Residential · Ireland
Hatch Student Living, Marsh's Yard
- Client
- Hatch Student Living
- Main contractor
- John Paul Construction
- Location
- Copley Street, Cork
- Completed
- 2019
- Sector
- Residential
- Scope
- Cut-vinyl supergraphics to walls, floors and ceilings · Building-name lettering at architectural scale · Level numerals to stairs and circulation · Level directory with amenity pictograms · Reception identity lettering and manifestations · Site survey and setting-out to the existing geometry
Marsh's Yard is part of the Hatch campus on Copley Street in Cork, reopened in 2019 after a €25 million programme on the grounds of the former UCC school of architecture. Wayfinders were appointed by John Paul Construction to deliver the graphics and signage alongside Kingston Lafferty Design.
Bedrooms
Programme value
Reopened
Marsh's Yard is one of the blocks on the Hatch campus on Copley Street in Cork, built on the grounds of the former UCC school of architecture. A €25 million programme reworked the complex in phases across 2018 and 2019 while neighbouring blocks stayed occupied, and it reopened in June 2019 with 265 bedrooms. John Paul Construction built it, Kingston Lafferty Design set the interior, and Wayfinders were appointed to deliver the graphics and the signage.
The graphics are the wayfinding
There is almost no conventional signage in the photographs. The interior language is black and white diagonal banding and lettering at architectural scale, and the wayfinding lives inside it. MARSH'S YARD runs wall to wall across a corridor head. HELLO HANDSOME spans the reception behind the desk, split around a mirrored band. A level numeral in a stairwell is a filled triangle and a figure 2, sized to be read from the half-landing below. All of it is cut vinyl and manifestation work, set out on site to exacting measurements, because the bands do not stop at a corner: they cross from wall to floor, run up a flight of stairs and continue on the far side of an angle, and the eye notices immediately if they land a few millimetres out.
A directory written as verbs
The level directory does not list rooms. Against each numeral it says what the floor is for. SLEEP on 3 and on 2. SLEEP, RELAX, DECK on 1. RECEPTION, EAT, PLAY, STUDY, RELAX, SLEEP, WC, COURTYARD, GYM, LAUNDRY on the ground floor, each with its own circular pictogram. CAR PARK, BIKE PARK on minus 1. The reader is an eighteen-year-old standing in a lobby with a suitcase on the first day of term, who does not yet know the name of anything in the building, and a list of activities answers the question they actually have.
Alignment was the job. Everything else followed from it.
