dn&co. have created the name and brand identity for Fathom Architects, a new practice set up by Justin Nicholls, former partner at Make Architects and Foster+Partners. The brief was to encapsulate their curiosity, sensibility for the context of a building, and use of technology to deliver beautiful, throughly designed buildings – an approach the studio describes as “beauty through rigour.” Built on Justin’s philosophy of pushing thinking beyond the expected architectural solutions, the brand name and identity plays with two meanings of the word ‘Fathom’: as a human-scale unit used to measure depth, and the deeper understanding of a difficult problem after much thought. The new brand demonstrates their core competency — depth of thinking — and captures Justin and his team’s unique interest in challenging projects that don’t have facile, fast answers. As a practice, Fathom aims to be collaborative and inherently about the collective team rather than the ‘starchitect’.
Published
02.06.2016