fathom Blog

Two Worlds Colliding: Branding & Architecture

Posted by devan in Architecture, Branding. 12/30/2009, 3:43 PM

If the early 1990s marked the so-called “death of the brand,” then the latter half of our present decade has seen a resurrection of sorts. Classic brands like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s flourish once again, and technology companies like Google and Apple have updated branding for a new kind of marketplace.

This renewed attention to brand might stem from the increasingly global competition that every company faces. Or maybe a down economy—always attended by more fiscally responsible consumer behavior—demands an increased focus on customer retention.

Whatever the reason, this contemporary importance of branding has begun to reach the architecture world as well. We wanted to share our experiences of the turbulence that can attend this integration of disciplines.

As design thinkers and researchers, we’ve found that the most effective way to bring branding and architecture teams into conversation is a two-step process:

First, we think deeply and creatively about the emotional relationships users have with an identity, product, or environment.

Next, we translate the terms of those relationships into insights that we deliver to architects—and product developers, marketing creatives, business owners, and so on—to incorporate into their own work. In this way, we encourage “brand thinking” across a project or organization.

Such work, however, is often easier said than done. Architectural processes traditionally do not incorporate a pre-design research component such as the type we conduct, which means we as design researchers must focus on making our case for the richness an emotional experience can bring to a designed environment.

When our research process, which includes ethnographic studies and user participation alongside more traditional branding work, can contribute to the traditional architecture process, it leads to spaces more closely connected with the users’ desired experience, as some of our case studies demonstrate.

For a different example of incorporating a new component into a well-established process, we can look to the LEED model of establishing the long-term value of increased investment up front. LEED-certified projects, which follow a strict set of guidelines, cost more and take longer to build. Over time, though, they save money (and benefit the environment) through greatly increased efficiency in resource consumption.

In the beginning, LEED advocates struggled to convince clients that incorporating LEED guidelines into the architectural process would serve their projects best in the long run.

Eventually, as the broader design community, the media, and certain leading corporations saw the benefits, the LEED certification process gained traction. Today, the green building market sees tens of billions of dollars in new projects each year.

As with the LEED guidelines, integrating our pre-design research process into the greater architectural process also demands time, resources, and a broad trust in the value of the insights. If architects and designers remain enthusiastic about incorporating emotional experiences, perhaps clients will follow suit.

But how can clients and building users, led by design researchers, possibly be of use in making architectural recommendations?

Because buildings do not stand empty or unused; rather they only function within the context of real human beings. And for good reason, architectural training doesn’t focus on the design researcher’s user-centric tools like sensory and image exercises, one-on-one interviews, and participant observation.

When the design research team can use these tools to provide insights toward the architect’s work—and when the architect can take part in the research process—then the environment can both serve its users and reinforce the emotional experience.

(Reprinted with some modification from “The Promise of Space: Branding and Architecture in Theory and in Practice,” by Christine Astorino. Design Intelligence, January/February 2010.)