Stadsblokken Meinerswijk

“Stadsblokken Meinerswijk” is an approximately 300 hectare meadow landscape on the border of the Rhine river, facing the city center of Arnhem. Formerly used as an industrial site, it is now redeveloped by KondorWessels in collaboration with Buro Harro and De Zwarte Hond. In the new plan, 1% of the area will be used for housing, to fund the redevelopment. Inhabitants and tourists are invited to come over and visit the grounds, from meadow via former factory to archeological sites and back again.

Since 2018, tourists are guided through the paths and the history of the site with a wayfinding system, built with cortex steel signs and information panels. The signs use Orly Stencil, designed by Pierre Pané-Faré. It is a typeface with an indirect relation to Arnhem: It’s part of the 1992 Stencil Type Series released by OurType, the foundry of Fred Smeijers, who started his design career in Arnhem in the 1980s. The series revisits the history of stencil typefaces by creating typefaces that refer to different methods and needs involved when making stencil typefaces: cutting and punching, stencil typefaces that want to hide or show their stencil character. The information panels combine Orly with Jeremy Tankard’s Bliss typeface.