La Unión Organization by Romas Stukenberg

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CLIENT

A Mex­i­can cit­i­zen orga­ni­za­tion with 600 mem­bers work­ing to advance the social, eco­nom­ic, and cul­tur­al rights of the neigh­bor­hood of Sun­set Park in Brook­lyn, NY—one of New York City’s largest Mex­i­can immi­grant neighborhoods.

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BRIEF

To gear the orga­ni­za­tion’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion tools towards bold­er impact; strength­en­ing self-con­fi­dence of the entire project and thus, facil­i­tat­ing the acqui­si­tion of nov­el part­ners and par­tic­i­pants. To atten­u­ate the orga­ni­za­tion’s “Mex­i­can sig­na­ture” in order to uni­fy the neigh­bor­hood’s entire eth­nic and cul­tur­al diver­si­ty and enable broad­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. And to make the orga­ni­za­tion’s efforts tan­gi­ble, to build com­mu­ni­ca­tion tools acces­si­ble for all participants.

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APPROACH

Being the orga­ni­za­tion’s most con­cise claim, the notion of “Unión” was pre­des­tined to become a res­o­nant word­mark that rep­re­sents the com­mu­ni­ty as a whole. The word­mark’s inte­ri­or was opened to car­ry vari­able infor­ma­tion, which payed trib­ute to the indi­vid­ual par­tic­i­pants and their cul­tur­al back­grounds. The final sym­bol mir­rors both Sun­set Park’s street blocks with their shared back­yard inte­ri­ors, as well as the way humans form orga­ni­za­tions by “shar­ing a com­mon ethos” with­out los­ing their indi­vid­ual cul­tur­al identity.

Romas created a contextualized design proposal within an ongoing urban planning done by a multi-disciplinary design team of international students. Core to this process was comprising analysis, based on sociological and urban investigation, carried out by the students. Thus, the design process didn’t start with a brief but with its formulation. Romas’ aim hereby was to strengthen La Unión’s organizational structure by establishing a symbol for social cohesion, which embraces a maximum of cultural diversity while still being focused on common objectives such as improving life quality in Sunset Park. — Imke Plinta and Ruedi Baur, instructors at University of Arts Geneva