Wayfinding: Hope Artiste Village

wayfinding

Dimensions of Piece
N/A

Course Title
final studio

Semester / Date
spring 2018

Wayfinding: Hope Artiste Village

As part of my final student project, I elected to design a wayfinding system for the Hope Artiste Village in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. This historic building was built by the Hope Webbing Company which manufactured narrow width fabrics and played an vital role in Rhode Island’s textile industry during the industrial revolution. The building currently houses over one hundred small businesses­—a collection of artists, restaurants, realtors, designers, architects, music venues, therapists, bakeries, dance and yoga studios, barbers, tattoo parlours, a bowling alley, and New England’s largest indoor farmers market. 

By incorporating the history of the Hope Webbing Company, I developed a conceptual environment where vendor names of Hope Artiste Village are inscribed or cut into oxidized copper metal sheets as part of a directory. The oxidation of copper creates the blue-green color that was historically part of Hope Webbing’s color palette. Each metal sign would contain the vendor list for one of the many hallways in the building. The metal signs also provide a surface to attach threads that will weave along the walls of the building. These planes of thread will serve as a directional for the storefront hallways. Each hallway has been renamed as a street and assigned a different thread color. The planes of thread will change angles as it goes around corners and may intersect with other hallway threads to simulate the wefting and warping of weaving of fabric. 

As I explored materiality, I hand-stamped type into metal for the artistic renderings of this concept. In reality, I intend to have the type cut out of the metal with a plasma cutter by a blacksmith. In keeping with the artisanal motif, every sign will be hand-crafted.