West Side Stories
Studio Spass• Date added
• Date added
West Side Stories is an architecture festival that showcases the celebrated urban renewal of the Oude Westen (Old West) district in Rotterdam. The festival includes an exhibition, several lectures, and a publication.
Rotterdam-based design studio Studio Spass brought the festival to life by designing its visual identity and exhibition.
Client
OMI Rotterdam
Year
2019
Creative Director
Jaron Korvinus
Daan Mens
Designer
Daan Mens
Typefaces in Use
West Side Stories is an architecture festival that showcases the celebrated urban renewal of the Oude Westen (Old West) district in Rotterdam. The festival includes an exhibition, several lectures, and a publication.
Rotterdam-based design studio Studio Spass brought the festival to life by designing its visual identity and exhibition.
The exhibition delves into the neighbourhood protests of the 1970-1990 postmodern period, featuring posters, local papers, cartoons, and pamphlets from the Oude Westen Action Group. Audio materials provide an auditory experience of the time, while film footage and interior photos offer a visual representation of the past and present.
Maps and plans reveal the design elements created to increase space and experiment with housing forms. The current state of the neighbourhood has been explored and mapped by Architectuur Maken, Bart Isings, Charlie Koolhaas, and Studio Verter. Essays by Tim Verlaan, Lidwine Spoormans, Florian Urban, and Endry van Velzen critically reassess the period from a contemporary perspective.
Within the framework of West Side Stories, OMI, a Rotterdam-based public centre for architecture and urban culture, organised a series of lectures, debates and film screenings at a local cultural centre named Leeszaal West.
The theme of the festival is inspired by the postmodern aesthetics of the Rotterdam urban renewal period of 1970 to 1990, which was characterised by public protests and the use of "Trespa plating" – a brand of high-pressure laminate panels used in applications such as exterior cladding, decorative facades and interior surfaces.
"This interdisciplinary project was great as the subject was completely in line with our personal interest in the style period and this era of our city's development."
In terms of the design approach, the project adopted a clean typographic grid as its foundation, upon which a playful graphic language was added. The graphic language was inspired by the postmodern Trespa aesthetics of the 1970-1990 urban renewal period in Rotterdam.
This playful system of shapes pays homage to the iconic Trespa plating, characterised by its distinctive colours and rounded bolts grid. Trespa plating was a popular and low-maintenance solution used during the era, often used to modernise older buildings.
Studio Spass
Studio Spass is a Rotterdam-based design studio that works across identities, campaigns and spatial design projects. Founded by Jaron Korvinus and Daan Mens, the studio combines a rigorous, considered and intelligent approach with a playful sensibility. Understanding that powerful and effective design needs both original ideas and faultless execution, the team prides itself on its perfectionist eye for the little details as well as its innovative conceptual thinking.
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