The Foundry - A Place for Change
Designed by Architecture 00, The Foundry was a recipient of a RIBA National Award in 2015, it provides space for some of the country’s most innovative and progressive social justice and human rights organisations, providing ethically managed and affordable workspace, events and exhibition space that will support the local community, the wider public and the social change sector.
Place identity, wayfinding and public art narratives were designed by Richard Wolfstrome. We collaborated with Richard to deliver the signage package in terms of materiality, fabrication and installation.
The wayfinding signage reflects the building’s wooden surface detail. Directional information text has been laser-etched into birch plywood panels. Exterior building signage displays The Foundry name as anodised steel lettering elegantly on the front of the new building, while at the back, on the old building, the name has been painted onto the surface as an original feature of the building. At the entrance, The Foundry logo, laser cut from solid oak is mounted onto the concrete surface.
Continuing the theme of integrated design, quotations appear throughout the building on both the concrete surfaces and white walls to create a narrative presence that reflects the places ethos a set of super-graphic portraits including Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Abraham Lincoln can be seen on the ground floor conference hall windows.