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In the Spring of 1998, Beverly Montgomery began the renovation of a building which housed her advertising agency, Montgomery and Partners. The intended rebranding was based upon an informal drawing by Donald Trump's renown architect, Der Scutt. The structure was located adjacent a community airport in scenic Reading Pennsylvania.
As Montgomery was an advertising agency serving a diverse range of accounts, they necessarily used different media for different applications including print, radio, video, and the then burgeoning Internet. With this in mind, among the other interactive elements that I designed for the building was a graphic and sculptural identity communicating traditional and new media approaches to advertising. Using the idea that "materials and technology are the palette of ideas," the thought was to create a sculptural marquee where each letter of "MONTGOMERY" would be different structurally and texturally with the emphasis placed on the unique identity of a specific material. For example the transparency of glass, the mass associated with granite, the lightness and futuristic sense of titanium mesh, the solidity of brick, traditional feelings of verdigris on bronze, and so on. In order to help sell the concept, I created a number of permutations of the animated logo that you see on these pages.
Ultimately only a "T" was constructed as a presentation element and the full sign was never built. Dividing the North and South panels of the marquee were to be four vertical elements of bright blue “neon” tubing. Slightly recessed, it would have been visible as people drove by, by line-of-sight from a distance, and by the diffuse glow which would surround the object during many of the foggy evenings common to that area. The letters were to have been between sixteen to twenty-four inches in height and were to have started five feet from the ground. There were a number of ideas that were actually built. The computer controlled interactive lighting of an interior hallway and an blue “neon” exterior, along with a unique hallway wall and lighting treatment are shown on the “Images” page.
Peter Terezakis
May 1998, NYC
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