In this arti­cle I will show the rela­tion­ship between archi­tec­ture and graphic design. In fact, sur­pris­ingly few archi­tects use typo­graph­i­cal ele­ments in their design. For this overview of projects that do make good use of let­ter­ing, I’ve prob­a­bly browsed through more than thou­sand Archi­tec­tural Designs. Below you’ll find ten build­ings on inte­grated archi­tec­tual let­ter­ing and signage.

I can only guess about the rea­son why archi­tects make so lit­tle use of typho­graph­i­cal ele­ments on their build­ings. The main rea­son will be that the build­ing design doesn’t need it. Most build­ings can make their func­tion clear with­out the use of sig­nage on the façade. As you will find on the build­ings listed below, archi­tects used the sig­nage to show the name of the build­ing to the world; there is no build­ing to be found with its func­tion printed on it. The func­tion is sup­posed to be clear.

A famous archi­tect once stated: ‘form fol­lows func­tion’. That’s why you know what the par­tic­u­lar func­tion of a build­ing is. Archi­tects fol­low their mantra.

Café de Unie (The Union), Rot­ter­dam, The Netherlands

One of the first uses of typo­graphic let­ter­ing in archi­tec­ture is the façade of the café ‘De Unie’. This build­ing was com­pleted in 1925, and has the looks of a Mon­dri­aan paint­ing. From the out­side the build­ing looks very much like the front cover of the design mag­a­zine ‘De Stijl’ (The Style). This sim­i­lar­ity is no coin­ci­dence; the archi­tect was a mem­ber of the Style move­ment. Mem­bers from var­i­ous dis­ci­plines, like archi­tects, graphic design­ers and inte­rior design­ers had a strong influ­ence on each other.

You can find this build­ing near Rot­ter­dam cen­tral sta­tion. It was destroyed dur­ing the sec­ond world war and has been rebuild in 1985, 500 meters from its orig­i­nal place.

Bauhaus, Dessau, Germany

At art school, every­one learns about Wal­ter Gropius and his Bauhaus move­ment. The Bauhaus has been very influ­en­tial in archi­tec­ture and other dis­ci­plines of art. This mod­ernist build­ing was build in 1926 and has a beau­ti­ful let­ter­ing on its front façade.

Seat­tle Art Museum, U.S.A.

In 1991, Pritzker Prize win­ner Robert Ven­turi designed the Seat­tle art museum. To make sure no other use will ever be made of the build­ing, ‘Seat­tle Art Museum’ has been carved into the front façade.

Min­naert build­ing, Utrecht Uni­ver­sity, The Netherlands

The Min­naert build­ing on the cam­pus of Utrecht Uni­ver­sity has been named after the Bel­gian astronomer Mar­cel Min­naert. The archi­tec­tural firm Neutel­ings Riet­dijk has made very orig­i­nal use of huge let­ters to give the build­ing its name. The columns that carry the upper lev­els are inte­grated within the letters.

Library of Alexan­dria, Egypt

Snøhetta is a Nor­we­gian archi­tec­tural firm with a very beau­ti­ful web­site. The build­ings they design are fine too. Take for exam­ple the library in Alexan­dria, a huge cylin­der cov­ered with con­crete plat­ing. On those plates you can see all kinds of typo­graph­i­cal ele­ments in non west­ern lan­guages, mostly hieroglyphs.

Ter­ror Háza múzeum / House of Ter­ror museum

House of Ter­ror is a museum located at Andrássy út 60 in Budapest, Hun­gary. Designed by archi­tects János Sán­dor and Kálmán Újszászy.

The recon­struc­tion turned the exte­rior of the build­ing into some­what of a mon­u­ment; the black exte­rior struc­ture (con­sist­ing of the dec­o­ra­tive entab­la­ture, the blade walls, and the gran­ite side­walk) pro­vides a frame for the museum, mak­ing it stand out in sharp con­trast to the other build­ings on Andrássy Avenue. Wikipedia.

City Museum Mel­bourne, Australia

Designed by Garry Emery, Mark Janet­zki and Ben Kluger for the City Museum Mel­bourne. This large folded mon­u­men­tal sign draws the atten­tion to the museum and gives direc­tion to the entrance.

Eureka Tower Carpark

Also designed by the Emery Stu­dio Mel­bourne, big painted let­ters on the walls and floor, look­ing directly the let­ters are dis­tored but stand­ing in a right posi­tion the let­ters can be read per­fectly. Fab­u­lously done art­work by Axel Peemoeller.

LAX

One of the large LAX signs that greet vis­i­tors to Los Ange­les Inter­na­tional Air­port. This sign is at the Cen­tury Boule­vard entrance to the airport.

Art school made me do this

A fun project by Rut­ger de vries (Per­on­geluk) who used this old build­ing to express his design ideas. It was doomed to demo­li­tion, the for­mer nurs­ing home in Utrecht (The Nether­lands). After the elderly res­i­dents had been relo­cated, it had served as a stu­dent res­i­dence for another six years, but now it stood empty. Rut­ger de Vries says:  “My work is tran­si­tory in nature; in fact I pre­fer to present it in places that have almost ceased to exist, where it can con­trast with the set­ting”.

You.

Can you name a build­ing where the designer made good use of typo­graphic ele­ments? Let me know by adding a comment!

This is a guest post by Frank van Leer­sum, a Dutch stu­dent archi­tec­ture who likes to write about archi­tec­ture and books. Visit his Dutch weblog Aureon or fol­low him on twit­ter.