Kössen Wayfinding: Inside Andrea Gassner's Stitched Sign System

Atelier Andrea Gassner's Kössen wayfinding stitches copper cross-stitch lettering into warm plaster at the new Education Center Kössen.

Walk the corridors of the new Education Center Kössen in Tyrol and the walls read back at you. The signage is built letter by letter from a copper cross-stitch, each character a small woven sculpture held slightly off the plaster. Warm light rakes across the surface and doubles every letterform in shadow, so the walls carry two texts at once: one stitched, one cast by the day itself. The letters are custom-produced in pearl copper, their woven geometry catching light at every angle, and the stencil-like openness of each glyph keeps the hand of the plaster visible between the stitches.

A stitched system for Kössen wayfinding

The studio drew its alphabet from the region's own craft language. The cross motif, long used in Tyrolean historical craftsmanship, becomes the construction unit for letters, numerals, and icons: every glyph is a field of X-shaped stitches, dense enough to read from across the hall and open enough that the wall shows through. The same unit scales from a small room code to building-height lettering without changing its logic, so a corridor sign and a facade sign speak the same dialect. Numerals and icons get the same treatment, and the signage oscillates between two and three dimensions: read flat at a glance, it reveals its depth the moment you step closer.

Material does the heavy lifting. Rough, porous plaster in a warm natural tone meets custom-produced characters in pearl copper, the metal's warmth answering the wall's. Because the letters stand off the surface, light and shadow turn the walls into a second display that shifts as the day moves. Outside, the theme continues at a larger scale, with building signage precisely milled into the wooden slats of the facade. Ornament here is never decoration for its own sake; the studio treats it as narrative woven into the architecture. The result is a Kössen wayfinding system that reads as craft first and signage second.

See more from Atelier Andrea Gassner on the studio's website.

The project was completed in 2025 for the municipality of Kössen, inside pedevilla architects' new education building.