Richmond Social Housing

Richmond Social Housing delivered 144 new apartments for some of Victoria’s most vulnerable people as part of the Victorian Governments ‘Big Housing Build’ initiative. Sustainability, safety and liveability were at the heart of the design approach for this project – and the imperative for the wayfinding and signage was to adopt robust, durable and readily available materials.

Working closely with KTA architects to integrate with the architectural aesthetic, materiality and colour palette, Semaphore developed a distinctive signage suite using steel rectangular hollow sections.

A stencil typeface was crafted for this project to complement the industrial nature of the signage construction. This is complemented with a distinctive and highly legible font for wider usage across the project.

This format was highly suited to the exterior wayfinding signage which directs pedestrians from the adjacent streets through to the two towers, community facilities and landscaped gardens. Clear external wayfinding is a crucial element to assist all users to navigate from the wider social housing precinct to the key destinations at the Elizabeth Street development.

The steel section signage system is equally applicable to key interior wayfinding modules such as directional systems and apartment numbers. Further elements of the signage suite respond to the community facilities, such as large-scale graphic pictograms for bike storage.