2009 SEGD Design Awards: Meet Me at the Harbor

The Empire State Development Corp. hired C & G Partners LLC (NYC) to create environmental graphics to honor the 175th Anniversary of the Erie Canal Harbor’s opening. The program entailed the rehabilitation of the canal’s historic Commercial Slip, which had been a hub of waterway commerce and immigration.

Adirondack Studios (Argyle, NY) produced the signage and interpretive graphics. The site’s primary identification signage comprises 4-ft.-high, can letters attached to the I-beam railroad bridge that looms over the canal (according to Adirondack’s Louie Allen, 19th-Century billboards erected to entice Canal travelers inspired the signage). Adirondack also produced stainless-steel plates embedded within a foot-traffic bridge that feature renderings of historically significant Buffalo citizens.

As a paean to the erstwhile canal warehouses that once housed tons of shipped cargo, C & G devised a four-story, interpretive façade that features a canal route map that encases the façade’s bottom third. The map comprises a graphic embedded within a polycarbonate layer and sandwiched between layers of DuPont SentryGlas safety glass.

Other project players include Systeme Huntingdon, which created the phenolic-resin graphic panels; Jan Spoerri & Co., which created the models and castings; and Prelco, which produced the laminated-glass graphics.