Philadelphia Passport Agency
Helping the Department of State’s passport agency use wayfinding and public art to connect a landmark with the city’s heritage and surroundings.
Challenge
We faced several challenges:
On the one hand, visitors needed to know that the building was dedicated to passport processing, rather than its prior use as a post office.
At the same time, the building’s historic status meant that we could not alter the exterior appearance. We also needed to be mindful of how different architectural styles would fit together (much of the interior was from the 1960s).
The building was both a former courthouse and a post office, so we needed to address multiple entrances.
Communicating how this landmark fits within its surroundings and the broader world. The building was named for Robert Nix, the first black Congressman to represent Pennsylvania in 1958.
Approach
The architect Mills + Schnoering initially hired us to complete wayfinding. Our brainchild was to permeate the space with its rich cultural, architectural, and historical context.
We engaged artists from Philadelphia to create inside murals that connected to Bas Reliefs sculptures on the building’s outside from the 1930s. Philadelphia photography linked this historic site to others in the city. Interpretive signage covered everything from Congressman Nix to Post office history, from the surroundings to the role of the WPA in building post office infrastructure. We considered the space so special that we even developed a custom typeface and symbols for this project.
After working through various city and federal approvals over the two-year course of the project, everyone from the Department of State (which oversees the passport agencies) to the Nix family was delighted in the results.