A bit off the top

This is a great idea - the coloured strips on the sides of the door frames shown in this photo are actually part of a signage and navigational system. The photo was taken in the circular corrider that runs around the entire building beneath the Roundhouse in Camden, North London.

This part of the building sits directly beneath the main performance area, and houses Roundhouse Studios which is a great facility for young people to get to grips with a range of skills in creating and producing music, television and radio broadcasting, photography, digital arts and web design. I’m sure there’s more too. Oh yes, drama. Anyway, it’s a confusing place to be since there are no external windows and you very quickly lose your sense of direction when walking around the circular passageway that leads of to the various recording suites and practice rooms. This problem is of course made worse by the fact that a lot of the people here will be disorientated anyway as it’s somewhere entirely new for them, as students generally attend short courses.

The answer to the problem is coloured door frames, grading gently through the spectrum from red to blue as you move around the circle. It’s great because you notice it without realising. If you drift off to the loo without noting which room you were in you can still find your way back, as you quickly get a sense that you might be in the wrong part of the circle if the overall colour of the corridor feels wrong.

It’s also great as it avoids the need for signs sticking out of the walls in what is a fairly narrow passage. Signs stuck flat against the wall might work, but this is far more elegant, and gives you a sense of destination when you spy the orange bit coming around the bend. The building was renovated in 2006 by John McAslan & Partners, though I’m not totally sure whether they were responsible for this innovation - I’ll find out.

Other interesting stuff, they have the headphone switch used in the recording studio of the original Star Wars soundtrack, and if you speak while standing slap bang in the middle of the central circular room within the studios you hear your own voice reflected back from the surrounding brick, producing some weird kind of 360 degree surround sound. Spiffing.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 7th, 2007 at 17:39 and is filed under Off the cuff, Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.