Shepparton Art Museum
Shepparton Art Museum is one of Australia’s leading regional galleries. Located in Northern Victoria, the new museum designed by architects occupies a landmark setting within a popular park.
Perforated branding on the top of the museum strikes a balance between being large scale and
indelible, yet subtly integrated, its expression changing with the atmospheric conditions, light and shade.
Sean Fennessy
External wayfinding wraps around a series of rectangular wayfinding totems, each with a different materiality, reflecting the four metals of the building’s façade, zinc, aluminium, colourbond steel and corten steel.
Sean Fennessy
Project Overview
The studio was charged with creating Identification, Donor and Wayfinding signage for both the interior and exterior of the new museum building.
The starting point was the architects’ folding box structure, which plays on the idea of an art gallery as an enigmatic cube, and appears to float seemingly unsupported.
In considering the exterior opportunity to brand the building, the studio was cognizant of the site’s context as a gateway location on the approach to the Shepparton town centre. The perforated branding on the top of the museum strikes a balance between being large scale and indelible, yet subtly integrated, its expression changing with the atmospheric conditions, light and shade.
For the gallery’s street identification signage and pedestrian wayfinding, directing visitors to various locations around the museum parkland site, the Shepparton Art Museum name and wayfinding information was wrapped around a series of dispersed rectangular wayfinding totems located throughout the Museum’s grounds.
The composition of totems feature different materialities, in line with the four different metals of the building’s façade. Zinc,aluminium, colourbond steel and corten steel to provide contextual alignment with the museum design.
Internally the wayfinding signage also adopted a ‘hover and fold’ language to guide visitors through the museum. Folded tone-on-tone letter forms, level numbers and arrows create a 3-dimensional effect and the signage appears to float off the walls in line with the purity of the architects planar design.
Internal wayfinding signage adopts a ‘hover and fold’ language to guide visitors through the museum
Sean Fennessy
Directory level numbers create a 3-dimensional effect, floating off the walls in the same finish as
their context.
Sean Fennessy
The combination of sculptural folded level numbers and applied level content creates an interplay between sculptural and didactic content. Navigation signage becomes an integral part of the gallery aesthetic.
Sean Fennessy
Lift directories adapt to their context, folded corten steel numbers hover against perforated corten lift core cladding.
Sean Fennessy
Gallery naming signage purposefully blurs boundaries between sculptural form and identification, hovering above entry thresholds and reinforcing the quiet sculptural interior language.
Sean Fennessy
Project Details
Design Team
Studio Ongarato
Photo Credits
Sean Fennessy (photography)
Open Date
November 2021