ABOUT TEAM STUDENTS BRIEFS ADMISSION
ALPHABET CITY
With graphic designer Fraser Muggeridge (www.pleasedonotbend.co.uk)
In the first workshop of the new studio, a new design language that should not only represent the studio’s identity, but also the people in the studio, was created. Architecture often involves letters. Signs, inscriptions, advertising, information and so on. Sometimes it is stuck on, sometimes incised into the surface. Letters can be three-dimensional and material or flat and painted on. Sometimes lettering is designed as
part of the composition. Occasionally it is the composition. There are also traditions under the banner of architecture parlance, from Boullee and LeDoux to Venturi and Scott Brown where architecture is thought of as a direct form of communication. Sometimes as recognisable and readable symbols, but even as letterforms themselves. In other words, we can think of architecture as something we ‘read’ (and also ‘write’).
Lettering is also an intrinsic part of our cities, from the navigation of road signs, street names to inscriptions and landmarks. It helps us know where we are and what we should do, but also tries to tell us who we are or what we should be. Letters, in other words, are also urban
objects. Through collecting various letterforms in Vienna, then remaking, hybridizing, juxtaposition and otherwise combining them a studio-alphabet was created. A new way for our words to look, that might allow us to say things we had never previously imagined.