29 November 2018

FX Awards 2018 Winners

Graphics: Signage and Wayfinding

Winner: Your Space by Gensler

Your Space by Gensler Image Credit: Gareth Gardner

To mark the 25th anniversary of Stephen Lawrence’s death, the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust embarked on an exciting new venture: transforming its centre in Deptford into a creative co-working hub called Your Space. Gensler donated time and design expertise to create a motivating setting for emerging creatives, with a focus on the positive outcomes of the Trust’s work.

As the Trust looks to its future, Gensler’s design team sought to create a space that represented progression.

When Gensler was approached to develop wayfinding and environmental graphics for Your Space, its brand design studio developed a concept that was sympathetic to the centre’s legacy, while embracing its future – offering subtle cues to Stephen’s architectural ambitions, and the centre’s core objectives to inspire and enable young people from underrepresented backgrounds to study and qualify as architects.

The design intent from the outset was to create a motivating setting which fosters networking, development and collaboration among emerging architects, designers and creatives, with a shifted focus on more of the positive outcomes of the Trust’s work that has followed on from Stephen’s murder in 1993.

Rather than going down the instructive route, as wayfinding often can, the design team wanted to create a language that was restrained, conversant, inspiring and fun.

To entice people to the various different spaces and create a sense of familiarity, various surfaces such as the concrete floors and glazed partitions have been enlivened and embellished with laminate vinyl ciphers of their corresponding architectural symbols – speaking to the building’s users in a language they appreciate and understand.

The judges said:

‘Simple yet original and effective wayfinding graphics’