2018-2024

Le centquatre

Le centquatre serves as a haven for audiences and artists from both the neighborhood and around the world. The strong identity and history of this place had to be taken into account but also assimilated in order to create a new visual language and new artistic directions. In a space like the 104, the concept of temporality is indeed significant. Ultimately, what is a cultural space if not a place that plans in advance a present that may one day become part of our memories? While there is anticipation, a certain spontaneity and improvisation are also present. The information panels are therefore designed as temporal spaces (yesterday, today, tomorrow) that flow from top to bottom, through the use of a vertical line of fixed thickness, inspired by vertical musical or choreographic scores.
Yesterday takes on a journalistic form, giving prominence to images that serve as eyewitness accounts of the social, cultural, and political history of the venue and its neighborhood. Today presents the day’s program but, above all, leaves room for spontaneous actions and everyone present at the venue. Tomorrow concerns programming and intentions, but also utopias and dreams. This construction of information around the concept of time stems from a digital approach to information. The most compelling example is that of vertical scrolling. The typeface, composed of a single weight, is designed with a compact approach and tight line spacing, with color and type size serving as tools for hierarchy. This typographic work defines the space. Regarding the signature, we envision a typogram in the sense that the form can adapt to needs: aligned to the right or left, across three or four lines.

Design team Laboratoire irb — Vera Baur, Ruedi Baur, Denis Coueignoux, and Olivier Duzelier