Portugal Street East lies within the Piccadilly East area, and is experiencing significant, rapid change. But with such a lot of change, the potential for confusion for user navigation is high.
With each development plot being delivered by different developers, Manchester City Council wanted to ensure a consistency of signage is delivered across the neighbourhood.
Our legibility study reviewed all modes of transport to understand how and where the users arrive from, the routes they take, and the decisions they will need to make to reach their destination.
This helped us to define the strategy for each building.
With large scale developments taking place in every direction, the key objective here is to reinforce the navigational pattern, to ease people movement within the regeneration area and to the transport hubs.
We prepared external wayfinding and signage strategies for each building, with the aim of:
· Developing a hierarchy of information and a family of signs that will greet visitors and residents
· Proposing a design that is in keeping with the public realm and utilises the material palette as set out by landscape architect re-form.
· Bringing consistency to signage across the area
Our wayfinding strategies were suitable for discharging planning conditions for each scheme, detailing:
· The strategic positioning of signs
· Sign sizes to ensure consistency across sites
· A clear hierarchy to help with legibility and navigation
With such a lot of flux and change taking place in Manchester city centre’s built environment, the Council’s main priority for wayfinding was to connect all the different neighbourhoods through consistency of signage.
Taking a strategic look across the area, and working closely with developers, stakeholders and landscape architect re-form, our strategies propose practical and implementable solutions that will tie the built form together, across the different buildings and spaces, to help users get to where they want to go.