Project Overview

The identity for the sixth edition of the New York architecture and design festival is built around a shifting tessellation. October is winding down, and this year’s edition of Archtober, the month-long festival celebrating the architecture and design of New York City, is wrapping up. Organized by the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects, the event has presented daily tours, lectures, films and exhibitions that highlight the ever-changing landscape of metropolitan architecture.

Project Commissioner

Center for Architecture

Project Creator

Pentagram

Team

Partner-in-Charge, Designer - Luke Hayman
Designer - Austin Maurer

Project Brief

Once again, Pentagram’s Luke Hayman and team have designed the identity and exhibition for the festival, extending the graphic program they’ve developed for Archtober’s previous five editions.

This year is the sixth Archtober, and the 2016 identity is built around a mathematical diagram called a Voronoi tessellation, a honeycomb-like system of irregular polygons that in this instance has been generated from six points. (Mathematically speaking, “the diagram partitions a plane with n points into convex polygons so that each polygon contains exactly one generating point, and every point in a given polygon is closer to its generating point than to any other.”)

Project Innovation/Need

The tessellation surrounds the distinctive Archtober frame logo in applications such as print advertisements and street banners, and shifts, moves and rearranges itself in animations created for online promotion. The identity also appears on the updated Archtober website, where a responsive rollover transforms the partition.

Design Challenge

Hayman and his team collaborated with the architecture firm SOFTlab on the design of the Archtober Lounge at the Center for Architecture in Greenwich Village. SOFTlab expanded the tessellation into a dimensional environment in the Center’s main exhibition space. Constructed of corrugated cardboard (held together by butterfly bandages), the installation inexpensively transformed the gallery into a unique architectural setting all its own. The exhibition also continues the tradition of presenting a calendar that highlights each day’s events. This year’s calendar is made of collectible cards that feature the Building of the Day.