SEGD Design Awards: On the Air (and in Color)

WNYC, the Big Apple’s flagship, public-radio station, operates AM- and FM-frequency stations that reach more than one million listeners per week. In 2006, construction began on the station’s new broadcast studios in lower Manhattan’s Hudson Square. Today, a two-and-a-half-story, 72,000-sq.-ft. facility features double the studio space of its prior location, as well as the Jerome L. Green Performance Center, a 2,300-sq.-ft., enclosed atrium. Poulin+Morris, a NYC-based, EGD firm, developed environmental graphics, wayfinding and donor-recognition systems.

On the ground floor, bright-red letters, painted on aluminum barstock, identity the performance space. Facing the windows visible on Manhattan’s Varick St., a 100-ft.-long, undulating news ticker keeps passersby abreast of the day’s events. Mark IV IDS (Plano, TX) produced the red-LED display.

Poulin+Morris devised a clever, 6 x 10-ft., donor-recognition wall that features multi-colored, light-block panels with white goldleaf and die-cut letters that replicate the multi-directional motion of a recording studio’s graphic equalizer. Rounding out the system, Graphika produced an entrance canopy that features cut-out versions of the WNYC logo.