The circle plays a significant role in the new family center of the Nenzing community—whether in the fairy-tale-like architecture with its rounded arches on windows and doors, or in the guidance system featuring pictograms and elements specifically designed around circles. The facility is called "allesamt." This name, developed during a workshop with the client, has a pleasant ring, feels familiar, and conveys the essence of the community's vision: inclusiveness. It welcomes all the village's children, as well as their parents. The "allesamt" lettering is prominently placed on the building's street-facing edge. The seemingly random spacing between the letters—both large and small—mirrors the rhythm of the façade's design, transforming the name into a logo and emphasizing its phonetic charm.

Pictograms as Play
For concise and memorable room labeling, the center uses names derived from local community parcels and an abbreviation-based counting rhyme familiar to children:

"Be La Gu – Ro Ha Ru – Mo Ma Hei – und du bisch frei!"

These two-letter terms designate the various functions of the rooms in the building. However, it's the combination with graphic symbols that makes them easy to remember for both children and adults. To draw attention to this sign system and encourage playful interaction, changeable pictograms have been installed at child-friendly heights. For example, in the central dining area, colorful discs on a plate invite rearrangement into shapes like flowers or emojis. In the sleeping areas, there are eyes that can open and close. In the sports and activity room, a spinning soccer ball is featured, while the oasis area showcases letters "riding" on waves.

Summed Up
The building is spatially organized into four diagonally offset "houses" running from west to east. To aid orientation, the main entrances and rooms for the three different child groups are marked in the primary colors red, blue, and green. Wayfinding begins even before reaching the building: in the nearby underpass, large dots on walls and ceilings grab attention. Additional dots appear as floor markings on sidewalks, in the parking lot, and along the path to the center.

The sign design by Atelier Andrea Gassner seamlessly integrates visual and verbal elements into the architectural concept. Here too, the playful, colorful guidance system fits naturally into the overall design, adding an imaginative accent and extending the story of this new communal living space in a creative way. The overarching goal is to significantly enhance the identification and connection to this positive space for children and families in Nenzing.

Showing neither trepidation nor any form of banal showmanship the blocky new building by Boltshauser Architekten on the slopes of the hill occupied by the convent gives the existing buildings a modern stamp. The vertical plane draws its strength from the distinctive layering of the building in storeys above the plateau and the basement floors, which are visibly anchored in the slope. Through the privileged position on the plateau two almost complementary visual axes are established to the east the mountains, to the west Lake Lucerne. The design concept for finding the way around the building is based on this complementary pair and uses the semantics of the words “Berg” (mountain) and “See” (lake) to facilitate orientation in the principal directions inside the building.

These terms are subtly reflected by the typography and layout. While the numbers, symbols and lettersthat refer to the lake side are hollowedout, like vessels, those that relate to the side of the building facing the mountain are full and corporeal. On the different storeys the information about which rooms are to be found on the respective floor is mounted in two lines: the word “Berg” is placed above the line with the room numbers, whereas the word “See” is positioned below thenumbers.

A high-quality typeface family with different weights was chosen for the numbers and the lettering – ranging from the classic Antique with bold capitals to sans serif Linear Antiqua – and was used flexibly. The design is intended to reflect the dignity of this order of nuns thatis more than 150years old while also meeting the need for legibility and a contemporary aesthetic. To employ the same language as the architecture the materialisation harmonises with the canon of materials and colours used in the building. The lettering for the outdoor signage on the trass lime facades is made of sanded and galvanised iron, while inside the building the lettering, which is mounted on a variety of materials, is made of colourless matt acrylic glass. The typographical layout is generally axial and conveys a sense of calm and serenity. The plans that help you identify your location and to find your way around the building have a surprisingly unfussy and unornamented character. They resemble tabular typesetting, which, thanks to the use of lines, almost automatically transforms into a cross-section through building, while at the same time providing the overview and orientation required.