Lely Builds North Amer­i­ca Cam­pus with One-of-a-Kind Archi­tec­tur­al Signage

Lely is a leader in robot­ics and data man­age­ment for dairy pro­duc­ers. The com­pa­ny was found­ed in the Nether­lands, and it’s no sur­prise that Lely felt a con­nec­tion to the Dutch com­mu­ni­ty of Pel­la, Iowa, when select­ing its site for their North Amer­i­can head­quar­ters. Pel­la is a small town with deep roots in agri­cul­ture and man­u­fac­tur­ing and is now home to anoth­er agri­cul­tur­al indus­try leader.

As an inno­va­tor in improv­ing ways to milk, feed, house, and care for cows, Lely need­ed a mod­ern head­quar­ters that reflect­ed their trend-set­ting style. Designed by Sub­stance Archi­tec­ture, the Lely head­quar­ters has a sleek glass, met­al, and con­crete façade. The archi­tects also planned for dynam­ic exte­ri­or archi­tec­tur­al sig­nage that was as inno­v­a­tive as Lely itself.

Exte­ri­or Archi­tec­tur­al Sig­nage for Lely’s North Amer­i­ca Campus

“The team at Sub­stance Archi­tec­ture had the vision to place a giant illu­mi­nat­ed logo sign on the front of the building’s glass wall, and we had to fig­ure out how to make it hap­pen,” says Pat Mesch­er, Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Man­ag­er for Lat­i­tude. ​“Our sig­nage experts craft­ed a com­plete­ly cus­tom solu­tion to attach the sign to the met­al mul­lions between the glass pan­els. It took a lot of plan­ning, but the fin­ished look is clean and crisp.” 

On the ground, the team designed anoth­er one-of-a-kind sign. Lely head­quar­ters faces High­way 163, and from the road, the words ​“farm­ing inno­va­tors” seems to rest on the grass. ​“The goal was to cre­ate an illu­mi­nat­ed sign that appeared to float above the grass,” Mesch­er says. ​“Through clever plan­ning and engi­neer­ing, the pro­duc­tion team deliv­ered big.”

And we mean big, the sign spans more than 83 feet and each let­ter is almost 5‑foot tall. Each let­ter is sup­port­ed by a steel tube that can with­stand high winds and hous­es the elec­tri­cal com­po­nents need­ed to illu­mi­nate the let­ters. The alu­minum let­ters are 12-inch­es deep. The face is made from a 3/16-inch white translu­cent poly­car­bon­ate with inter­nal white LED illu­mi­na­tion that real­ly makes the sign pop at night.

In addi­tion to this unique sig­nage, more tra­di­tion­al exte­ri­or sig­nage exists as well. A large mon­u­ment sign wel­comes guests as they turn onto the cam­pus as well as direc­tion­al sig­nage and nec­es­sary park­ing iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. With the cre­ative sig­nage, comes the nec­es­sary signage.

More Than Cor­po­rate Signage

“Yes, we’re a design and sig­nage com­pa­ny,” Mesch­er says. ​“But we’re so much more than just room and build­ing signs. At times we are tru­ly craft­ing archi­tec­tur­al art pieces that com­ple­ment and enhance a build­ing or a space.”

With design­ers, fab­ri­ca­tors, and installers all on the same team and col­lab­o­rat­ing togeth­er, we are able to cre­ate one-of-a-kind archi­tec­tur­al signage.

Bring us your ideas. We’ll bring the skill to engi­neer a solu­tion, pro­duce it, and install it. From ideation to instal­la­tion, we have your back.

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