At the New School’s New Building, a Sign Isn’t Just a Sign

Mr. Baur, 57, is acknowledged for getting created the visual identity method for the Pompidou Center in Metz, France, and the Cinémathèque Française, made by Frank Gehry. He has created indications for the Louvre and the Rodin Museum in Paris. And he invented signs for the Vienna Airport that are, on goal, slightly blurry. He wanted to get travelers’ attention and, in the process, make the airport distinctive in their minds.

So there was a very good deal of anticipation about what Mr. Baur would do for the New School, his very first key commission in the United States.

“Most people approach a project like this by saying ‘put an arrow here and a space variety there,’ ” explained Tim Marshall, the provost, “but we wished a cutting-edge method since that’s what we want to be recognized for as a university. The concept was that he would inject contemporary contemplating about design and style and culture and even how we’re surrounded by language everywhere we are. It was an chance for him to believe about what all of that says about the university.”

Mr. Baur gave the creating a system of indicators that men and women can use as they make their way via the corridors and along the building’s attention-acquiring stairways. The system has its very own typeface, with variations: The lettering modifications from degree to level.

“Seven levels, and every single has a font,” Mr. Baur said. “When you recognize the technique, you can say, ‘I’m at the top’ or ‘I’m near the bottom.’ ”

Architects and engineers see wayfinding as a indicates of doing far more than just receiving folks on the move to their destinations. It can give them something to keep in mind — a sense of where they are. And if they are going to be in a constructing day after day, as New College students will be after the University Center opens early up coming year, a psychological map can deepen their knowing of their surroundings.

And the surroundings are some thing to see, and to recognize. Created by the New York office of Skidmore, Owings &amp Merrill, the developing, on Fifth Avenue between 13th and 14th Streets, seems like two ribbed metal boxes. One particular is squattish and serves as a 7-story base. The other box, taller and more rectangular, rises from inside the first box and includes a 9-story dormitory. There are two more levels beneath the street.

But the 3 sets of stairways — “communicating stairs,” the New School calls them — are the most arresting element of the creating. They stretch by means of it — the 1 on the Fifth Avenue side runs in an uninterrupted line from the second floor to the fifth — and are bordered by windows. The idea is to put students on public view as they walk from class to class.

“I needed to find something distinct, find something that would strengthen the singularity of the building,” Mr. Baur explained. “And it was also important to say, welcome to a creating exactly where the individuals go on the stairs, not constantly on the elevator.”

So he created what amounts to a mural for the extended ceiling above the staircases — “sculptural lettering,” the New School calls it. His prototype has the names of popular figures from the New School’s past, like the photographer Berenice Abbott and the philosopher Horace Kallen, the two of whom had been on the faculty. Their names serve as punctuation between titles of courses like “Art and Ritual” and “Bitter Adore: Chinese Intellectuals and the State.”

“This is a lot more about orientation than particular details,” mentioned Mr. Marshall, who joined Mr. Baur on a tour lately. “As you move into the creating, there are area numbers and specificity.”

The lettering has a 3-dimensional appearance that plays on standpoint to point people in the right course. It is as though an individual were shining a flashlight above the letters, and after you realize the technique, you can tell which way to go from the way the letters face.

The letters vary from floor to floor, despite the fact that the typefaces are all variations on a single font: Irma, created by Peter Bil’ak. The lettering on the best floor has a deep shadow. The lettering on the ground floor has practically none.

“The idea is to give a instrument for a spot, a typeface for a location,” Mr. Baur explained. “It’s a language which can be adopted in diverse contexts.”

Mr. Baur said the biggest challenge was not the staircases or the signs, but the “donor wall” in the lobby, with the names of individuals who had contributed income for the developing.

“We in no way do that in Europe,” he stated.

But he explained he had settled on a layout answer: The sizes of the names would “correspond with the funds.”

At the New School’s New Building, a Sign Isn’t Just a Sign