The Nest Sharjah Residential Wayfinding
Arada The Nest Wayfinding
Refreshing the city's oldest & most important equine destination.
Expertise: Brand Strategy, Naming & Positioning + Creative Nest is the Middle East’s premier student accommodation complex located in Sharjah, UAE.
Consisting of 12 buildings shaped to provide plenty of shade and channel wind movement during the summer months, the complex includes internal courtyards and spaces that provide meeting places for residents. Nest is so much more than a place to sleep and study. Residents within the complex benefit not only from incredible amenities, including lush green spaces, a central dining hall, library, swimming pools, gyms and other sports facilities, but also from the rest of the groundbreaking Aljada community as well.
When Creative Dialog was approached to undertake this landmark project, we came into the exercise with the clear knowledge that we are inheriting what the client had deemed a failed project, whereby the two previous consultants involved with the wayfinding program had not lived up to expectation.
Our first task then was to not only assess the actual site by way of undertaking a site wide wayfinding audit but to also undertake a detailed analysis of the exiting work completed to date. What we found was an incomplete and ill-conceived wayfinding project that did not adequately support the intended visitor experience.
Turning the project on its head, we set about the task of redefining the navigation and zoning across the campus. The student accommodation campus is split into coed living spaces, and this informed our approach to the wayfinding which was a matter of blending form with core function of the requirement to provide very clear gender-based navigation and information across the site to make it infinitely more legible and easier to understand for all visitors.
Having redefined the zoning and nomenclature to be far more intuitive, we then set about the task or delivering a radical departure from the existing uninspired design.
Our design approach was based around the notion of fun, imagination and play along with the two selected core gender-based colors. We also designed a custom set of pictograms and unique, engaging graphic applications to complement the overall signage design which used simple rounded forms to soften the look and feel while also complimenting the curvilinear architectural vernacular of the campus.
From exterior public realm wayfinding and mapping, through to the interior navigation, our unique solution provided a huge step up to the incumbent schemes and provided not only a fun and engaging design as well as a clear and concise visitor journey but also elevated the overall look and feel of the student accommodation to be more hospitality-esqe than a dull and dreary campus as it was before.
