Graphics agency Naranjo-Etxeberria slashes and burns designs for architectural publication

Date
18 March 2016

Madrid-based design studio Naranjo-Etxeberria has produced a publication for architects Fake Industries Architectural Agonism’s proposed designs for the new Guggenheim Museum in Helsinki. “The creative process wasn’t easy,” says co-founder Diego Etxeberria. “The architects live in Sydney, Carlota Santamaria the creative director lives in LA and we are in Madrid. The process was a mix of Skype sessions, long emails and many proposals.”

He adds: “We wanted a contemporary approach, to create a publication rather than a project dossier. A selection of classic and contemporary typefaces contrasted through large and small texts helped us to create and identity for the project.”

The Guggenheim architectural competition attracted more than 1700 entries that were whittled down to a shortlist of six. Fake Industries Architectural Agonism (Cristina Goberna and Urtzi Grau) along with Jorge López Conde, Carmen Blanco and Álvaro Carrillo were shortlisted for a proposal called 47 Rooms. The concept was based on the idea that Helsinki is a city of interiors and that weather would enter the building with each space having different climatic conditions.

Furthering the concept for the museum, each spread in the book has a different ambience with carefully selected images and colours expressing what a visitor might experience in each room. The book avoids many of the familiar tropes of architectural representation, with few technical drawings or heavily annotated arrangement plans to emphasis the experiential qualities of the proposal.

If there was any doubt as to the commitment to the concept, the designers commissioned Diego Diez to burn the book and shoot it. “We set fire to the book to use the same idea of the architecture proposal that is used in the development of the book: the importance of temperature contrasts and atmospheres inside of the building,” explains Diego.

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Naranjo-Etxeberria: 47 Rooms (image Diego Diez)

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Naranjo-Etxeberria: 47 Rooms (image Diego Diez)

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Naranjo-Etxeberria: 47 Rooms (image Diego Diez)

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Naranjo-Etxeberria: 47 Rooms (image Diego Diez)

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Naranjo-Etxeberria: 47 Rooms (image Diego Diez)

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Naranjo-Etxeberria: 47 Rooms (image Diego Diez)

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Naranjo-Etxeberria: 47 Rooms (image Diego Diez)

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About the Author

Owen Pritchard

Owen joined It’s Nice That as Editor in November of 2015 leading and overseeing all editorial content across online, print and the events programme, before leaving in early 2018.

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