Wayfinding as a visual mantra – Signage for Education Center Kössen

Repetition is an exercise in learning and training.

In collaboration with pedevilla architects, Atelier Andrea Gassner developed a wayfinding system that renders the semantics and playfulness of the ornament visually tangible. 

For the building signage and wayfinding system across the various facilities of the Kössen Education Center, the designers of Atelier Andrea Gassner “stitched” a signage concept with the cross-stitch – a craft technique with a deep regional tradition. To make the semantics and playfulness of this ornament visually tangible, they developed it further into a typographic system.

The lettering oscillates between two and three dimensions. The rough, porous plaster with its warm tonality is contrasted in the interiors by the materialization of specially produced letters, numbers, and icons, while simultaneously accentuated by pearl copper as the primary color.

Through lighting and three-dimensional execution, enchanting shadow patterns emerge. The large-scale building signage is precisely engraved into the wooden slats of the façade cladding. Here, the ornament as signage never appears as superfluous decoration, but rather as an effective interweaving of narrative and architecture. The theme of the cross and cross-stitch is consistently continued at the entrances and façades.