screens is well suited to telling stories of Los Angeles interspersed with tales of travel to far-flung destinations like Brazil and Thailand.

The Destination Board, a 75-foot-wide digital display set against an aluminum brise-soleil, provides real-time flight data and spawns clouds of related information, such as local weather conditions.

While structural, engineering, and lighting modifications for the landmarks were made as a series of change orders to the architectural plans, Moment Factory, the Montreal-based multimedia design and production studio, transformed the content strategy into immersive, ambient media.

With one year left before the terminal’s opening, Senior Multimedia Director Melissa Weigel explains, “Our mandate was not only to produce the media itself, but to produce the content guidelines to help future creators develop for the system.” Moment Factory’s team of 60 full-time motion designers, filmmakers, and animators joined forces with an army of freelancers to create not just individual media elements, but what Weigel calls an “orchestrated media environment…with a common cinematic language.” That language has aspects of travel documentary, fantastical set pieces, and ethereal imagery, all conveying the romance of travel and the delights of Los Angeles.

Moment Factory created 40 short-films, each tuned to the exact technical requirements and dimensions of its media landmark. For a Time Tower short inspired by silent comedy actor/ producer Harold Lloyd, the team built a full-scale model and shot live-action footage. The resulting film transforms the Time Tower into a Beaux-Arts apartment building with characters teetering on the window ledges and hanging from the clock’s hour hand.

Creative and environmental design agency Digital Kitchen designed and delivered a collection of “ambient narratives”—documentary-style stories that capture the spirit of Los Angeles and portraits of destination cities. Their hypnotic cinematography washes across the Storyboard and down the Welcome Wall.

The Bon Voyage Wall, positioned to catch the eyes of outbound passengers as they collect themselves after security, features slow-motion video of Los Angelenos waving goodbye.

Behind the scenes

The complexity of building, installing, and deploying the media ecosystem can’t be overstated. Moment Factory and Digital Kitchen produced about five hours of HD and large-format content, some of which processes real-time flight information to render customized experiences timed with flight arrivals and departures. Moment Factory’s X-Agora video servers render the interactive and generative content. Smart Monkeys (Miami) designed the sophisticated playback and show control system that runs all the media features. The system is a fusion of broadcast, A/V, digital signage, and enterpriselevel networking to support the speed, data, and performance benchmarks the project required. LAbased Electrosonic Inc. integrated the entire system and built its NASA-like control room.

After winning a public RFP process, Daktronics manufactured and installed the LED and LCD video displays, along with the architectural surrounds and a fiber-optic backbone. Adam Gilliland, Daktronics project applications engineer, tallied “approximately 10,000 modules totaling over 20 million LEDs.” Of the $40 million spent on design, development, and deployment of the IEMS, roughly $20 million was spent on the display technology, $6 million on the content, and the rest on fabrication, engineering, and consulting.

Seeking sponsorship

To inaugurate the system and enable the sponsorship platform, the airport authority sought bids for a Terminal Media Operator to manage the sponsorship guidelines, solicit sponsorship opportunities for the seven media landmarks, manage those agreements after they have been approved by the airport authority, and maintain the media infrastructure itself, which is estimated at $2 to $4 million a year.

The sponsorship guidelines are intended to protect and evolve the high caliber of the content.

Sponsors are allowed a maximum of 12 minutes per hour in aggregate (equivalent to 20% of the time) to communicate their brand on the media feature. Sponsors are also required to provide passenger benefits such as apps, charging stations, or other amenities.

In December 2013, joint-venture JCDecaux/ Airport Sponsorships/Time Warner was awarded a six-year contract that guarantees at minimum $180 million in sponsorship revenue to the airport.

The size of that minimum payment reflects the confidence that advertising giant JCDecaux has in the potential of the media features. JCDecaux president Bernard Parisot called this opportunity “nothing short of revolutionary, bringing together sponsorships with new services to make the passenger experience more rewarding.”

Editor’s note: The LAX TBIT project was originally featured in eg magazine No. 08, 2014. This story excerpts the original feature by Leslie Wolke.

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HONOR AWARDS MegaFaces Pavilion City of Bath Information System

Victoria Revealed Exhibit Brisbane Multilingual Pedestrian Signage Rebranding the Museum of the City of New York Boy Scouts of America Sustainability Treehouse Exhibit Seattle Childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Research Institute Neighborhood Visibllity

HONOR AWARD Information System City of Bath Bath, England

The new wayfinding system in Bath, England, was designed to help tourists experience the most of the historic city. Nine 2.3-meter-high, 900-mmwide monoliths in the city center feature bespoke heads-up maps that provide 360-degree views of the city.

Design PearsonLloyd product design, FW Design wayfinding strategy, graphic design, City ID wayfinding strategy, digital strategy Design Team PearsonLloyd: Tom Lloyd director FW Design: Roger Crabtree director City ID: Mike Rawlinson director

Consultants City ID wayfinding client adviser, Rhodri Samuel client at BANES Council Photos Ed Reeve © PearsonLloyd

Bath to Basics A new wayfinding system for the thousandyear-old city of Bath, England, focuses on the visitor experience, revealing its hidden gems with a contemporary design inspired by its Roman and medieval roots.

By Jenny S. Reising

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Fabrication Wood & Wood signage manufacturer, AJ Wells vitreous enamel maps

Seventeen smaller 1.8-meterhigh, 500-millimeter-wide monoliths supplement the city-center system with more detailed localized mapping showing close-by attractions and walking distance.

AT 1.6 SQUARE MILES, the City of Bath is a compact, scenic urban village situated in a valley with a river running through it. Originally a walled Roman and then medieval city, it lost most of its walls in the 18th century as part of the great Georgian expansion and reinvention. Today, 90,000 people call Bath home but upwards of 4 million tourists visit the city annually. Bath is one of the few cities in the world identified as a UNESCO World Heritage site due to “human creative genius” for shaping a beautiful city that seamlessly integrates landscape, urban design, and architecture.

As with any city whose primary industry is tourism, getting people to visit, see the sights, enjoy their stay, and come back for more is not only good for business, it’s the key to survival. Unfortunately, little attention had been paid over the years to the visitor experience.

“For a long time, there was no real focus or consciousness of public space, no sense of what the public realm could do for the life of a city,” says Rhodri Samuel, former Regeneration Manager for the City of Bath.

Bristol- and New York-based urban planners CityID had been tapped in 2006 to look at the idea of a legible city project in Bath. But according to CityID Design Director Mike Rawlinson, “There hadn’t been investment in Bath for generations, and it became apparent there was a need for a broader vision for the city.”

In 2008, the city commissioned a public realm and movement strategy for Bath city center, led by CityID, to analyze the legibility of the city across multiple modes of movement from multiple user perspectives. In 2010, CityID published the

results in Creating the Canvas for Public Life in Bath, a guidebook that established a framework of place and design values, as well as the principle of “Bathness” (i.e., designing with an understanding of Bath’s unique qualities). The research unveiled some interesting social history about Bath that helped inform a new approach to public spaces and wayfinding.

“In the 18th century, Bath was quite pioneering and radical in its approach to public space,” says Samuel. “The city consciously defined itself with interaction and pleasure in mind by designing streets, parades, and public spaces almost like a stage for social theater. We looked at ways to capture that spirit and reposition the city as a fantastic place for humans to come and interact and feel better about being alive.”

Cautious approach, radical redesign

To ensure the success of the new wayfinding strategy, multiple stakeholders were involved in the process, including a design panel comprising 20 national and international designers from the fields of urban design, landscape design, lighting, theater, and opera set design; and a movement panel consisting of professionals in transportation and movement.

CityID was retained as lead design adviser, with FW Design handling graphic design and PearsonLloyd working on product design.

Involving locals in the planning process was important. As Roger Crabtree, managing director of FW Design, explains, “Bath is a desirable destination with people who are precious about the city and cautious about change, so it was important to allow stakeholders to feel engaged with the design process.”

eg magazine — 33

“Such elegant materiality: modern, aged, simple, and timeless, so right for this city. The circular map makes me feel like I can get lost in this city, yet always find my way.

This map makes it a joy to explore and plan the day.”

—Jury comment

The information system is augmented by handheld printed maps, which are available at shops, city information points, and hotels. When funding permits, the city will implement a digital wayfinding layer using handheld devices. (Photo: Ed Reeves)

From a wayfinding perspective, Bath was in dire straits. The previous system of cast-iron fingerposts was entirely directional, and many of the directions were inaccurate or ambiguous. Moreover, because fingerposts could be bought by local attractions, some signs had more than 20 fingers on them, making the information almost illegible for the user and overly dominated by destinations with the most money.

“We learned from our research that many of Bath’s visitors were leaving with a very limited mental map of the city and what it offers in terms of attractions, experiences, architecture, and vistas,” Samuel says. “We wanted people to see how compact and walkable Bath is and to have the confidence to explore an expanded central area in a more meaningful and rewarding way.”

The design team agreed that a multimodal journey (integrating pedestrian and transportation information) that uses the same suite of products and services—from online to street—would be the best way to glue the city together visually and communicate what Bath has to offer. CityID recommended a heads-up map-based system that orients visitors to attractions based on the direction in which they are facing.

Less is more

PearsonLloyd settled on a system of two-sided rectangular monoliths in two sizes (2.3-meterhigh and 1.8-meter-high sizes) that are substantial enough to withstand parkour (i.e., youths using the built environment to do acrobatics) and the right proportion to display information at a readable height for tall people, short people, and those in wheelchairs. The signs have a galvanized steel frame

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clad in brass with an antique finish that resembles bronze at a fraction of the cost. The finish not only references Bath’s local stone and slate roofs, but is also designed to acquire a rich patina over time (going from lighter to darker), making the signs easy to maintain.

The design team agreed early on to take a less-is-more approach to the signage. “We wanted to hit the sweet spot between conveying relevant information in an intuitive way without overembellishing or adding unnecessary fussiness or detail,” explains Rawlinson. So the signs’ informational hierarchy is quite simple: a transport mode icon (for pedestrian signs, a walking person) is etched in the top left corner, a large map of the whole city appears at reading height, directory information etched into the sign with a white infill appears just below the map, and an orange “You are here” locator indicates the pedestrian’s position in relation to the map. The bottom portion of the sign is left entirely blank and there is no visual branding for the City of Bath anywhere on the panel.

“We didn’t want to add a label saying, ‘This is Bath,’” Rawlinson says. “We wanted the materials, color palette, and graphic identity to convey the brand.”

Bath is in a geographic bowl with surrounding hills forming a striking backdrop to the historic city core, so the idea of a circular map, of looking through a lens and seeing a single entity, emerged as a way to visually present the city to visitors.

An 800-millimeter-diameter map on the larger monoliths depicts the city core, complete with axonometric drawings and pictograms. The same map appears in a smaller size (500 millimeter diameter) on the smaller monoliths with a

450-millimeter-diameter inset map that zooms in on one area; for example, a cathedral and what’s around it.

Designers specified vitreous enamel for the maps, which involved printing 14 separate layers of colors that reflect the Bath color palette and correspond with the landscape. The vitreous enamel finish also provides a durable, vibrant, tactile graphic that is color-safe, won’t fade, and can be cleaned aggressively. A bezel around the circular maps acts like a compass, with map markers indicating key attractions and places that are within and beyond the center—destinations that are not on the map but are worth checking out—and how many minutes it will take to walk there.

David Quay was commissioned to create the Bath typeface used throughout the wayfinding system. The primarily sans-serif font (with a serif option) was inspired by the elegance of Bath’s incised letterforms and the city’s Palladian architecture. Pictograms were also customdesigned based on national and international standards but with a proportion and shape that echo the typeface.

Signs of success

The wayfinding system is designed to be multimodal, with transport information integrated into pedestrian wayfinding elements and vice versa. As part of the pilot program, which was installed in 2012 and funded in part by the European Commission’s CIVITAS Initiative, four new bus shelters with graphics were installed along with benches and circular cast-bronze bicycle racks.

Future plans call for an expansion of the street furniture program and additional bus shelters.

An important component of the wayfinding system is the use of handheld printed maps, which are available at shops, city information points, and hotels. The map is also available online and there are plans, when funding permits, to augment the onstreet, print, and web maps with a digital wayfinding system using handheld devices.

As with any project, there were a few challenges. Namely, some stakeholders were resistant to changing the wayfinding system, particularly those with a previously dominant position on the fingerposts. And with so many stakeholders involved in the project, gaining consensus was not always straightforward.

However, since the signage was installed, Samuel says, “The reception from residents has been predominantly positive or silent, and I regard silence as a sign of success and acceptance in Bath, as many city projects have generated a lot of negative noise in the past.”

Rawlinson adds that getting buy-in was a lengthy process—the project kicked off eight years before anything was installed—but considering Bath has been around for a thousand-plus years, the project length was relatively fast and the outcome benefited from careful consideration.

“The system sits comfortably in the fabric of the city and is rooted in history but also of today,” Rawlinson says. “That’s a hard trick to turn. But the client was educated and the team was talented, and that has paid dividends in the quality of the product.”

The new multimodal wayfinding system is designed not only to highlight the main attractions, but also to uncover the hidden gems and show how walkable the city is. Pedestrian orientation points etched around the maps reveal interesting sites that aren’t on the map but are worth checking out—and how long it will take to get there on foot.

Jenny Reising is a Cincinnati-based writer and editor who has written extensively for eg magazine. She is the former managing editor of ID magazine.

eg magazine — 35

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HONOR AWARD MegaFaces Pavilion MegaFon Sochi 2014 Olympic Park, Russia

Design Asif Khan Design Team Asif Khan creative director; Peter Vaughan project director; Sara Griffiths project architect; Valentin Spiess chief engineer, iart; Mathis Meyer project manager, iart; Anastasia Orkina marketing strategic director, MegaFon; Galina Kukina project manager, MegaFon; Yulia Vasilyeva head of Olympic project, MegaFon; Alsu

Khairutdinova client service director, Axis; Polina Sophie Shevskaya account manager, Axis Technology Iart interactive engineers Fabrication iart interactive façade and photo booths, Axis event fitout and exterior and interior furniture, SMU-2 primary contractor, Serge Ferrari architectural fabrics

Consultants Axis agency and project management, AKT II structural engineer, Atelier Ten services engineer, AECOM project management, UK, Progress local architect, Scott Eaton digital sculpture consultant Photos Hufton + Crow

Face Time London architect Asif Khan pushes the boundaries of architecture with a “digital Mount Rushmore” that celebrates the power of the portrait.

By Pat Matson Knapp

Asif Khan’s MegaFaces Pavilion for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, was called the “Digital Mount Rushmore.” It was the world’s first large-scale actuated LED display.

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IN 2013, LONDON-BASED ARCHITECT Asif Khan took an out-of-the-blue phone call from a Russian marketing executive whose potential client—one of the largest telecommunications companies in Russia—was creating a pavilion for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. What MegaFon wants, Alsu Khairutdinova explained to Khan, was to connect people with its brand in a completely new and emotional way. She had seen Khan’s Coca-Cola Beatbox for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London—a structure of giant red-andwhite interlocking polymer pillows that visitors touched to create music—and she was well aware of his reputation for using technology to push the traditional boundaries of architecture.

“This is the best,” she said of the Beatbox pavilion. “We want something better.”

“There was something about the way she spoke to me—or maybe it was that exotic Russian accent,” laughs Khan. She invited Khan to join her team in a pitch against 10 other architectural teams, and he found himself saying yes. “I said, ‘It sounds interesting to work with you guys. I’ve never worked in Russia before. But you have to be ready for something very big, and very different. Are you prepared for that?’”

Hero worship Khan and Khairutdinova’s Moscow-based Axis marketing agency won the project, and with Swiss interactive engineers iart as technology partners, Khan set to work inventing an idea—and a technology—that had never existed before.

His inspiration came from the power of portraits, and of heroes.

“People watch the Olympics to worship their heroes,” he explains. “But we decided to turn that on its head and make everyone a hero. We’ll take inspiration from Mount Rushmore but instead of presidents, it’s going to be the faces of you and me.” The faces would be magnified 3,500%. And the punch line? They would appear on the pavilion façade in three dimensions.

“The technology didn’t exist at that time,” admits Khan. “But I knew it could be done.”

Khan envisioned a kinetic façade that could transform in three dimensions to recreate the faces of visitors and athletes, giving everyone the chance to be the face of the Olympics. Fans and athletes were photographed in custom 3D photo booths inside the building. Their images were scanned by

five cameras and “meshed,” then—like a giganticscaled version of pin art—translated onto the façade via 11,000 computer-programmed actuators under the building’s stretchy skin. Three portraits, each 8 meters tall, were displayed on the building at once. Each of the 11,000 actuators was tipped with a translucent sphere that contained an RGBLED light, and each actuator acted as one pixel, extending out from the building by up to two meters to create dimensional images, or change color as part of an image or video simultaneously displayed on the façade.

Khan’s idea translated MegaFon’s intangible product—essentially, human communication— into a tangible brand experience that combines architecture and digital portraiture. “MegaFaces says something about the way we record our images in the digital age: selfies, Facebook, emoticons sent out to our friends all over the world. It’s the same as the monumental sculptures and land art of the past.

No matter that we are using new technology to do it: we are still fascinated with human faces and the emotions they convey.”

The 3D display covered the façade of the Olympic pavilion sponsored by MegaFon, a major Russian telecommunications company. The portraits were formed by computerprogrammed actuators under the building’s stretchy skin.

eg magazine — 39

“This monumental installation literally takes digital technology to a new dimension. I believe this technology goes beyond a gimmicky effect and is an arresting experience that provides visual delight day and night. I feel that I’m seeing the birth of a new design ‘tool’ that will provide great creative opportunities for cultural and commercial applications.”—Jury comment

Enlarged 3,500 percent, the portraits look like gigantic versions of pin art.

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iart, a Swiss interactive engineering firm, collaborated with Khan on the new technology.

describes the collaboration as an “agile process” of R&D/design/ build. Khan presented his ideas to the iart technical team in a series of workshops and development meetings. The iart team began prototyping and continued prototyping throughout the process, modifying based on Khan’s feedback and the team’s technical input.

“This agile process allows us to create demonstrative or productive increments very early in the process, in order to verify our approach and make sure we’re on the right track,” explains Spiess. “Only because of this process were we able to develop this solution within the very tight time schedule.”

“It was kind of like a space race,” Khan laughs. “You’re trying to launch this thing and you’ve got a deadline and you want to get this satellite in space before the Russians do….except, oops, we were on the Russian’s side this time.”

Pushing architecture Khan is often frustrated that architecture stops short of what it could be. “We think of its physicality in terms of the existing palette of building products that we’ve always used, which stunts our discovery process about new ideas.” Despite the ubiquity of technology in every aspect of our lives, he says, architecture hasn’t kept up.

“I’ve spent the past seven or eight years pushing that line,” Khan says. “I want to see how far we can go.”

When he conceived MegaFaces, he was already calculating how it would work. He guessed that rendering the huge facial images in 3D would require linear telescopic actuators and they would probably have lit tips. He wasn’t sure how many, but he called fellow polymath Valentin Spiess at iart and said, “I’ve got this idea. I want to do this thing.“ A half-hour later, Spiess emailed back with gut-check calculations for resolution, the number of actuators, and even ballpark costs. “The question was: how big, and what resolution can we achieve in the time we have?”

R&D in real time They had 377 days. In addition to the daunting technological challenges, they had to jump through Olympic hoops: the project would require signoffs from not only the client, but the planning authority hosting the Games and the Olympics itself.

Most complex, perhaps, was integrating the nascent technology (and its hardware) with the building itself. Spiess

Digital tromp l’oeil One of the most fascinating—and to Khan, surprising—aspects of the project was the art direction required to render the faces accurately at that scale. When the team created mock-ups and projected real skin texture at huge scale, the faces looked uncanny and…well, rather scary. “It was like seeing a giant,” Khan remembers. “It becomes almost too real and then it starts to distort perceptions. In this case, it would have created fear.”

“In that moment,” he adds, “We decided that rather than going directly from scanning to actuation, we would add an art direction step.”

So Khan brought digital sculptor Scott Eaton onto the team.

Eaton, who teaches Pixar artists about rendering human anatomy, developed a system that automatically positioned and scaled the faces for maximum emotional impact and recognizability. Using digital tools just as an artist would use his eyes and hands and chisel on a bas relief, Eaton “taught” the system how to modulate light and shadow to minimize distortion and make the faces more recognizable (and less scary).

“Scott discovered it was about compressing the zone behind the eyes to the front of the ears,” says Khan. Essentially, Eaton’s program stripped away the lighting effect created by the camera flashes and relit the 3D meshes in a virtual photo studio, simulating strong sunlight from above and creating increased shadow effects that accentuated the depths of features and nuanced the portraits.

eg magazine — 41

After having their photos taken in custom 3D photo booths, visitors received SMS telling them when their face would appear on the building. The average display time was about 50 seconds.

50 seconds of fame On site at the Olympics, visitors queued up to have their photos taken. The images were then sent to a remote site for technical alterations. When their portraits were ready for prime time, visitors received an SMS telling them when their face would appear on the building. Usually 10 to 15 minutes later, fans enjoyed an average of 50 seconds of fame (depending on the building throughput). Once their giant “selfies” appeared, visitors received another SMS linking them to a permanent website where the images reside.

Recognizing that only a small fraction of Russians would be able to make it to the Games, MegaFon toured photo booths around 30 cities. “Even if you couldn’t get to the Games, your avatar could be there,” says Khan. This turned out to be a nice gesture of inclusiveness in an event dogged by bad press about Russia’s intolerance of homosexuality.

In all, the photo booths captured between 150,000 and 200,000 portraits, or about 400 3D facial scans per hour.

New horizons

In pulling off the project, Khan’s team and iart created the world’s first large-scale actuated LED

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display. “We have moved an art form and display technology to its next level,” Khan believes. The potential for application of this new technology is endless, he adds, from large-scale kinetic displays to shape-changing architecture.

MegaFon, in the meantime, is happy with the results the pavilion achieved. It was largely hailed as the most popular pavilion of the Games, and it received heavy international press coverage and more than 100,000 social media posts and Tweets.

The world is definitely paying attention to Khan’s invention. The project recently won the Grand Prix Award for Innovation at the 2014 Cannes Lions, the world’s largest annual awards show and festival for the creative communications industry.

Khan was most amazed at the reception his fantastical idea got from his Russian partners and client. “I described something that didn’t exist and gave only a verbal promise that we could bring it into existence. And they wanted to go for it,” he muses. “There is something very special about this client and this agency and Russians in general. This belief in ideas. Belief that you can achieve amazing things if you’re brave and work hard at it.”.

HONOR AWARD Victoria Revealed Historic Royal Palaces

Design OPERA Amsterdam Design Team Deirdre Murphy lead curator; Ruth Gill, Rhiannon Goddard, Alex Gaffikin interpretation; Jo Pike project director, Renata Alvares senior designer

Fabrication The Hub Ltd. primary fabricator, Meyvaert exhibition showcases, SP Production, graphic application, Ege Carpets production custom carpets, Sysco AV AV hardware

Consultants Spiral Production AV production, Cristina Guitan artist, Rebecca Morrison costume designer, Andy Singelton paper artist Photos Richard Thwaite, ©OPERA Amsterdam

Kensington Palace, London

The design team collaborated with several artists as well as the charity Fine Cell Work. Seventeen prisoners in four different facilities embroidered the cushions for the “Falling in Love” room. Each consists of 11,000 stitches featuring words and imagery symbolic of the royal couple: “bliss,” “dream,” an interlocking “V” and “A,” and a crown.

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A laser-cut and powdercoated steel screen comprised of words from love letters exchanged between Queen Victoria and Prince Albert adds another layer of intimacy to the “Falling in Love” room; some of the words are highlighted in gold paint for emphasis.

Reproduction despatch boxes covered in red leather and silkscreened text contain interactive games and puzzles that educate visitors about life in the Victorian era.

Victoria Revealed In a new exhibition at Kensington Palace, OPERA Amsterdam paints a compelling picture of Queen Victoria, literally in her own words.

By Jennifer M. Volland

PRESIDENTS AND PRIME MINISTERS. Foreign leaders and heads of state. Celebrities and historical figures. The general public tends to have strong and fixed impressions of powerful individuals. Shaped by media and public opinion, these one-dimensional interpretations are often difficult to shake. This was the overriding challenge faced by Historic Royal Palaces in staging the Victoria Revealed exhibition at Kensington Palace, London. How is it possible to tell the story of arguably the most important person who ever inhabited the palace, bringing together the Queen Victoria of familiar lore—a somber older woman dressed in black—and the younger, romantic woman destined for greatness?

There seemed to be only one appropriate solution: Let Victoria speak for herself.

Jo Pike, Director at OPERA Amsterdam, the firm responsible for the art direction and all the twoand three-dimensional design for Victoria Revealed, developed a concept that would tell Victoria’s history in a visually and emotionally engaging way.

“Everything is based on her words,” Pike explains. “We didn’t follow a traditional exhibition approach. It is not didactic and it does not move from one object to the next. Rather, the client wanted something that was multi-sensory, where visitors could follow Victoria’s emotional journey.”

Setting the stage

The historic spaces of Kensington Palace provide the setting for visitors to explore the various stages of Victoria’s life, from her childhood through her many decades as Great Britain’s monarch. Memories were reconstructed through Victoria’s diaries, personal documents, and letters, and contextualized with a selection of objects—including garments, jewels, sketches, portraits, furniture and toys—from the personal collection of Queen Elizabeth II. At the exhibition’s entrance, animated title plates are projected onto the wall, as if written while visitors watch. A few ink splashes fall on the words, followed by a red wax seal. A portrait of Victoria accompanies the animation, creating the sense that the visitor is experiencing something autobiographical.

But rather than follow a chronological organization, the exhibition adopts a cinematic view of history. The rooms are arranged by theme—love life, duty or work, mourning—or by where certain events took place. As visitors ascend the palace’s central staircase on their way to the exhibit, they get a glimpse into Victoria’s emotional state on her first day as queen: her words are woven into the red carpeting. The first room visitors see is the Red Saloon, where the 18-year-old queen held her first Privy Council meeting. Artifacts include a table from the royal collection adorned with the queen’s impressions stenciled on the surface and a glass display case holding the dress she wore on that pivotal day. Gobo projections of Council members loom along the walls, while an audio track of voices representing the council members fills the room.

No natural daylight enters the space. By activating surfaces and creating a multi-sensory environment, the design team captured the seriousness of the event without resorting to explanatory panels.

eg magazine — 45

Capturing a romance

In a room dedicated to Albert’s career and personal pursuits, a 3D representation of the Crystal Palace is a dominant feature.

Fabricator The Hub cut layers of printed Plexiglas in the shape of the building, creating a sort of life-size peep box.

Victoria and Albert’s monogram, wallpapered in a light beige pattern, provides the backdrop for Albert’s favorite portrait of Queen Victoria.

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Nowhere is the emotional impact more dramatic than in the room devoted to the love life of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Overlooking Kensington Park, the room is filled with natural light and a soft beige/peach and mint green color scheme that infuses the space with warmth. Musical compositions the couple wrote for each other play in the background. All surfaces come alive with the passionate words they exchanged: columns and mirrors are inscribed with text, the wallpaper is patterned with the initials of Victoria and Albert, the carpet features a graphic treatment of the word “love,” and prisoners working with the charity Fine Cell Work embroidered cushions with words like “dream” and “bliss.” Queen Victoria’s actual wedding dress is on display, cased and backed by a delicately scrolled white paper sculpture, as is an interpretation of Albert’s wedding suit, embroidered with Victoria’s words and positioned in a forward motion, as if beckoning his queen. A painted screen made of laser-cut steel, and comprised of words of adoration between Victoria and Albert, bisects the room. Some of the words are accented in gold, highlighting the most intimate and endearing compliments.

“It was our challenge to present their letters to each other in an appropriate context,” describes Pike.

“Immediately, this room has a personal feel. The room is flooded with words of adoration and you feel the love they had for each other. It is overpowering.”

Silhouette projections of the Privy Council members (by Spiral Productions), their names listed on the walls in cut-vinyl film, convey the intimidating scene of Victoria’s first day as queen.

Rooms with a view

Each of the 10 rooms captures a different facet of Victoria’s life, and each conveys a distinct mood.

One room is devoted to family life, both Princess Victoria’s childhood and the experiences of Victoria and Albert’s own nine children. A family tree dominates the back wall and a vine graphic scrolls into each of the children’s names as it wraps around their portraits.

Another room on duty and work explores Victoria’s official role as queen. It is dominated by a very large desk, which is covered with Victoria’s quotes about the difficulties of leading her large empire. On top of the desk are replicas of her red leather despatch boxes, inscribed with quotes and filled with interactive games and puzzles that teach visitors about Victorian life.

Still another room examines Victoria’s shock at Prince Albert’s death and the beginning of her 40-year widowhood. With dark walls and carpet, the mood of this room is somber. On display are three black dresses set against specially commissioned paper sculptures, whose barren, white branches signify death and loss, an eternal winter. A well known quote of Victoria’s extends across the glass case in her hand: “My life as a happy one is ended!

The world is gone for me.” Poignantly, a white bust of Albert is visible on the other side.

A non-traditional approach

This carefully orchestrated play between environmental graphics and objects transforms the visitor experience. Deirdre Murphy, curator of Historic Royal Palaces, is used to unconventional methods of display and storytelling. Because of the historic nature of Kensington Palace, she is limited in the types of interventions she can make. The interiors preclude the desirability of text panels and object labels because they present a series of rooms instead of formal gallery spaces.

“We tend toward more creative and unexpected styles of displaying historic materials,” says Murphy.

“We take an approach to interpretation that encourages our visitors to make discoveries and

to explore the stories of how monarchs and people shape society.”

Queen Victoria lived at a time when there was an incredible volume of written word, and much of the correspondence between her and family, friends, and colleagues survives along with her personal journals and diaries. While some of her writings have been accessible to the public, a great deal of what appears in the exhibition has never been published, and certainly it has never been contextualized like this.

“We wanted to tell a very personal story,” says Murphy. “At a point in the conceptual process, we realized the best way to do this was to reduce the curatorial voice as much as possible.” Graphics, and how words are displayed, became all the more important, as they served as vehicles to understand the material. From a curatorial point of view, this made for a time-consuming research process.

Murphy had to find just the right journal entries to correspond with the objects on view.

Although this is the most text-oriented exhibition ever produced by Historic Royal Palaces, very little of it consists of conventional didactics.

The font hierarchy helps solve the question of voice. Pike specified two typefaces: Dear Sarah for the words of Victoria and Perpetua (including small capitals, italics, and regular) for all other text, including the brass “history happened here” eg magazine — 47

“The use of typography is imaginative and cohesive and beautiful. It has a delicate beauty and elegance that doesn’t limit itself. It uses the spoken and written word, providing a whole new immersive experience. Very few exhibits address an emotion like love in such a sensitive and imaginative way.”—Jury comment

Mourning costumes of Victoria and her children are displayed against the backdrop of expressive paper-cut art by Andy Singelton.

As a result, the freestanding elements serve as main focal points in the exhibition. In a room dedicated to Albert’s career and personal pursuits, a three-dimensional representation of the Crystal Palace (signifying the prince’s involvement in the Great Exhibition of 1851) is a dominant feature.

Layers of printed Plexiglas are cut in the shape of the building, creating a sort of life-size peep box. This element, in particular, required a lot of detailing. The Hub produced metal work legs and support posts and accurately engineered acrylic panels to ensure the intended effect, reminiscent of a Victorian-era perspective, was delivered.

Such experiential environments are commonplace throughout the entire exhibition, its culmination notwithstanding. As visitors exit down the staircase, they encounter a final personal expression of Queen Victoria: a drawing she made of Prince Albert is projected and animated on the wall, as if happening in real time. plates on doors that identify where specific events in Victoria’s life took place, the occasional third-person quote, and object labels.

“It was important that we didn’t put a name and date at the end of every quote. It would have looked awful and boring,” explains Murphy. “It was very tempting to veer off course because of the needs of the situation, but we stuck rigidly to those rules.”

Disengaging the wall

Whereas the design team developed text-based rules as a means to impose a certain rigor to the environmental design process, the palace itself presented other obstacles. The Hub Limited served as the main contractor for the project and fabricated all joinery and metalwork items, casework, AV hardware, and graphics and electrical packages.

Project Director Philip Wooderson explained how his team had to be wary of applying for consent for any fixing required to the fabric of the building and the lead-time associated with these.

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Keeping it real

The mandate of Historic Royal Palaces to illuminate the history of Kensington Palace and the lives of the characters who lived there was well achieved in Victoria Revealed. The design team was able to reach a wide audience—young and old, male and female, those with special needs—by offering an emotional journey reliant on the interplay between graphics and objects.

“That is sometimes a real battle. You want people to know the whole story but there is often too much information,” Pike says. “You need to bring it back to something people can process. You need to leave room for people to imagine. With Victoria Revealed, you feel like you are in her shoes and you can hear her talking to you at all times.”

Jennifer M. Volland is an independent writer and curator based in Southern California. She co-curated Grand Hotel: Redesigning Modern Life, presented at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 2013. She is also the co-author of Edward A. Killingsworth: An Architect’s Life (Hennessey + Ingalls, 2013).

Design Dotdash

HONOR AWARD Multilingual Pedestrian Signage Brisbane City Council

Design Team Peter Rudledge design lead; Mark Ross director in charge; Domenic Nastasi, Keith Sullivan technical designers Fabrication Harlequin Signs and Plastics Consultants Aradia Pty Ltd. translator

Brisbane, Australia

Photos Larraine Henning/Dotdash

Brisbane’s new pedestrian wayfinding system incorporates English as well as Chinese, Arabic, Korean, and Japanese— reflecting the city’s growing multicultural population and its aspirations to be a worldclass tourist and event destination.

Wayfinding: The Lingua Franca Brisbane’s new wayfinding system bridges the language gap for its growing Asian population.

By Steve Aust

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AUSTRALIA PROVIDES AN INTERESTING study in population distribution. Collectively, the nation’s median population density is 2.9 people per km, according to a 2010 report by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. By contrast, the United States contains approximately 34 inhabitants per km, per data cited in a 2011 World Bank study. By this metric, the Land Down Under is one of the 10 least densely populated countries in the world.

Due to the unforgiving climate of its Outback regions, approximately 90% of Australians live in urban areas, and two-thirds of Australia’s inhabitants live in its five largest cities: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide.

A concentrated urban population, intrinsic Aussie resourcefulness, and alliances with such established partners as the U.S. and European and Pacific Rim countries have converged to create favorable economic conditions in Australia. Unlike most of the developed world, its economy grew by more than 1% even during 2009’s dark days, and unemployment never exceeded 6%. In addition to mining, its bedrock industry, Australia has also grown into a regional leader in manufacturing,

“So right for the streetscape in scale, visibility, form, and massing. Restraint is exercised to use only the space needed to carry the information. The multilingual messaging is artful.”

—Jury comment information technology, biotechnology, tourism, and other industries essential for thriving in the 21st century.

Brisbane, Australia’s third-largest city with a population of about 2.2 million, is distinguishing itself as an international gathering place. So far the Queensland capital city has hosted such worldwide events as the World Expo and the Goodwill Games, and it will serve as the venue for the G20 economic summit in November 2014.

Brisbane’s heyday as an international gathering center appears to be forthcoming. Approximately one-fourth of its residents hail from another country, and, according to www.studybrisbane.com, roughly one in six of its residents speaks a language besides English at home. And approximately 80,000 foreign students take courses at area universities.

Considering these factors, forward-thinking city officials have been working to leverage Brisbane’s growth opportunities. Brisbane City Council commissioned a report, “Brisbane’s

The first phase of the system, designed by Dotdash, included 33 fingerpost signs in the Brisbane Central Business District. A second phase added 14 signs.

Unique Window of Opportunity,” which, among other factors, addressed the need for visual communications that enhance connections with Pacific-Rim immigrants, students, and tourists.

According to Scott Chaseling, Brisbane’s senior urban designer, approximately 40% of its tourists visit from five markets: New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the U.S., Germany, and China. Not surprisingly, China comprises the fastest-growing of these markets and Korea, Japan, and Singapore are also growing segments.

Among other recommendations, the report cited civic wayfinding as a necessity to serve its foreign-born communities. City Council members approached Dotdash, a Brisbane EGD firm, about devising a new wayfinding program within the central business district. The city’s prior wayfinding system incorporated fingerpost signs bedecked in a dull, institutional blue, with smallish type and most critically, no acknowledgement of Brisbane’s need to serve its multi-cultural population.

eg magazine — 51

The yellow-gold signs stand out in the busy urban environment. While yellow is not a primary color in the Brisbane graphics standards manual, Dotdash had the leeway to make it prominent in the wayfinding system.

Bridging the (language) gap

Dotdash, a 26-year-old Brisbane firm specializing in wayfinding, earned the project through a select tender, for which it was one of five firms invited to submit proposals. The firm had gained substantial international respect for its work developing environmental graphics for the Summer Olympiads held in Sydney, Athens, and Beijing.

Although the city has a graphic standards manual, Dotdash Co-Managing Director Mark Ross says it addressed signage only sparsely, which provided Dotdash with some latitude. For instance, although yellow was a secondary color in the original graphic-standards manual, Dotdash was able to implement it as the wayfinding program’s dominant hue, albeit a slightly more subdued gold tone.

After completing a demographic study of Brisbane and its environs, Dotdash and council officials determined that in addition to English, the wayfinding system should include Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Arabic.

with the stroke widths most similar to Avenir. Ross noted that manual adjustments were required to achieve the balance and the ultimate goal of providing sufficient information in a compact space.

Approximating a flat key shape, the sign blades contain English text, pictograms, arrows, and walking distances on the outer half and multilingual listings on the wider inner half. Rudledge says that because Japanese translations were consistently the longest, they were placed on the bottom row.

Chinese messages were the shortest, and thus placed on top, with Arabic on the second row and Korean third.

Most of the pictograms used to help users identify generic destinations (transportation, stairs, etc.) were culled from universally recognized symbols. Two Brisbane-specific destinations— Brisbane City Hall and ANZAC Square, a public space honoring Australia and New Zealand’s soldiers who served overseas—required custom symbols.

Creating balance

If you build it…

Fitting wayfinding messages onto slender fingerpost signs in five languages was no easy task. “Our aim was to achieve a visual balance of weights and letterforms across different languages while still honoring each language’s individual characters,” says Ross.

To match the city’s existing environmental graphics, Dotdash employed Avenir for the English typography. Peter Rudledge, lead designer for the program, made typographic selections. In choosing the Asian typefaces, he navigated the limited number of sans-serif fonts within each and selected the faces

The firm partnered with Harlequin Signs, also of Brisbane, to fabricate the program.

Project costs were diminished considerably because Harlequin was able to install the signs on the established 1m-diameter, bored-pier footings that had been used to create Brisbane’s old wayfinding program. The panels’ supporting posts, which sleeve the existing posts, comprise square hollow sections of Alloy 304 stainless steel, a formulation that’s extremely corrosion-resistant— a necessity for a coastal environment’s heavy salt-air concentration.

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Providing text in multiple languages on the signs’ limited real estate was a design challenge. For the non-English typefaces, Dotdash chose those with stroke widths most similar to Avenir.

A kit of parts facilitated efficient production.

The perimeter cleat, which contains the Brisbane City Council’s logo, contains a pin that was fixed to the posts with an interlocking “key” system, which makes the panels easily removable and interchangeable. The directional blades were fabricated in 1cm-thick stainless steel that was waterjet-cut because of the precise finish the technology allows.

Holzberger says the project’s structural engineering incurred its most substantial challenge.

Although the program was retrofitted to fit the previous wayfinding system, the supporting posts and panels had to provide sufficient strength to allow for additional signage on each post.

“Fabricating signage with large directional blades yields posts that are very top-heavy,” he says.

“Working with Dotdash, our structural engineer, and the client, we were able to install more support points to fortify the signs without compromising design integrity.”

Accolades The signs also provide walking distances to primary destinations.

Listing them below the destinations improved legibility.

The program has earned considerable acclaim.

At last year’s Council of International Students Association Conference, Brisbane’s CBD program was commended as a textbook example of a city successfully internationalizing itself. And the program’s street cred is frequently affirmed by unsolicited comments on the Study Brisbane Facebook page, says Chaseling.

“From a tourism point of view, the international wayfinding is fundamental to positioning Brisbane as a global city and is key to improving the international visitor experience,” he says.

A second phase, which encompassed 14 additional signs, was unveiled last year. Chaseling says that although a timetable hasn’t yet been established, a third phase is likely.

Steve Aust has written about signs and architectural graphics for 14 years.

eg magazine — 53

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HONOR AWARD Rebranding the Core Museum of the City of New York New York

Starlight is an iconic new LED sculpture and placemaking element that invites museum visitors up its central staircase.

Star Bright As part of a major renovation, the venerable Museum of the City of New York gets fresh new public spaces, including a dazzling icon for a new age.

By Pat Matson Knapp

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REBRANDING THE CORE Design Cooper Joseph Studio Design Team Chris Cooper, Wendy Evans Joseph, principals in charge; Chris Good, Wonwoo Park, Greg Evans design team

Fabrication RUSH Design lighting installation, Make Product Development Inc. café, Full Point Graphics vinyl graphics Consultants Studio 1Thousand lighting Photos Eduard Hueber/ArchPhoto

The sculpture consists of 5,243 double-sided LED pixels hung on 210 tri-partite strands in a circular form 15 feet in diameter and 42 inches deep. It creates bursts of star pattern effects as visitors ascend the space.

THE MUSEUM OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK is undergoing a decade-long, multi-phase renovation of its historic East Harlem building. Designed by Ennead Architects, the renovation includes a threelevel addition, redesigned terrace, and library for the landmark neo-Georgia mansion it calls home.

With its new interiors, the museum saw the need for a layer of interventions that would completely redefine the visitor experience, enlivening the new public spaces and engaging visitors with its new features.

Museum Director Susan Henshaw Jones asked Cooper Joseph Studio to create a bold, unified experience that would draw visitors up the museum’s central circular stair to the galleries and gathering spaces above. Cooper Joseph focused its efforts on the rotunda, entry, and second-floor central open space.

“It was primarily a matter of accentuating the vertical access and giving people a reason to go up the grand stairs and explore the spaces above,” says Wendy Evans Joseph, studio principal.

Nouveau iconic

Cooper Joseph’s solution was the insertion of a sparkling new icon for the museum, an expansive light sculpture that fills the upper half of the rotunda and draws visitors up the stairs to see it from new angles.

Starlight consists of 5,243 double-sided pixels hung on 210 tri-partite strands in a circular form 15 feet in diameter and 42 inches deep. Designed in a uniform three-dimensional grid pattern, its geometry seems to change as visitors ascend the stairs. Bursts of star patterns change the viewers’ perception, forming perforated veils over the classical architecture. Instead of taking the elevator, visitors are drawn up the stair and congregate on the bench below the light sculpture.

“We had explored the optical effects of these kinds of uniform grids in a project for the same client, but in a different location,” says Joseph. “We were fascinated with what happens when people move through these geometric frameworks. You get eg magazine — 57

“The Starlight installation is a superb use of LED technology, both atmospheric and visually powerful. In contrast, the wayfinding and graphics are bold and architectural in scale... a very contemporary expression in an historic building.”

—Jury comment

Bold black and white wayfinding elements help visitors navigate through construction detours.

The cafe’s typographic identifier consists of dots that recall the Starbright sculpture. A famous New York City skyline photo (background) was pixelated and reverse-printed on vinyl as the cafe’s “hero shot.”

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these beautiful moire patterns and a visual effect that constantly changes.”

Her team explored several options for the LED sculpture, looking at how they would appear in both plan and elevation views. “What drew us to this solution was the fact that when you first enter the rotunda, you see half of it, but until you get to the top of the stairs you don’t realize it’s a full circle. At the top, you can see the top of the sun shape reflected in the marble. It’s very dramatic.”

Starlight replaces an existing chandelier, and Joseph likes the fact that it fills multiple roles, providing a light source as well as an iconic placemaking feature for the new museum.

Studio 1Thousand helped with the technical aspects, and Cooper Joseph worked with the museum staff and structural engineers on hanging the piece. “It had to be hung very precisely to achieve the intended optical effects,” notes Joseph. In particular the team spent a lot of time determining how much weight to add to the end of each strand to

ensure they would fall taut and wouldn’t bump into each other.

In keeping with the building’s character, the LEDs are dimmable, but not programmable. “So the lights don’t flash,” says Joseph. “They create this beautiful, elegant white light that is in keeping with the museum interiors.

Gathering spots

In addition to Starlight, Cooper Joseph created placemaking elements for the museum’s relocated café and temporary wayfinding for the ongoing construction.

In the relocated café, Cooper Joseph used a black-and-white color palette to echo the building’s historic marble interior. It created a new “hero shot” for the café by pixelating a famous New York City skyline photo by Samuel H. Gottscho.

Full Point Graphics created a reverse print of the NYC nighttime scene in vinyl. The café identifier consists of large white letters made up

STAIRWELL B Design Pentagram Design Team Michael Bierut art director, designer, Britt Cobb designer

Fabrication Mega Media Concepts primary fabricator, 3M vinyl film Consultants Ennead Architects architects, Brandston Partnership lighting Photos Peter Mauss/Esto A separate project aids circulation through the museum by encouraging visitors to use the back stairs.

Pentagram covered nearly every inch of the stairwell with iconic black and white photos from the museum’s archives.

of dots that recall the light points in the Starlight sculpture.

To help visitors through the ongoing construction zone, Cooper Joseph intervened with bold black arrows that show the way. Barriers are erected and moved often, so the Cooper Joseph team used arrows and wordplay to make it easier to find the way.

Destination: back stairs

A separate project by Pentagram makes the museum’s back stairwells a destination as well as encouraging visitors up to the exhibits. The idea was to aid circulation by turning the secondary staircases into destinations on par with the historic curving stair in the lobby.

Pentagram Partner Michael Bierut created an interior tower of words and pictures celebrating New York. Nearly every inch of wall space in Stairwell B has been filled with carefully typeset quotations about New York (from John Adams, Walt Whitman, and E.B. White, among others) and photographs of the city and its people.

Carefully selected from the museum’s collection, the historic images include vertiginous views of New York and its landmarks as seen from above and below, and most appropriately, photos of famous New York staircases, including a 1955 image of the vast sea of humanity on the Port Authority Bus Terminal’s escalators and a 1946 photo of a snuggling couple on a fire escape, taken by Stanley Kubrick.

Rebranding the core

Joseph says the interventions have created new conversations about the museum while still respecting its venerable past. Fresh and unexpected, the site-specific light sculpture accomplishes multiple tasks and has become a catalyst for the museum.

“The bottom line for us is creating a new dialogue for a new time,” she adds. “We do that by respecting the past, but looking forward.”

eg magazine — 59

HONOR AWARD Sustainability Treehouse Exhibit Boy Scouts of America/ Trinity Works Mount Hope, W. Va.

Design Volume Inc./Studio Terpeluk

Fabrication Pacific Studio

Design Team Adam Brodsley exhibit design/principal; Eric Heiman creative director/ principal; Brett Terpeluk exhibit design joint venture (Studio Terpeluk); Bryan Bindloss, Brice McGowan, Daniel Surgeon designers; Ragina Johnson production; Brian McMullen, Michael Rigsby copywriters; Natasha Fraley content developer; Erin Kemp, Hanna Thomson project management

Architecture Mithun design architect, BNIM architect of record/ executive architect Consultants Red Gate Films main theater film Photos Joe Fletcher

Merit Badge A new treehouse exhibit reinforces the Boy Scouts’ environmental stewardship mission and turns sustainability into high adventure.

The message on the treehouse stairway sets the tone for the exhibit.

Pacific Studio created the waterjet-cut letters in galvanized steel.

Scouts pedal a stationery tricycle to activate the 20-ft.-long Net Zero House Recyclotron, setting off triggers that illustrate how a Net Zero building works.

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The “Spin O Pledge” wheel is made of phenolic resin graphic laminated onto FSCcertified plywood, typical of how graphics were made throughout.

THOUGH IT DOESN’T GET AS MUCH PLAY as the rules focused on being trustworthy, brave, and clean, Boy Scouts also promise to be “conservation minded,” and environmental stewardship has always been part of the Scout code.

Reaffirming its conservation heritage was a major goal when the Boy Scouts of America built the five-story Sustainability Treehouse at its new highadventure camp in West Virginia. The treehouse opened at the new Summit Bechtel Reserve in Summer 2013 just as the Boy Scouts introduced a new sustainability merit badge.

Designed by Mithun to Living Building Challenge standards, the treehouse is home to an important irony: it sits atop a former strip-mining site.

That fact is an important backstory that Volume

Inc. and Terpeluk Studio tell in the award-winning, 5,000-sq.-ft. exhibition housed in the treehouse.

The exhibits were designed to emphasize the role of natural systems and most important, the interconnectedness of nature and humans. Last but not least, says Adam Brodsley, Volume Inc. principal and creative director, “Our goal was to inspire Scouts to become change agents.”

At the same time it tackled this important—and serious—issue, the design team was also mindful that its exhibition was up against some stiff competition for Scouts’ attention: the adventure camp also includes zip-lining, rock climbing, and a skate park. Their first and abiding question was, “How do you engage kids who just arrived at an adventure park to learn about sustainability?”

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A red oak tree removed from the site became a vehicle for comparing the working systems of a tree to that of a Net Zero building.

Volume used simple, low-tech devices to tell the story of systems thinking and interconnectedness. Collected rainwater travels along a Rain Chain of stainless steel camping cups

Audience and story

The answer was to abandon the “tried and true, formulaic approaches” such as text panels on walls or obligatory videos, says Brodsley.

Active versus passive learning was key. Scouts jump on a stationery tricycle to activate a Rube Goldberg-esque contraption called the Net Zero Recyclotron. As they pedal, a ball rolls along a track, triggering videos, interactives, and messages about how a sustainable building should function.

Where there is text to read, the tone is irreverent and words are mixed with icons and colors from the Boy Scout palette. “We wanted the content to be funny, but not like your dad’s jokes,” says Brodsley. A wall filled with calls to action such as “Close the damper, camper” are meant to be read in passing.

Like the treehouse construction, the exhibition fabrication was held to Living Building Challenge standards, says Marc Burns, sales/project manager for fabricator Pacific Studio. Specifications included low-VOC Sherwin Williams latex paints and locally milled lumber and wood scraps. Material decisions

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A hand-painted wood wall introduces humor mixed with icons, typography, and a color palette drawing directly from the Boy Scout vernacular. Volume kept text panels to a minimum to avoid “preachiness.”

were made around minimizing waste and prolonging the exhibit’s useful life. Pacific Studio used reusable packing blankets to transport the exhibit elements from their Seattle shop to the site. Materials were packed onto one truck for a single trip, reducing energy consumption and pollution. Where possible, Pacific Studio sourced local materials and hired local labor for installation.

Systems thinking is encouraged throughout the exhibit, “not by explaining what systems thinking is, but by highlighting the interconnectedness of things,” says Allison Schapker, director of design and sustainability for Trinity Works, the Summit site developer. For example, the Net Zero Recyclotron House and other exhibits encourage visitors to think about the impact of their decisions.

Inspiring change is the ultimate goal, and Schapker agreed with the Volume/Terpeluk team that leaving Scouts with just a couple of take-home ideas was better than preaching. Their approach was, “Now that you’ve gone through the exhibit and learned things, what will you do?”

“Made me want to be a Boy Scout again: Always be prepared…. and conscious of the environment. The seamless integration of materials, nature, and graphic design captures the culture of scouting while initiating a creative education model.”

—Jury comment

Editor’s note: The Boy Scouts Sustainability Treehouse was originally featured in eg magazine No. 09, 2014.

eg magazine — 63

HONOR AWARD

Design NBBJ Studio 7

Neighborhood Visibility

Design Team Eric LeVine principal in charge; Robert Murray lead designer; Elliott Rupe, Amanda Seever designers

Seattle Children’s Research Institute

Fabrication Tube Art Group

Seattle

Consultants Copacino+Fujikado advertising agency Photos Robert Murray, Sean Airhart/ NBBJ

Retro Rx NBBJ Studio 7 prescribes an unexpected medium to draw attention to the work of a pediatric research facility.

By Pat Matson Knapp

Neon signs hang in nine storefront windows at the Seattle Children’s Research Institute’s downtown Seattle building, raising awareness about its mission and adding life to the urban streetscape.

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AT SEATTLE CHILDREN’S RESEARCH INSTITUTE, one of the top five pediatric research centers in the U.S., hundreds of scientists and researchers work to find new cures, develop better treatments, and improve outcomes for sick children.

Yet the public is mostly unaware of its presence in downtown Seattle.

For years, SCRI has tried to increase its visibility using the storefront windows of its building, which spans more than half a block in a somewhat lackluster stretch of urban streetscape. Traditional solutions such as window graphics and posters fell flat.

“Telling our story and representing what we do in our physical environment is something we’ve struggled with for years,” says Victoria Cleator, SCRI’s senior director of research. In this case, telling SCRI’s story in a succinct and exciting way was complicated by the fact that most people who view the storefront are passing by in cars. So the messaging needed to be read and understood quickly, from 20 feet away.

The shape of the “No Radiation, No Cancer, No Chemo” sign references the vintage neon hotel signs found on Seattle’s Highway 99, as well as SCRI’s work to find alternatives to traditional cancer treatments.

Bigger fish

NBBJ Studio 7 immediately saw an even bigger opportunity than just the storefront displays. “Not only could we use the window space to tell SCRI’s research story, but there was a fantastic chance to invigorate the surrounding city block for the neighborhood and passersby,” says Eric LeVine, NBBJ principal.

LeVine’s team was familiar with the SCRI brand, having developed wayfinding and branded environments at various research, office, and lab facilities downtown as well as Seattle Children’s Hospital.

As the team began exploring options for the storefront, initial rounds focused on “typical printed graphics stuck to windows—basically just making the storefront a billboard,” says LeVine. “We decided they didn’t have any impact. In fact, they were almost a detriment to the streetscape because they were blocking the windows.”

The team also considered an art installation with large images from SCRI’s research, such as cells and DNA. “While this was interesting and certainly representative,” recalls Cleator, “We didn’t feel it would deliver the message of what we do quickly enough for how a typical viewer would experience it.”

Literally the night before their presentation to SCRI, LeVine and lead designer Robert Murray were still struggling to find a solution that would both tell the research story and “give back” to the neighborhood. With 150 linear feet of storefront to cover, recalls LeVine, “There had to be a way to make SCRI more visible and also create some kind of artistic intervention.”

“A fresh use of neon with clever dialogue that draws your eye to the first-floor storefront. It makes external conversations. A light-hearted look at a heavy subject. Wages a crusade about the human condition.”—Jury comment

Fresh ideas daily

Seattle has a distinct neon heritage. The Elephant Car Wash, Pike Place Market, the P-I Globe, and the Bardahl sign on 15th Avenue NW are just a few of the neon treasures the city has to offer. What if, thought LeVine and Murray, they borrowed the familiar (and unabashedly commercial) vernacular of vintage neon signs?

eg magazine — 65

Slogans allude to Seattle’s neon heritage and SCRI’s research mission. This sign refers to Pike Place Market and SCRI’s use of fish in tumor research.

The signs recall retro neon signs found in restaurants, stores, and even auto repair shops.

The messages were meant to be light and hopeful, yet communicate SCRI’s important mission to improve outcomes for sick children.

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NBBJ also designed a neon lobby sign for the building.

“Rob and I said, ‘How can we shake this thing up?’ Shock them with something they’ve never seen before?” It was a risky proposition for a client presentation, but the pair decided their eight-year relationship with Cleator and SCRI was such that they would be open to a novel approach. So they prepared some preliminary drawings showing neon-rendered SCRI slogans that would hang in the storefront windows from chains, much like neon signs in a restaurant or bar.

Cleator and her colleagues jumped on the idea right away, game to try a fresh way of presenting the SCRI brand and story.

Up in lights

NBBJ teamed with Copacino+Fujikado, SCRI’s advertising agency, to create a series of slogans that would encapsulate the research mission and brand in a fun and offbeat way. The phrases are short, sweet, and unexpected, and the brilliant neon colors help catch the eyes of passersby.

“Gene Repair,” set against the backdrop of a large wrench, alludes to neon signs advertising old auto body shops as well as the important work that SCRI does. “Fresh Ideas Daily” features a large fish, a nod to Pike Street Market and the fact that SCRI frequently uses fish in its research on tumor growth. “Breakthroughs Happening Here” and “No Radiation. No Cancer. No Chemo,” make reference to the vintage neon hotel signs found on Seattle’s Highway 99, as well as SCRI’s work to find alternatives to traditional cancer treatments. And signs that say “Welcome to Hope,” “Welcome to Care,” and “Welcome to Cure” are a direct brand reference to SCRI’s mission statement.

Tube Art Group (Seattle), which has been bending neon since 1946, came on board to fabricate the signs. They built a six-foot-deep cavity inside each of the nine storefront windows, creating

window boxes for the neon jewels. Fitting the traditional aluminum cabinets with exposed neon tubing inside those boxes was the most challenging aspect of the project, says Brian Hopkins, Tube Art’s vice president of business development. Because NBBJ designed the signs as stand-alone, UL-listed fixtures—each complete with it own electrical cord and dedicated outlet—permitting wasn’t an issue in the project, he adds.

“We wanted to be very authentic with these signs, and we relied on Tube Art’s expertise,” explains LeVine. “They have some very experienced craftsmen in their shop who were really into the project because it’s so old-school.

“This project was definitely not about using the latest technology, but using the old technology and crafting it perfectly.”

Humor wins

NBBJ and SCRI knew that using humor to tell a very serious story required a light hand. So the slogans were carefully vetted to ensure they were positive, not too flip or edgy, and on-brand.

Cleator says the response has been consistently positive, from passersby who often do double-takes when they see the signs to employees, who love the bright and artful interventions. NBBJ also created neon signs for the building’s lobby. Cleator hopes the signs will become iconic to the neighborhood, adding to Seattle’s neon legacy and strengthening SCRI’s as well.

LeVine and his team are helping with the legacy part. Their intent when designing the signs as stand-alone fixtures was that once they have completed their turn in the storefront windows, they can be taken down and sold as memorabilia (or given to donors), raising funds to help offset their cost and continuing to spread the good word about SCRI’s good work.

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MERIT AWARDS 3M Heritage Wall Adidas Laces Against the Odds Autostadt Light Weight Central Park Trash and Recycling Eaton Experience Center A Beautiful Way to Go ITG Headquarters Experience Longing for Mecca Monarch at The Cosmopolitan

Nanchang Insun Cinema Nature Lab This is NPR The Public Theater Renovation Puzzle Facade REACH at SFO South Street Seaport Museum Tool Table Sydney Theatre Company Honor Wall Tongji University WayďŹ nding Vancouver Community Library VASE Ventspils Museum Exhibition Yale School of Management Data Visualization

Design THERE

MERIT AWARD

Design Team Paul Taboure creative director; Jon Zhu senior designer

Heritage Wall

Fabrication Spike Design lead fabricator; Infracraft timeline wall

3M Australia

“This timeline presents 3M’s history through a coherent and timeless treatment that is subtle yet remarkable. It’s the brevity and quietness that make this solution so effective.”

—Jury comment

Consultants Colliers Project Services interior architects

Sydney

Photos THERE

For 3M’s new Australian headquarters, THERE was asked to create an extensive branded environment that celebrated the company’s heritage of landmark innovations, as well as the engineers and inventors behind them. While mining the 3M archives, the design team unearthed a rich trove of materials that charted the development of the company from humble origins to a global powerhouse of innovation and technology. The exploration also unearthed a long history of graphic symbols and logos.

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Charting the visual trail, THERE created an interpretive graphic evolution of the 3M logo, a dimensional mural spanning an 80m2 wall in the headquarters foyer. Fabrication was a monumental undertaking. The logos were routered into horizontal slats at various depths, a strategy designed to play on the abundant natural light in the foyer. The wall was finished in white to contrast with the shadows cast by the dimensional logos.

Design Büro Uebele Visuelle Kommunikation

MERIT AWARD Adidas Laces Signage System and Interior Design Adidas AG Herzogenaurach, Germany

Design Team Andreas Uebele principal in charge, creative director; Carolin Himmel project manager Architecture kadawittfeldarchitektur

Fabrication Eicher Werkstätten signage, vinyl, paint; Dieter Ertl Einrichtungen – Innenausbau mural reliefs, threedimensional sculptures

“There is an elegance to the multiplicity of ways the letterforms are integrated into the architecture.”

—Jury comment

Photos Christian Richters, Werner Huthmacher

Additional images, credits, and jury comments at www.segd.org/awards

Interior Design ZieglerBürg Büro für Gestaltung

Adidas’ new research and design center in Herzogenaurach, Germany, is where 1,700 workers develop new products for the world leader in sports equipment and apparel. It’s nicknamed “Laces” to describe the suspended walkways that crisscross its vast atrium, connecting departments and connecting departments and encouraging collaboration and creativity.

Movement is the essence of sport, and also defines the design language that Büro Uebele developed for the space. Turbocharged typography runs through the design center. Uebele adopted a form of FF Din that leaps and bounds across walls and balustrades, its form vibrating and changing in the process. Words identify places and become colored surfaces, reliefs, and sculptures.

Black-and-white graphic elements provide a neutral canvas for the company’s colorful products.

In upper-level meeting areas, white lettering appears frozen in mid-movement, forming a mural relief. On the glass balustrades of the walkways that crisscross the building, letters look as if they have been stamped into super-fine, transparent gauze. The outlines are made of highly reflective film, creating a shimmering effect. Throughout the building, the letterforms solidify into abstract surfaces or create objects such as a screen, a reception desk, or an information sculpture. A colorful wayfinding system is integrated on white walls in blue, red, yellow, green, and black.

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MERIT AWARD Against All Odds Museum of Jewish Heritage New York

Design Team Jonathan Alger partner in charge, creative director; Daniel Fouad, Monika Thorson exhibit design; Kelsey Cohen graphic design, content coordination; Zak Greene interactives, media; Max Millermaier media, sound, and hardware design; Eliza Fitzhugh Samuel Sheniova, Jessica Griscti graphic design

From 1933 to 1941, European Jews sought haven from the Nazis, reaching out to relatives, friends, even strangers. The exhibition Against the Odds: American Jews & The Rescue of Europe’s Refugees 1933-1941 tells the little-known story of the Americans who answered the call. Despite strict immigration laws, these generous few, many immigrants themselves, overcame tremendous obstacles to help the refugees to safety.

The barriers they encountered, often bureaucratic, are represented by “paper walls” of floating curls of card-stock. These carry the ghosted typography of archival documents. The paper walls divide the exhibition into chapters, from the earliest

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Fabrication Precision Plastics fabrication, Bay Imagery printing Consultants Anita Jorgenson Lighting lighting Photos au2026

“Walls speak loudly in this exhibition, drawing the viewer into an array of visual metaphors that recount the Shoah. Oral histories, media projections, and interactive devices bring to life a tragic event that otherwise could be easily relegated to history.”

—Jury comment

days of warning to the crush of Nazi Germany overrunning Europe. The paper walls move constantly, evoking the shifting context of the times.

The story is presented through archival documents, interactives, an ambient musical score, AV installations, and oral histories. Interactive experiences are delivered through iPads with handmade wooden covers, featuring the voices of the real characters. Media projections occur in surprising ways. Remixed archival footage of boat passengers is projected onto a screen made of many pieces of overlapping paper. What seems to be a window shows scenes of life that look happy at first glance, but become red with menace over time.

MERIT AWARD Autostadt Light Weight Autostadt GmbH Wolfsburg, Germany

Autostadt (“Car City”) is the visitor attraction adjacent to the Volkswagen factory in Wolfsburg, Germany. Every year, 2 million visitors experience the center, including a museum, feature pavilions for VW Group brands, and a factory tour.

Autostadt Light Weight is an exhibition that demonstrates the interaction of substantial and constructional lightweight materials and how VW uses lightweight construction in car production. To illustrate the concept, aPLEX created a central 3-dimensional object that sandwiches lightweight frame construction. Visitors learn more

Design Team Oliver Mühr principal in charge; Alexander Jung creative director; Bruno Bakalovic art director; Justyna Mintus account manager; Susanne Zahlaus project manager; Ninette Kohler storytelling; Gesine Last content design concept; Thomas Brauner media management; Andrea Kowalski, Gerit Lippert interface design; Ramon Karges architectural design; Ronny Lorenz conceptual design; Peter Pötsch, Moritz Strickhauser, Alexander Thieme programming

Fabrication MKT AG primary fabricator; Interactive Scape multi-touch hardware; AVE PRO media equipment Photos © 2013 Christoph Buckstegen

“This project succeeds as an instructional tool and, quite simply, as a beautiful piece of sculpture. The colors and forms are bright and seductive, and the extreme scalar quality of it (as though one were the size of an ant) engages the viewer in a way that two-dimensional media could not.”

—Jury comment

Additional images, credits, and jury comments at www.segd.org/awards

about the topic in three interactive stations. By engaging with the interactives, they can learn about materials, lightweight construction, and how VW applies the technology in car production.

A real monocoque of the XL-1 car illustrates the structural approach of supporting loads through an object’s external skin, similar to an egg shell.

A touchscreen provides a complete overview of the lightweight design principles used for the XL-1.

The installation was open to the public until December 2013, and is now traveling to various trade shows and events.

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MERIT AWARD Trash and Recyling Receptacles The Central Park Conservancy Central Park, New York

Design Landor Associates Design Team Anthony Deen creative director, lead designer; Mike Boylan senior industrial designer; Craig Dobie creative director, lead graphic designer; Lady Tanmantiong graphic designer; Brad Scott senior director, project lead

Fabrication Robb Smalldon, Landscape Forms, Inc. all fabrication Consultants Stephen Leonard, Alcoa Technical Center material and fabrication Photos Elliot Scott, Lady Tanmantiong/Landor Associates

With a grant from the Alcoa Foundation, the Central Park Conservancy enlisted Landor Associates’ New York office to collaborate on a new trash and recycling initiative.

Landor’s design needed to encourage visitors to recycle, make trash collection easier for Conservancy staff, cohabitate with Olmstead and Vaux’s 19th century vernacular landscapes and architecture, and increase visitor awareness of the Conservancy’s role and contributions to the park. These criteria were all factored into the design along with other concerns such as rodents, birds, raccoons, urban miners, robustness, maintenance, and operational safety.

The design was inspired by the iconic 1939 New York World’s Fair

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“The cans are a perfect marriage of form and function; they make it easy to participate in recycling.

They’re a call to action, as well as placemaking elements.”

—Jury comment

bench designed by Robert Moses and ironmonger Kenneth Lynch. Hand built in the USA from corrosion-resistant, aircraft-grade aluminum alloy (supplied

by Alcoa and containing 30% recycled content), the bins can be included for LEED certification points in future architectural projects.

To help change visitor behavior, Landor employed color-coding and different-sized apertures to make the act of self-sorting recyclables more intuitive. The tilt of the vertical slats, the spiral gesture of the barrel and lid, and typographic placement all draw the user’s eye up and into the receptacles’ apertures, and reinforce decision-making as park visitors approach the bins.

Design Ralph Appelbaum Associates

MERIT AWARD Eaton Experience Center Eaton Cleveland, Ohio

Design Tim Ventimiglia project director, lead designer; Walter Froetscher project manager, senior designer; Darla Decker writer, content developer; Heather Christian Smith content coordinator; Katherine Kline exhibition designer; Mia Beurskens, Robert Homack, Michael Schnepf graphic designers

Production Alex Vlack executive media producer; Lilly Preston media producer; Nina Boesch interactive designer; Carlin Wragg project coordinator; Michael Neault producer; Alex Nguyen senior developer; Andrew Papa, Jamie Boud animators

“The digital, typographical animations for chandeliers and curtain are playful and use the huge space in an effective way. Graphics integrate with forms of lighting. Creates a beautiful focal point that is also functional.”

—Jury comment

Fabrication Traxon Industries LED mesh; Engineered Products steel fabrication; Creative Edge inlaid stone floor; Softmotion 3D lenticular graphics

Additional images, credits, and jury comments at www.segd.org/awards

Photos Chuck Choi

Eaton Experience Center is a large-scale immersive multimedia installation integrated into the main atrium space of Eaton Center. It was created to help communicate Eaton’s values and strengths to employees, customers, suppliers, business partners, media, and government and civic leaders and to provide a communal space for employee and talent acquisition events.

In the 16,250-sq.-ft. atrium, a transparent 80-ft.-long by 14-ft.-tall LED curtain is the canvas for messaging, abstract and natural landscapes, and data visualizations. Overhead in the center of the

atrium, a brilliant 53-ft. LED chandelier echoes the immersive animations of the curtain. Together, the curtain and chandelier create a space alive with media, yet playful in nature.

Both elements are lightweight, precisionengineered tensile structures that support an open-weave mesh of LEDs. The provocative information on the LED curtain attracts visitors to four touchscreen media tables, where they can explore deeper levels of information about global megatrends and emerging cultural shifts.

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MERIT AWARD A Beautiful Way To Go: New York’s Green-Wood Cemetery The Museum of the City of New York

Design Pentagram Design Team Abbott Miller art director, designer; Jesse Kidwell, Chris Adamick designers

Fabrication South Side Design & Building primary fabricator; Apple Digital Graphics floor and wall graphics; Full Point Graphics CAD cut vinyl graphics and case labels; Ken Allen Studios object labels

“I appreciated the deliberate light touch that keeps the content and artifacts engaging. There is a dignity about the entire mood that is extremely well done.”

—Jury comment

Photos Bilyana Dimitrova

New York

A Beautiful Way to Go: New York’s Green-Wood Cemetery commemorates the 175th anniversary of Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. Predating both Central Park and Prospect Park, the national historic landmark was one of the most important landscapes of the 19th Century, ultimately influencing the rise of public parks and green space in the U.S. The exhibition design creates a continuous environmental surface from historic maps of the cemetery. Museum visitors navigate the exhibition encountering objects and stories of Green-Wood’s most famous “residents” that are positioned according to their location within the landscape.

A series of maps that document the distinctive, twisting paths and roads of the park are spliced together on the floor, creating a miniaturized landscape. The artifacts are gathered within a range of lantern-like vitrines, conjuring an impression of the park at twilight. The story of the cemetery itself is told through historic documents, sculptures, drawings, paintings, and photographs. Vintage guidebooks, prints, and souvenirs capture GreenWood’s days as a tourist attraction.

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MERIT AWARD ITG Headquarters Experience ITG New York

Investment Technology Group is a U.S.-based multinational agency brokerage and financial markets technology firm aimed at a hedge fund and asset management clientele. Landor Associates’ San Francisco office was tasked with extending the ITG brand idea of “decoding signal from noise” to the company’s new headquarters at One Liberty Plaza in New York.

The Landor team created an immersive experience that encompasses brand signage, wayfinding, environmental graphics, and commissioned art. The core of the experience was built around the creative use of ITG’s data. The

Design Landor Associates Design Team Cameron Imani creative director; Chris Frank, Britt Anderson design directors; Wylie Robinson, Martin Kovacovsky, Carolyn Ashburn, Doug Becker, Kalin Cannady, Ivan Thelin senior designers; Anthony Light senior writer; Lynn Ritts client director; Jill Imani production manager; Scott Blum, Crispian Gibson production specialists

Fabrication Principle Group architectural graphics; Harkess-Ord signage; Maltbie data sculpture

“This project elevates the information graphic to a stand-alone piece of art.”

—Jury comment

Photos Padgett and Company

Additional images, credits, and jury comments at www.segd.org/awards

design team developed and commissioned original art and sculpture to integrate with the architecture of the building. Each piece reveals hidden patterns and the unique beauty of data derived from diverse areas of research, from petroleum reserves to Chinese search rankings. To help support the visitor’s experience and understanding of the headquarters experience, the team developed a responsive microsite that invites visitors to navigate the building to explore each of the installations in greater detail. Visitors can access each piece via a QR code and watch the data come to life through animation and expert interviews.

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MERIT AWARD Longing for Mecca— The Pilgrim’s Journey Rijksmuseum Volkenkunde

Design Kossmann.dejong Concept and Production Rijksmuseum Volkenkunde, British Museum Fabrication Iris Vormgeving, Vertical Vision, TARS Visuele Presentatie construction; Dutch Mountings mountings

Consultants Marc Heinz Lighting Design lighting design; IJsfontein Interactive Media interactives Photos ©Thijs Wolzak

“To engage, inform, and delight are key elements for an exhibition, and this accomplishes all three.”

—Jury comment

Leiden, The Netherlands

The Hajj—an Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca and the largest gathering of Muslim people in the world every year—is an important part of the world’s culture, yet it has never been explored on a substantial scale in a Dutch museum. Previously on show at the British Museum in London, Longing for Mecca: The Pilgrim’s Journey was redesigned and adapted for Rijksmuseum Volkenkunde (National Museum of Ethnology) in Leiden, The Netherlands.

The challenge for exhibition designer Kossmann.dejong was to create a personal exhibition accessible to a wide audience.

Objects, personal stories, and

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in-depth reports provide a comprehensive picture of the journey. Each space in the exhibition represents a stage in the Hajj, made distinct through light, color, objects, film, and sound.

Graphic design plays a significant role. At the entrance, texts from the Qur’an on pieces of fabric provide, for instance, the setting for a dynamic presentation of moving letters. Stimulated by this “longing” for Mecca, in the next room visitors receive practical tips on how to prepare for the Hajj. The long corridor that follows displays a series of maps that each show a different route to Mecca.

Design Digital Kitchen

MERIT AWARD Monarch at The Cosmopolitan The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas Las Vegas

Design Team The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas: Lisa Marchese chief marketing officer; Krista Chmielewski art and digital curator Digital Kitchen: Mark Bashore head of creative; Anthony Vitagliano executive creative director; Jeff Brecker managing director; Noah Conopask director, live action; Omer Ganai director of photography; Chad Ashley

Monarch is the latest experiential design concept unveiled by The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, extending the library of digital narratives for which it has won numerous design awards, including the 2011 Cannes Grand Prix. The display platform for the installation is a unique and innovative combination of architecture and multimedia: eight massive floor-to-ceiling video columns in the hotel lobby.

Digital Kitchen capitalized on the mirrored floor and ceiling, creating an infinity effect that leaves guests wondering where the floor ends and the ceiling begins. Monarch reimagines

creative director; Jason Esser senior creative; Joe Donaldson, Peter Kallstrom, Joe Ball, Stephanie SantillanLopez creative; Jason Esser, Nate Pence, Camille Durand editors; Jeremy Stuart colorist; Colin Davis head of production; Andrea Silverman account director; Emma Trask stylist

“A most amazing, dramatic, and erotic sensation to be surrounded at all angles by these columns in motion. I forgot to gamble.”

—Jury comment

Additional images, credits, and jury comments at www.segd.org/awards

Music and Soundtrack Chromatics Photos Digital Kitchen

perceptions of beauty and the female form through a unique choreography of reflection and motion— transforming lustrous footage of gorgeous models into a living sculpture, both sultry and mirthful, challenging perceptions of reality and fantasy.

Monarch’s visual simplicity belies its technical complexity. In order to visualize the final, intended effect while shooting, the Digital Kitchen team invented a simple device for monitoring and mirroring the live-image capture being fed from a large-format camera turned on its side. More than 24 hours of raw footage was condensed to the final six-minute edit.

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MERIT AWARD Nanchang Insun Cinema Hubei Insun Cinema Film Co., Ltd.

Design One Plus Partnership Ltd. Design Team Ajax Law Ling Kit, Virginia Lung principals in charge Photos Ajax Law Ling Kit, Jonathan Leijonhufvud

“We love the Big Idea of linking books and cinema. Visitors enter the world of cinema through the memory of famous dialogue and the written word. This solution bridges media. Beautiful.”

—Jury comment

Nanchang, China

Nanchang Insun International Cinema is located in the Book City area of this southeastern Chinese city. So in its environmental graphics program for the cinema, One Plus Partnership Ltd. took inspiration from both books and movies.

Books are normally printed with black text on white background, while films work in the opposite way, with images printed on black frames. One Plus used a black and white color palette to create dramatic interventions in the cinema’s public spaces. In the cavernous white ticketing lobby, sculptural wall installations with integral lighting and signage look like super-scaled pages of books fanned along the walls. What looks like stacks of paper on the floor is a ticketing office made of Corian. Passing through the lobby into the hallways leading to viewing rooms, the background switches to black, with white text scattered in various fonts and sizes on walls and ceilings—recreating famous dialogue from iconic movies.

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Exhibit and Interior Design Gallagher & Associates

MERIT AWARD

Natural History Museum of Los Angeles

Design Team Patrick Gallagher principal in charge; Bruce Lightbody creative director and interior design; Cybelle Jones project director; Jake Mackenzie, Courtney Payne exhibit design; Lisa Dunmeyer project manager

Los Angeles

Graphic Design KBDA

Nature Lab

Nature Lab is a 6,500-square-foot, hands-on gallery showcasing live animals, media interactives, scientist demonstrations, and more than 200 specimens for visitors to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

Focusing on Los Angeles’ location inside a biodiversity “hotspot,” and working closely with museum staff, Gallagher & Associates developed a unique new interpretive approach focused on the urban ecosystem. Nature Lab offers visitors a detailed look at the interesting lifestyles, adaptations, and challenges facing urban wildlife.

By experiencing stories about a displaced mountain lion, confused coyotes, playful rats, and curious opossums, visitors can better understand and respect the animals living in their communities.

Design Team Kim Baer content strategy and creative direction; Allison Bloss creative direction and design; Elizabeth Salud, Amanda Hovest design Fabrication Lexington Design + Fabrication primary fabricator; Digital Plus graphic output Photos Conrado Lopez, Elizabeth Salud

“It is so nice to see children interacting with nature’s creatures (which they may normally be scared of) thanks to the fun, creative, and easy-tofollow graphics that are encouraging interactivity as a form of learning.”

—Jury comment

Additional images, credits, and jury comments at www.segd.org/awards

G&A developed customizable social media solutions to inspire children and adults to participate in an ongoing research initiative, “Citizen Science,” which documents living specimens using networked cameras.

Content is layered and visual to satisfy visitors of all ages, whether they read only headlines or want to “dive deeper.” KBDA developed simple infographics that connect visitors to the work of the scientists, and commissioned graphic novelinspired illustrations to tell the animals’ stories.

Because the exhibit has six entry points, KBDA created a clear and consistent layered hierarchy of wayfinding and storytelling throughout the gallery, so visitors can easily navigate the experience no matter where they begin.

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MERIT AWARD This is NPR NPR Washington, D.C.

Design Poulin + Morris Inc. Design Team Richard Poulin principal in charge, design director; Erik Herter project manager, senior designer; Ani Ardzivian project designer

Fabrication Sansi North America/ SNA LLC LED display manufacturer; Jack Stone Signs sign fabricator; Blue Telescope user interface programmer; Maltbie Associates exhibit fabricator Photos Jeffrey Totaro

“I appreciate this installation for its architectural integrity. It is a ‘contentbox’ within the larger box of the building. The strong colors and composition of the panels contrast with but are complementary to the more reserved architectural surroundings.

It is lively but reserved— very consistent with the NPR brand.”

—Jury comment

As part of a comprehensive environmental graphics, donor recognition, and wayfinding program for the new NPR headquarters and production studios in Washington, D.C., Poulin + Morris designed a permanent, interactive lobby exhibition entitled This is NPR. The 70-foot-long exhibition spans the length of the lobby. It consists of a reader rail supporting two tiers of angled panels displaying text, images, video monitors, and interactive audio listening devices. The rail is divided into five sections, each dedicated to a story significant to NPR. A member network map emphasizes the breadth of the NPR community. Created in translucent white resin with raised translucent blue rods to pinpoint the location of member stations, the map’s placement at a window allows it to glow with natural light.

The interactive component of the exhibition includes an interface that allows smart phone users to access a specially designed website offering a selection of audio clips to accompany each section of the exhibition. Poulin + Morris collaborated with a media developer to create the user interface.

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MERIT AWARD The Public Theater Renovation

Design Pentagram Design Team Paula Scher art director, designer; Andrew Freeman, Rafael Medina, Courtney Gooch designers

Consultants Ennead Architects architecture; Ben Rubin, EAR Studio; multimedia sculpture Photos Peter Mauss/Esto, James Shanks

Fabrication Design Communications Ltd.

The Public Theater

“Beautiful evolution of the theater’s 3D brand expression. Ticket buying becomes the first act in the performance. Thank you for the arches.”

—Jury comment

Additional images, credits, and jury comments at www.segd.org/awards

New York

In Fall 2012, the Public Theater opened a major revitalization of its New York home in the former Astor Library, an historic 1854 landmark in East Village. Designed

by Ennead Architects, the renovation is the Public’s first significant upgrade since it opened in the space in 1967.

Pentagram Partner Paula Scher and her team worked with Ennead to integrate the Public’s identity—a familiar part of the city’s cultural landscape for the past two decades—into the architecture.

The renovation transforms the lobby into a gathering space for theatergoers, and new environmental graphics help make the space vibrant and welcoming.

A chandelier-like multimedia sculpture designed by Ben Rubin hangs above and is flanked by projections that provide information about current productions. Theaters are identified with dimensional typography inset into the lobby’s distinctive arches. The box office features a colorful collage of Public posters from the past two decades.

Outside, the restored façade features the Public logo rendered as a transparent marquee canopy made of custom frit glass. Illuminated poster boxes run along the street.

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MERIT AWARD Puzzle Facade Universität für Künstlerische und Industrielle Gestaltung Linz, Austria

Design Javier Lloret School Universität für Künstlerische und Industrielle Gestaltung, Masters Program in Interface Culture Instructors Laurent Mignonneau, Christa Sommerer, Martin Kaltenbrunner thesis project supervisors

Consultants Gregor van Egdom primary consultant/collaborator for interface cube design/ production Collaborators Peter Calicher, Vicente Heras, Travis Kirton, Tijn Kooijmans, Bernardo Lloret, Jiskar Schmitz, Mr. Stock, Eric Toering, Jasper van Loenen; Ars Electronica Andreas Pramboeck, Peter Holzkorn, Wolfgang Photos Javier Lloret, Michaela Lakov

Puzzle Facade was part of Javier Lloret’s thesis project in the Interface Culture master’s program at the Universität für Künstlerische und Industrielle Gestaltung in Linz, Austria. Puzzle Façade brings the experience of solving a Rubik’s cube to the urban space. It transforms the façade of the Ars Electronica center in Linz into a giant Rubik’s cube, inviting passersby to engage with the interactive experience.

In Puzzle Façade, the player interacts with a specially designed interface cube that tracks rotation and orientation. These data are sent over Bluetooth to a computer that runs custom Puzzle Façade software that changes the lights and colors on the media façade in correlation with movement of the handheld interface cube. Due to the nature of this building and its surroundings, the player is only able to see two sides. This factor increases the difficulty of solving the puzzle, but as the player is able to rotate and flip the interface-cube, it is not a blocking factor. (More information at http://puzzlefacade.com)

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“This project delights. More critically, it questions the immutability of architecturally scaled objects. It reminds us that the public realm and the building surfaces that shape it are virtual canvases waiting to be occupied by creative spirits.”

—Jury comment

MERIT AWARD REACH at SFO San Francisco International Airport

Design Gensler Design Team Nicole Powell researcher/ writer; Amy Kwok researcher/ writer/project manager; David Mayman design lead; Miriam Diaz graphic designer; Elizabeth Snowden writer Photos Gensler

San Francisco

REACH stands for Revenue Enhancements and Customer Hospitality. It is an aspirational design guideline meant to orient employees and consultants to San Francisco International Airport’s point of view, values, and objectives for the future.

SFO was interested in elevating the passenger experience for the entire airport campus. With the success of its new SFO Terminal 2, airport stakeholders are striving to reimagine all SFO environments so that they engage the passenger’s sensibilities, decrease the stress associated with air travel, provide excellent concessions opportunities, and reinvigorate the joy of flying.

“This document reaches to all the ‘moments of truth’ across a very complex organization. A good brand lesson: Every piece of experience is aligned with who you are and what you want to be.”

—Jury comment

Additional images, credits, and jury comments at www.segd.org/awards

Gensler designed the REACH document to provide both inpirational and pragmatic information. It expresses SFO’s brand through an experiential and environmental lens. Informed by both the passenger experience and SFO’s values, it covers topics from health and wellbeing and sustainability to time efficiency and technology.

Unlike traditional guideline documents, REACH is editorial both in writing style and layout—a fresh, unique approach designed to make a significant impact on future SFO projects.

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MERIT AWARD Tool Table South Street Seaport Museum New York

Design Cooper Joseph Studio Design Team Wendy Evans Joseph, Chris Cooper principals in charge; Annika Bowker project manager/design team Fabrication Random Exhibit Services, LLC general contractor

“For me this needs very little explanation. I just wanted to study the ingenuity behind each tool and respect it for its inherent beauty. As a 3D collage, this is so well composed that it invites contemplation and wonder.”

—Jury comment

Consultants Anita Jorgensen Lighting Design lighting design Photos Eduard Hueber/ArchPhoto

While working on another project at the South Street Seaport Museum, Cooper Joseph discovered several boxes of old tools that were destined to be moved offsite. Instead, the designers suggested they be collected in an exhibit.

The resulting display is housed in one of the museum’s renovated 19th Century warehouse buildings. Cooper Joseph wanted to show as many of the different tools as possible, and to show many of each type so that visitors can appreciate not only the vast number of tools required in the maritime world, but also the subtle variations of design and scale among the handcrafted tools.

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The team created the display on a “table” that fits snugly in an 18- by 50-foot room. It rises from 12 to 60 inches front to back, high enough to provide a good view of all the tools, but not to obscure the window. After creating a grid using blue string (much like graph paper), the team created the composition freestyle. Two designers did the layout while five volunteers handed off the items. The display was created in one long workday.

The project budget was $10,000.

Touchscreen monitors in the room display images and content about how the tools were used.

MERIT AWARD Honour Wall Sydney Theatre Company Sydney

Design Collider Design Team Andrew van der Westhuyzen creative director; Natasha Bartoshefski, Yuna Moon, Sarah Nguyen design; Renée Mulder prop styling Fabrication A&W Signs production and installation

“This ingenious approach to a donor wall reads as a noir cabinet of curiosities.

Dimmable lighting and the use of the clear jewel boxes make for a dramatic presentation. Gorgeous.”

—Jury comment

Additional images, credits, and jury comments at www.segd.org/awards

Photos Andrew van der Westhuyzen

In 2013, Collider was engaged to design a permanent installation to honour the Sydney Theatre Company’s long-term patrons and donors. The honour wall features a series of clear boxes housing special props and wardrobe featured in a variety of productions over the company’s history.

Dimmable backlit panels provide a frame for each object while oregan panelling grounds the wall within the existing architecture and layered, old, and industrial nature of

the company’s pier setting. Featured objects include an apartment key from Gross und Klein (2011) starring Cate Blanchett; gold flitter from The War of the Roses (2009); a vintage fan from A Streetcar Named Desire (2009); and a corset from Chicago (1981, 1983), to name a few.

At its opening, the wall had 20 featured boxes and an additional 28 covered boxes, allowing for future patrons to “take a box” through their patronage.

eg magazine — 87

MERIT AWARD Metalworking Studio Environmental Graphics and Signage

Design College of Design & Innovation, Tongji University Design Team Wu Duan principal in charge; Gao Bo creative director; Shi Yin project manager; Liu Yuyun wayfinding design; Zhang Chenxi environmental graphic design; Jiang Wangxi graphic design

Fabrication Shanghai Yuequan Consultants Tongji Tiandi Institute of Art & Design Innovation interior design Photos Liu Yuyun

“This hybrid system honors the pictographic quality of the Chinese character, while creating a new vocabulary that helps visitors know and navigate the studio.”

—Jury comment

Tongji University Shanghai

The Tongji University metalworking studio focuses on training students to develop practical skills and innovative thinking. The teaching philosophy is “knowledge, ability and personality.”

The 5,000m2 studio encompasses three floors and is divided into teaching and work areas. Because the studio and the program are new to students, the design team from the university’s College of Design & Innovation created a series of icons to identify key areas and imbue each space with a unique identity.

The unique icons are a combination

88 — eg magazine

of Chinese characters and symbols depicting various aspects of the metalworking trade, such as a saw blade for the CNC milling area and flames for the heat treating space. The icons appear on wayfinding signage and in environmental graphics (painted on stairwells, on wall murals, or in vinyl on glass) throughout the studio. Using the pictograms as their foundation, they help students navigate the space safely while building a sense of identity and community pride.

MERIT AWARD Vancouver Community Library Fort Vancouver Regional Library District Vancouver, Wash.

Design Mayer/Reed wayfinding; Miller Hull Partnership architecture; AldrichPears Associates interpretive installation Design Team Mayer/Reed: Michael Reed partner in charge; Kathy Fry project manager/project designer; The MillerHull Partnership: Craig Curtis design partner; Sian Roberts partner in charge; Ruth Baleiko lead project designer; Adin Dunning project manager; AldrichPears

Associates: Isaac Marshall principal in charge; Sheila Hill project manager; Brent Dutton designer Fabrication Plumb Signs wayfinding signage fabrication; Pacific Studio Knowledge Wall fabrication and installation Photos C. Bruce Forster, Nic Lehoux

“A seamless integration of architecture and wayfinding—a symphony of materials and finishes—a playful interplay of scale and architecture.”

—Jury comment

Additional images, credits, and jury comments at www.segd.org/awards

A “drawer full of knowledge” metaphorically describes the building design and wayfinding concept for the new Vancouver Community Library. A 200-foot long, four-story atrium is the open drawer, exposing the library’s contents and encouraging exploration.

Wayfinding is integrated into an adventurous stair and “knowledge wall,” immersing patrons in the experience of using and navigating the building.

A graphic wall representing the collection reaches up the atrium, linking database stations with the collections on each floor. Super-scaled letterforms painted onto the concrete undersides of the exposed stair landings identify collection and program locations at a glance and promote use of the main stair instead of the elevators.

Moved from a suburban site to the heart of the historic commercial core of the state’s fourthlargest city, the building is the cornerstone of a planned four-block, 600,000-square-foot mixeduse development, including a public plaza that will spill out from the library’s four-story atrium. At the main entry adjacent to the plaza, 27-inch-tall, lime green sculptural letters spell out “Library” and invite visitors to come in an explore.

eg magazine — 89

MERIT AWARD Vase Municipality of Paredes, Portugal Parque José Guilherme, Paredes

The Municipality of Paredes, Portugal, has been framing itself in the context of creative cities, finding an engine for development and sustainable growth through talent and creativity.

Its history and industrial capacity, in particular its furniture-making heritage, are key factors in Paredes being recognized as a creative center.

Artur Fontinha’s public seating structure, Vase, was designed to support these aspirations.

A student in the University of Oporto Faculty of Fine Arts’ Master’s Program in Art and Design for the Public Space, Fontinha designed Vase to be a landmark in the public space, engaging citizens with its playful use of scale, symbology, and the appropriation of a public tree.

Fontinha also wanted to increase awareness of the deforestation caused by the use of noncertified forest products, the importance of sustainable forest policies, and the socioenvironmental responsibility that these represent to assure a sustainable future for our forests.

Made of certified plywood suitable for exterior use, Vase was handcrafted in a process that took 120 hours to produce all of its 750 pieces. Stainless steel cables with lockers secure the structure. It seats five people. Fontinha’s design considered factors such as ergonomics, proportion, material, modularity, and optimized production methods.

90 — eg magazine

Design Artur Fontinha School University of Oporto Faculty of Fine Arts, Master Program in Art and Design for the Public Space Fabrication GLOBALDIS plywood; Rocha & Leitão, Lda. ironmongery; Artur Fontinha manufacturer; Faculty of the Fine Arts of the University of Oporto, Municipality of Paredes transportation and on-site installation

Consultants Schréder Iluminação, S.A. lighting Photos Artur Fontinha

“This project brings humans and nature together in a surprising, whimsical way and at the same time, celebrates the importance of trees in the urban environment. We also like how this project plays with scale.”

—Jury comment

MERIT AWARD Exhibition of Ventspils Museum Ventspils Museum Ventspils, Latvia

Design Design Studio H2E Design Team Holgers Elers principal/ lead designer; Ingūna Elere exhibition and graphic designer; Tatjana Raičiņeca graphic designer; Anete Šalma, Ģirts Arājs, Aleksandrs Beznosiks designers; Dagnija Balode project coordinator Fabrication Design Studio H2E primary fabricator; Interactive Design Systems exhibition/media production

Consultants Pēteris Blūms interior/ architectural design; Ints Bērziņš AV technologies; Ingars Putniņš exhibition elements; Ventspils Museum Armands Vijups, Margarita Marcinkēviča, Ingrīda Štrumfa, content Photos Ansis Starks, Indriķis Stūrmanis

“Exquisite use of materials, textures, and artifacts.

Modern shapes set into an ancient interior. What knocks us out is how this set of rooms embraces you and transports you to another place and time.”

—Jury comment

Additional images, credits, and jury comments at www.segd.org/awards

Ventspils Museum is located in the 13th century Castle of the Livonian Order of Knights, one of the oldest castles in Latvia. Design Studio H2E took this special context into consideration in creating its permanent exhibition. The team’s design concept is based on the shards of history that have impacted the castle and the port city over the course of centuries. The team translated the concept of shards visually through asymmetrical, polygonal shapes that form furniture, display cases, and interactive stations.

The design language was intended to create an emotional and spatial adventure in itself; therefore, digital technologies and interactives were dispensed sparingly.

The aesthetics of the broken lines (shards) symbolize the heterogeneous course of history with all its turns of power, facets, and revolutions; the figurative shards illustrate the preserved fragments of the former wholeness of time. In the exhibition, traditionally matte materials were replaced with glass surfaces which, being achromatic, absorb the colors of the surrounding space and give visitors a chance to observe themselves in the “mirrors” of history, in historical context. Glass surfaces were patinated (after a year of glazing experiments by the design team), muting their brightness to avoid any dissonance with the historic environment.

eg magazine — 91

MERIT AWARD Data Visualization Yale School of Management New Haven, Conn.

Design Unified Field Inc. Design Team Marla Supnick principal in charge; Maureen Lin art director, lead designer; Tonian Irving producer; Bobbi Jo McCauley designer; John Singer, Henry Tseng engineers Consultants Foster + Partners architecture; YCD Multimedia digital signage platform

“An incredibly sophisticated approach to data visualization as a branding tool. This is the future: technology helping to make complexity understandable.”

—Jury comment

Additional images, credits, and jury comments at www.segd.org/awards

Photos Ian Harris/Arbuckle Industries, LLC

Opened in January 2014, the 242,000-squarefoot, Norman Foster + Partners-designed Edward P. Evans Hall is the new home of the Yale School of Management. To create a lasting impression of the school’s presence and brand, and to easily communicate timely information, Unified Field created three floors of interactive media and digital signage for the students, faculty, and visitors.

The narrowcast network displays real-time information such as school-wide agenda, class and conference schedules, special announcements, insightful information, and photography from students, staff, and guest speakers as well as customized presentations and broadcast media.

The data visualization on the three-level, floorto-ceiling media installation currently addresses topics related to the theme of “Business, Society and Leadership in an Increasingly Complex World.”

The media displays dynamic graphic visualizations of social and economic data and offers shifting perspectives on global trends such as Internet and social media usage, type and availability of medical care as a percentage of population, life expectancy, market values of publically traded stock, and cost of capital and gross national product.

92 — eg magazine

At the University of Michigan’s famed football program, nobody is bigger than the team.

A $9 million renovation of Schembechler Hall, the Wolverines’ football operations building, required a coordinated effort involving the best partners in design, fabrication and installation.

Rainier was selected to manufacture and install the graphical components that created a new 7,000-square foot experience for fans and recruits celebrating the program’s unrivaled success.

We worked with the design team at Downstream to make their vision a reality. The two-story Win Wall displays footballs representing more than 900 team wins—paying impressive homage to The Victors.

Success always takes a team: www.rainiersport.com

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SYLVIA HARRIS AWARD WE BUILD THE _______ CITY New York City Department of Design and Construction New York

Design New York City Department of Design and Construction, Office of Creative Services Design Team Kate Howe design lead; Victoria Milne creative director, writer; Julio Foronda 3D production; Xenia Diente external liaison; Helena Lee print production

“The whole system is well considered, building citizen awareness of an urban issue.”

—The Jury comment

Additional images, credits, and jury comments at www.segd.org/awards

Fabrication Linco newspaper printer; Peeq Media vinyl lettering; Ooshirts.com t-shirts; Balloon Saloon balloons Photos Kate Howe

Sylvia Harris (1953– 2011), founder and principal of Citizen Research & Design, was a passionate advocate of good design for the public good. The Sylvia Harris Award, given for the first time in 2014, honors her work and her legacy.

96 — eg magazine

Civic construction work—generally maligned while in progress, and taken for granted once finished—rarely receives the recognition it deserves for providing the necessary foundation for a thriving city. In 2013, the New York City Department of Design and Construction participated in the New Museum’s Ideas City Festival, and wanted to communicate the benefits of its work directly to the public. The DDC’s Office of Creative Services conceived of a “Civic Values Walking Tour” of a variety of DDC projects within the immediate vicinity of the New Museum. The projects represented a range of work—from police stations and fire houses to cultural construction projects.

The in-house team identified a shared civic value for each of these projects—the Safe City, Creative City, Healthy City, etc.—demonstrating the lofty ideas that the very concrete construction projects bring to life. The team also gave booth visitors the opportunity to record their civic values and what kind of city they’d like to build.

People filled in the blank on post-it notes printed with the “We Build the ________ City” theme of the event, and by the end of the day the booth was covered with an impressive collage of citizengenerated civic values.

Because the event had to be set up and taken down in one day, the team focused the design around the iconic and available: reflective orangestriped construction signage. Striped barriers were repurposed into signage with the addition of vinyl lettering, balloons, and oversized posters.

Volunteers wore matching t-shirts to complete the package. The uniformity of the design stood out from the urban fabric, and linked all of the distributed tour spots with the main booth in the heart of the festival.

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CCBC Designer: Ayers Saint Gross (Baltimore, MD)

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Cabana Bay Beach Resort Designer: WrenHouse Design Debra Wrenhouse

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