The Bahá'í Temple of South America is a worship site in Chile that is intended to serve all, irrespective of background, religion, gender or social standing. Hariri Pontarini Architects enlisted Entro to design the wayfinding, regulatory, and identification signage for the temple path, entrance wall, and visitor centre.
The signage program is both minimalistic and impactful, while speaking to the architectural form of the temple. The temple walls are made up of nine curved leaves comprised of a combination of cast glass and stone. A series of sacred quotations are CNC carved out of marble on the inside of these leaves, giving expression to the faith. Intended to inspire thoughtfulness and reflection from visitors, our solution ensured that the overall display of the quotes worked well with the curve of the leaves and the nature of the environment – one of pause and individual prayer.
Often in the bidding process, we are called upon by architects to showcase their proposed architectural design concept in an appropriate and visually impressive way. Such was the case when Hariri Pontarini Architects was still one of the competing architecture firms to design the temple. Entro created a book that used a subtle yet engaging design, allowing HPA’s beautiful conceptual images to speak for themselves and outline their concept for the future Bahá'í Temple.
The completed Temple has been described as “one of architecture’s most ambitious undertakings” by the Globe and Mail and we are delighted to have supported such an iconic structure.