Saturday, December 12, 2009

Project Recap No. 10 - nous Gallery Sign (London)...



Last year we had an exhibition at the nous Gallery, a London based gallery that specializes in showing and promoting work exploring various more recent computing based architectural practices and theoretical strands. For the exhibition we were also asked to design a bespoke sign for the gallery using one of the techniques we've been investigating, which in this instance involved using the default marker, a 0.2 mm dot or circle (made in CAD), which usually indicates the starting point of a laser-cut, as an design feature in its own right. The interesting quality this miniscule hole has is that when it's cut out of a bit thicker material, here a 3 mm sheet of steel, the hole is proportionally so small to the naked eye that it almost seems to 'fade' into the material when viewed from even a slight oblique angle, and can only be noticed when seen from straight ahead with a light source in the background. Here this property was used, when multiplied over 3,300 times and shaped into letters, to spell out the gallery's name.

Thus, when one walks by the lit sign, the letters of its title seem to gradually appear and disappear, providing a passive/ analog effect through particular technological aspects specific to laser-cutting...



Four differently oblique views of the sign illustrating the gradual fading in & off of the sign's lettering...


Above and below - an example of a, if not the same, at least similar exercise using perforations, in this case on a slightly larger scale on the partition screens in our London office (design by Perparim Rama and Edward Finucane from our sister company the 4M group).



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