Fabricar

Exhibition

How do we give shape to an extensive body of content about manufacturing in Barcelona? To test this, a museographic scheme was developed for one of the new Labour Museum’s galleries while simultaneously working as the architect on the rehabilitation (see the Black Dye House project). The challenge was to give content and form to a museography capable of shaping the museum’s discourse and narrative. The space, called FABRICAR, was dedicated to the craft of making in Barcelona: from hand-stitched Indian textiles and artisanal shoemaking to mass-produced automobiles. Galvanized-steel panels structured the space, suggesting production processes; the museography appeared as subtractions from those walls, reliefs, printed photographs, and cutouts, creating layered moments of interpretation. The panels acted as both raw material and storytelling device, blurring the line between exhibition object and architectural element. The exhibition unfolded as a temporary intervention inside the Fabra de Creació within the Fabra i Coats industrial complex. The result was a tactile, process-driven display that invited visitors to trace the city’s manufacturing history through material, form, and narrative.

Client: Museu d’Història de Barcelona
Museography design: Patricia Tamayo
Graphic design: RUN design
Date: 2023
Photography: Pol Viladoms

This project develops the exhibition design and graphic identity for the MUHBA Centre d’Interpretació del Treball. The proposal uses typography as both a narrative and spatial tool, drawing from Barcelona’s historical type foundries and printing industries to construct a visual language rooted in the city’s industrial heritage.

The graphic concept is rooted in typography, drawing its identity from Barcelona’s historical printing and type-foundry tradition. The exhibition’s typographic system is built using typefaces selected from original specimen catalogs published by local foundries such as Neufville and Richard Gans. Historically used by printers to select and compose type, these catalogs form the archival basis of the project’s visual language and give each exhibition area a distinct character linked to the city’s industrial heritage.

Each exhibition area is conceived with its own typographic identity. The selected typefaces are not interchangeable, but chosen for their historical relationship to the professions and forms of labor represented in each theme. Sourced from Barcelona’s historic type foundries, these fonts were originally used in specific working contexts, allowing typography to convey the character, rhythm, and social meaning of each space.

While the exhibition panels are constructed from metal, selected key themes are highlighted through an additional translucent ribbed layer applied over the surface. This subtle material intervention establishes a visual hierarchy, drawing attention to pivotal moments within the narrative while maintaining the industrial character of the exhibition as a whole.