inside the works of gallo + powell…
we tend to format all of our drawings to 18×24. it’s a nice, handy size which has a few nice side benefits - one of which being that you can strap the drawings on to your bike, just below the top tube. You ride drawings-between-the-legs style. …an architect joke waiting to happen, no doubt. But sometimes, you’re handling someone else’s drawings. And sometimes when you do, you need to improvise. Here’s a shout out to all the rubber bands of the world. …holla.
yeah, that’s the Daily Journal of Commerce, sucka!
Leftbank has come a long, long way. After a good 30 months of attention, the building officially opened its doors a couple weeks back to much fanfare and hullabaloo. I’ve had the opportunity to do a bit of just about everything on the project, but one role unanticipated in the beginning is that of the ’sign guy’. It began last year with an unforgettable (though occasionally unreadable) leasing ‘installation’, and segued into building signage thereafter. One apparent success was the simple, white vinyl ‘leftbank’ above the door. More recently, the focus has been inside with a collaboration w/Justin Gorman for the super-hot directories and general directional signage. All told, it’s been a side show to the more demanding design, vision or dumb logistical aspects of the project, but a welcome one side show, for sure.
Of all of ‘em, I think I take the most pride in the signs I just made for the aforementioned opening… Signs intended to guide people through the building, giving them basic information about things that make leftbank unique, spaces that are available, and tenants already contributing to the community. It was an enjoyable project for two reasons: one is that it pulled from so many things I’ve been intimately involved with, a chance to recap and retell the story for folks unaware. The other is a bit more simple - it allowed me to get my hands dirty once again.
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
These signs are crafted from wood reclaimed from one of the past lives of the building. Placed in the lobby area of each floor, they feature floor plans for direction, and lists of tenants, spaces, and interesting points on the floor. The floor plans were printed 11×17 on bright white cardstock and spray mounted directly to the wood planks (which were planed, sanded, and treated with linseed oil). The other materials, however, are always subject to change - available spaces get leased, new tenants come in, etc - so they were designed to be changed easily. Formatted 8.5×5.5 (half a standard 8.5×11), this allows for anyone to type up a modified list and print it, cut it in half and then mount it. The mounting is achieved with magnets, which connect to ¾” #8 wood screws embedded in the wood. The signs are mounted with good ol baling wire - easy to use, cheap and elemental.
Graphically, the informational sheets were designed to reference the floor plan. Many points of interest have companion signs scattered throughout the building - their locations are marked with asterisks on the mounted floor plan (again, since they would never change). Knowing that tenants are subject to change or be added, the reference there is achieved with creating an ‘icon’ for each listed tenant, and then pinning a second corresponding icon directly onto the floor plan on the suite they are occupying.
There was also a welcome sign, hanging now in the main lobby - it uses the same vocabulary, but also has a portion dedicated to the mission of the Leftbank. This part was achieved with white vinyl lettering and an utterly painstaking application. Recalling the way we cut our teeth for a good month and a half just crafting the words articulated there, the tedium seemed justified.
Packed comfortably now in a steel tube, ascending above the asphalt and exotic grass basin that is Phoenix, I consider the last few days. This past weekend, our old class from architecture school gathered for reunion. It was a fine Sonoran Saturday that found us collected in Tucson’s Barrio Hollywood under full moon and sky that stretched across the globe. We were old friends, comrades and sometime rivals, all back together to honor what our old faculty simply think of as, ‘The Class’. Six years later, it’s needless to say that just about everybody needed a drink. As we settled, the stories emerged. The most common one involves a firm and a computer, a well worn routine, a sagging economy and sometimes the phrase ‘layed off’. Ugh.
But amidst the dry, deadly familiar, there were others:
There is my unofficial love and equally unofficial little sister, Madeline, our fine host for the evening, who after spending years immersed in the earth and glass and sometimes-billionaire-client-funded world of Rick Joy, is now digging in to the scruffy part of Oakland. Working with a few hungry fellows on a mission to redefine the way people use bikes. It’s called Xtracycle – and with her help, their who-needs-an-SUV-when-you-can-have-a-bicycle lifestyle is coming to the pavement near you. Promise.
Then Im and David, who after several years working more common architecture jobs by day, and crafting and empowering every square inch of a tiny apartment by night and weekend, popped up on the cover of some trashy rag called Dwell. They walked away from the left coast a few years ago to study at Cranbrook Academy and make lovely things. Today they are themselves on a plane, headed to Bangkok, and a little plot of land laying in wait for the design studio they’ve set out to build. Their material lives are packed in a shipping container, sitting on an enormous boat and traveling a one way route somewhere presently in the South Pacific. The future is open, the details unclear.
And yes, there’s us, with our build it right now, bootstrapping, self teaching, scrap-your-way-through-digging-trenches-and-crafting-new-visions-for-old-buildings-alike model. What’s common with these stories is the bob-and-weave. A refusal to be bound by conventional paths and a willingness to apply more than just your education, but rather your entire self into doing something. A lightness that respects the flowing wind and shifting tides of deep time, and modern time.
People in the world.
I don’t want to glamorize this – it’s largely the absence of glamour, or the immunity to glamour that defines such a way, i think. Even more, this really isn’t a discount to the more conventional roads many take – the world still needs architects who are simply [Architects]. …I think. Something that sticks though, sitting now somewhere above Southern Oregon, is that of all the stories told under the wispy desert clouds and beckoning moonlight that night, the light ones sure didn’t dwell much on the economy.
As ever, go forward.