Academy Wall

Academy Name Recognition Wall
Client: Albuquerque Academy High School
Location: Albuquerque, New Mexico

The design underlines the school’s value of individual diversity and campus community within an installation that will continuously grow. The wall highlights the names of individuals, while also grouping each name within a larger framework. While the names are organized alphabetically and by year, there is also overlap with immediately adjacent years to reinforce the strong relationships formed between students of different years. The names are inscribed on planks that vary in size and shift to create this overlap.

The bowing form of each name plank is derived from the arches found across campus. The organization of the stacked name planks reflects the predominant building material on campus, brick. The plank layout is based on very simple rules that can be easily reproduced when new names need to be added to the installation. As new names are added and the installation grows, these rules will serve as a template for the next portion’s layout.

The scheme establishes nodes along a line that runs straight through campus. each node contains a decade worth of names. The line is not fixed to a particular building or structure. It is directly anchored to the variegated topography of the school’s land and provides another way to tie the campus together.