A groundbreaking research effort produces universal symbols for health-care settings—and underscores the value of evidence-based design.
Patients, family members, and other visitors entering the doors of a hospital or other health-care facility face a daunting environment. Between them and their final destination, they will encounter a series of obstacles: multiple elevator banks, long and often identical-looking corridors, complex routes to distant departments or buildings, and often, ineffective wayfinding signage.
In a factory the size of a small city, environmental graphics help boost productivity by connecting the people who build aircraft with those who design them.
This vertical big box shopping complex includes four stories of big box retail and eight stories of parking – creating a number of challenges. The designers broke the mold by designing a sign system that required retailers to abandon their typical internally illuminated plastic signs for signage that would become the skin of the building. For example, signs for Target and Best Buy were layers of painted, welded wire attached to a chain link wall and set in front of the building's corrugated metal wall. It is large in scale but doesn't dominate the landscape.
Designed to provide visitors of all ages with tools to assist them in understanding the design process of the building's architect, this exhibit space was conceived as an alternative to traditional art museums by allowing visitors to be hands- and minds-on, rather than passive viewers of art. The strong geometric qualities of the Gallery, trapezoidal in shape, necessitated exhibit structures that were simple and independent.
Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture Donor Recognition
This piece was commissioned for a new museum addition and is located in the entry pavilion. It has three programmatic components: as a sculptural piece located at the head of the grand stairs to the lower level exhibit space; as a screen for the café area beyond; and as a donor recognition piece for the museum's capital campaign. Titled Fire Lodge, the piece evokes the images of the region's Native American cedar bark lodge and fire pit, symbolic of a gathering place.
PCC Natural Markets have grown organically over 50 years into seven urban neighborhood stores. The design team helped them realize an opportunity not only to design the details of their newest store, but also to use the same elements in the redesign of their other existing properties and branded products. An entirely new logo and positioning were created.
The Jack, Will & Rob Center was built to commemorate the lives of three young brothers who perished in an airplane crash on Thanksgiving 1999. It is a gift to the depressed mill town of Camas, Washington, where the boys grew up, providing resources and affordable instruction in music, art, and computer sciences as each boy had a particular gift in one of the three areas. The challenge for the designer was to give meaningful expression to each emotionally charged idea, in a manner empathetic to the context of each architectural situation and all on a tight budget.
