INTRODUCTION/
In September 2018, Birkhäuser released Clocks and Clouds: The Architecture of Escher GuneWardena, a monograph covering about 30 selected projects - unbuilt and completed work spanning 20 years. Followng the book, I designed a website that stemmed from both the book's principles and the firm's interest in space and art.
I present the process of design for the website for Escher GuneWardena. Some of the documenting and content was done with Ben Boatright.
Clocks and Clouds: The Architecture of Escher Gunewardena
- By Lilian Pfaff
Strategy and Scope/
Escher GuneWardena, unlike other architecture firms, works in multiple disciplines, from architecture, history to art, often collaborating with artists such as Olafur Eliasson, Sharon Lockhart, Steven Prina, and Mike Kelley. This multi-disciplinary approach presented a challenge to the structure and visual presentation of architectural content, questioning the degree each material project is allowed to be novel in the context of the brand.
Selection of firms work in residential, historical resoration and art.
Narrative/
The goal and narrative strucutre of this web page aimed to guide users through a constellation of narratives and explore ideas about living, art, history, and the public. The web-site hierarchy begins with an ideas cloud and descends into the typological cloud and to the final layer of the project cloud.
Visual Design/
The website's visual design has thematic and aesthetic consistency, where the clouds, white space and content have equally important in the interface. The tradeoffs in the interface prioritized UI design clarity, which at times conflicted with the phyiscal mediums and formats the office used to document projects. As a result, we either resorted to photography material and or altered drawings and created models to fit the format.