BY Armin

Scientifically Architectural Building Blocks

Originally established as a children’s museum in 1941 in the city of Fort Worth, Texas, growing in size and popularity to become the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History (FWMSH) is one of a handful of world-class museums in the Fort Worth Cultural District that also happens to boast architecture by Philip Johnson (Amon Carter Museum), Tadao Ando (Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth), and Louis Kahn (Kimbell Art Museum). Slowly deteriorating, and slightly frumpy next to these buildings, the FWMSH is currently undergoing a renovation under the design of Mexico City based Ricardo Legorreta’s Legorreta + Legorreta that will open 202 days from now (according to the web site’s counter).

Rendering of the new building, designed by Legorreta + Legorreta.

Known for his use of strictly geometric, clean forms, unexpected nooks, and bright, splashy colors — although, for my money, Luis Barragan did it much better, but that’s another post in another blog — the Legorreta design for the FWMSH served as the foundation for its new identity designed by Pentagram partner DJ Stout.

Stout and his team in Austin developed a logo consisting of three squares representing the letters F, W, and M (Fort Worth Museum) and an entire alphabet of Legorreta-inspired letterforms. The square letterforms can be stacked and rearranged like a child’s set of alphabet blocks. These symbolic “building blocks of knowledge” are a metaphor for the museum’s early roots as a children’s museum and its commitment to families and learning.
— Pentagram project detail

Designing logos based on architecture is tricky and rarely that successful or, if successful, rarely distinctive or overly engaging but this is a great way of interpreting architecture without it being a literal translation of a facade or a set of columns. This new logo allows room for interpretation and a leap of imagination as to what it actually is. When I first saw the logo I immediately read “building blocks” and made the instant connection to science and play. My second thought was “Is this a Luis Barragan building I didn’t know about?”. But I digress on my Barragan fixation.

To complement the logo, Stout and team designed an alphabet based on the same premise as the logo, and while some of the letters hit and miss on readability it’s an interesting exercise in building scalability of the logo’s look. For now, all the applications shown on Pentagram’s site are pie-in-the-sky renderings, so it will be interesting to see how the identity actually shapes up come inauguration time.

\n\nOriginally established as a children's museum in 1941 in the city of Fort Worth, Texas, growing in size and popularity to become the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History (FWMSH) is one of a handful of world-class museums in the Fort Worth Cultural District that also happens to boast architecture by Philip Johnson (Amon Carter Museum), Tadao Ando (Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth), and Louis Kahn (Kimbell Art Museum). Slowly deteriorating, and slightly frumpy next to these buildings, the FWMSH is currently undergoing a renovation under the design of Mexico City based Ricardo Legorreta's Legorreta + Legorreta that will open 202 days from now (according to the web site's counter).

Many thanks to our ADV @ UnderConsideration Partners