Graphis International Awards & Publications

Skolos-Wedell Posters Turn Architecture into Art

GraphisOctober 2, 2024

Skolos-Wedell's mastery in blending graphic design with photography shines through their work for the Lyceum Fellowship Committee, where innovation and design converge. As seasoned professors and renowned designers, Nancy Skolos and Thomas Wedell approached the challenge of creating promotional posters for the prestigious architecture competition with an eye toward elevating complex themes. Their designs encapsulate the competition's forward-thinking ethos, from regeneration to revitalizing urban landscapes. Let's dive into how their creative process brought these thought-provoking programs to life.

By: Nancy Skolos and Thomas Wedell, Professors & Designers, Skolos-Wedell

Lyceum Fellowship, Annual Student Architecture Competition Call for Entries Posters

2024 Poster

The 2024 program, “Re-forming the Anthropocene,” authored by Elizabeth Gray and Alan Organschi of Gray Organschi Architecture, asked students to design a center for regenerative building. The objective was to create a space that would contribute positively to both the local economy and the earth’s ecosystem by designing a facility that would support sustainable building practices.

Our Design Approach:

The central idea for the poster was to create a visual representation that embodied the principles of regeneration and sustainability to reflect the project’s theme dynamically. The poster’s image was designed to optically magnify an organic drawing in multiple ways, making it shift and evolve as it passed through an arrangement of plexiglass dowel rods. The rods served as both a medium and a mechanism, manipulating light and perspective to enhance the regenerative effect and create a striking visual metaphor for the symbiotic nature of the program.

2023 Poster

The 2023 program, “Old Town Mall—Reimagined,” was authored by Douglass Alligood, AIA, LEED AP, NOMA,  Partner, Bjarke Ingels Group: BIG. The Old Town Mall, a neglected pedestrian shopping area in the center of Baltimore, was the site of the 2023 competition. Students were tasked with proposing thoughtful designs to revitalize the retail mall and create a vibrant development for the community. Entrants were asked to examine options for preserving existing structures versus demolishing them to explore the potential of a four-block, 16-acre parcel of space with a focus on benefiting the neighborhood.

Our Design Approach:

We approached the poster design by constructing a three-dimensional model, reflecting the characteristics of the site’s structures and functions. The model’s modular design was meticulously crafted from fluorescent plexiglass to embody architectural energy that was essential to the assignment. The photographic representation of the model employed strategic lighting to enhance its structural and textural details. This was crucial in translating its three-dimensional forms into a compelling two-dimensional image. The image’s physical embodiment of the program’s design elements aimed to capture the feeling of a vibrant new shopping complex.

Nancy Skolos and Thomas Wedell of Skolos-Wedell work to diminish the boundaries between graphic design and photography—creating collaged three-dimensional images and design. The studio’s pioneering work achieved prominence in the 1980s in Boston when the burgeoning high technology sector provided a fertile ground for crafting a visual language for emerging abstract concepts. The team’s groundbreaking integration of surreal photographic elements with structured typographic design gave form to complex ideas such as “software,” facilitating a new realm of abstraction. Recognized globally through prestigious international exhibitions, publications, and awards, Skolos-Wedell has garnered acclaim both in the United States and internationally. Their influential posters are featured in the graphic design collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and many others. Nancy is an elected member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale and a Boston AIGA Fellow. Nancy and Thomas were awarded the AIGA Medal in 2017, and their comprehensive monograph, Overlap/Dissolve, was published in 2023.