[ Cultural / Design / Corporate ]
Giving visual expression to a mutant cultural centre
Las Naves, a cultural creation and research centre committed to social transformation.
In València's Poblats Marítims district, a cluster of former industrial warehouses on Carrer de Joan Verdeguer holds one of the city's flagship cultural venues: a contemporary creation centre serving the creative, cultural and design sectors.
We created a flexible brand for a constantly evolving space: a visual language capable of transforming itself with each new proposal.
More than just a building, Las Naves was a constantly evolving space. Under one roof, it housed rehearsal rooms, a photo and video studio, a performance space, an entrepreneurship incubator, an exhibition hall, a think tank, a library and a media library. Depending on the day and time, the same place could be a stage, a studio, a classroom or a reading room.
A brand with a strong and contemporary brand identity programme.
The identity we developed in 2015 springs from the venue's multifunctional nature: a brand as mutable as the space it names. We conceived it as a mechanical departure board — the kind found in stations and airports — each letter in its own tile, ready to flip and recompose around whatever is happening inside. A robust typeface, inherited from the building's industrial signage and set in motion. Naves: at once industrial memory and a vessel bound elsewhere.
A signage plan for a space undergoing constant change.
We had a month to relaunch Las Naves. On 30 June we held our first working meeting, and by 1 September the venue was due to be transformed. Perhaps that rapid pace of transformation set the tone for the future of its programme: dynamic, youthful and diverse. We had to choose a system capable of being reinstalled immediately and which would not affect the building’s surface or structure, so we opted for cut vinyl, which was gradually applied to every window and wall.
A design scheme that is easy to grasp at a glance. A simple, striking and cost-effective design system that translates the diversity of the programme into a recognisable visual language.
That logic runs through every application. The monthly programme — the most recognisable piece — works as a two-ink fanzine, a different duotone each edition: a format that is simple, bold and, above all, cheap, where the board's tile scales up to mark the month (an "F" for febrer/February) and a system of labels orders a line-up as varied as the space itself.
The third and final project at Las Naves, a venue that took the scene to a whole new level and which is still going strong today under the name La Mutant.
Espai Mutant was the third and final project we developed at Las Naves, and it was also the one that took the venue to a whole new level. We devised a comprehensive plan covering everything from the venue’s signage to the programmes and the labelling of the seats. The aim was to transform La Nave 3 into a chameleon-like space, capable of hosting everything: dance, theatre, performance art, rock, experimental music and film premieres. This versatility has stood the test of time: today it is still going strong and continues to be known, as a legacy of that original name, as La Mutant.