The Branded Experience Welland Sin April 1st, 2008

This project will adopt the framework of branding as a creative process and explore its effects on Montreal’s

continuous interior network. The contemporary global city is experienced as a sequence of branded spaces

that flow through the built fabric. A brand is no longer a mark of identification for the product, but for the

user. Experiential design and its impact on the urban landscape will be explored as an architectural

intervention beneath a historical public space, Square Victoria, merging the disparate worlds of formal civic

space and branded environment. The program will incorporate spaces of brand consumption and brand

production, blurring these categories and creating a space that considers branding an art form necessary to

the urban experience. This space will clarify the role of architecture within a product-oriented economy.

Premise

The extent of the branded form in architecture is manifold, ranging from the consumption of the urban

experience to the creation of corporate space. The aim of this project is to examine the outward and inward

effects of branded space and to heighten the user’s awareness of their relationship to consumer space. The

underground city is a manifestation of the contemporary advertising landscape. It is non-hierarchical, self-

organizing and disorienting. By examining Montreal’s indoor city as a site of tension between brand space

and public infrastructure, the public spaces will be cross-contaminated with the strategies and program of

retail to comment on both the contemporary design process and the state of consumer culture.

Within this context I propose an architectural intervention that both “learns from” the current retail

condition and intensifies the relationship between citizen-space and consumer-space. Rather than creating a

brand, I proposes space that unifies the concepts of branding will heighten consumers’ symbiotic

relationship with a brand’s concept and resulting experience. Several mechanisms will be explored:

1. Incorporating techniques of branding in the conceptual design process (both organizational

phenomenological approaches to retail)

2. Combining the space of consumption will merge with space of product creation in order to

reinforce the relationship of corporate identity and consumer identity.

3. Establishing a critical relationship between the exterior (above ground) condition and the

interior (below ground) condition

4. Inserting temporary recreational/public program into the underground space where a selective

mall experience will be created where activities can occur in a branded space outside the act of

shopping

Identity

Jane Pavitt, the author of Brand.New defines branding as “the process by which the values of a brand are

attached, both physically and by suggestion, to the product” (p. 26). Corporate brands and the act of

branding began as a system of product identification, which further evolved into self-marketing devices that

represent a standardized experience. The values and images associated with a brand have shifted from being

fixed identities to a social currency that forms the relationship between the brand owner and the consumer.

A brand’s image begins with its logo, and becomes expressed through products, services and most recently,

immersive architectural experiences. Architecture’s role in branding serves to extend its image through the

incorporation of its “brand DNA”, the essence of the brand that pervades its products. As many consumers

seek to identify themselves with the brands they buy, the city and its architecture become an extension of a

brand.

The most prominent examples of uniformly branded spaces on this scale are the NikeTown or

NikePark projects in Berlin (Figure 3). Nike has created a “theme park” experience allowing sports

enthusiasts to participate and become actors in the Nike’s corporate identity. In Who’s Afraid of NikeTown?,

author Friedrich von Borries sees this type of urban intervention as an additional layer, or “film that

cover[s] the entire city, and alters it.” It is as if by architecturally extending the Nike brand throughout

Berlin, the city itself has been re-branded. The Jerde Partnership, an American architecture firm that

specializes in mixed use, consumer spaces has been practising what it calls “Experiential Design” for several

years with considerable market success. Transposing many of the strategies employed by Disney and its

“Imagineers”, Jerde choreographs a “heterogeneous” mix of architectural experiences, augmenting a typical

commercial program into a theme park experience (Klingmann, 1998).

In 1972, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown studied the extents of this comparison and its

architectural influence in Learning from Las Vegas. Their work validates architectural form that is derived

not from idealist notions of space but rather the consideration of consumer response within a fabricated

environment. Several decades earlier Le Corbusier embraced the role of mass media in his many essays for

L'esprit Nouveau and nearly collaborated with Michelin Tire for his Plan Voisin de Paris (Colomina). While

both Venturi and Le Corbusier were both fascinated by the power, creativity and opportunities that “mass”

culture had to offer, advertising remains a complex field that understands and encompasses the complexities

of divergent lifestyles, trends and culture.

The current state of advertising is attempting to cope with a its own success – the very same

cluttered landscape that Venturi and Scott Brown learned from in 1972. New methods are emerging in

advertising that centre around a new balance of power shifting away from the producer/retailer to the

consumer. Seeing architecture as one of the remaining authentic experiences in the realm of advertising,

new ideas are entering the advertising lexicon such as “Being Spaces”, “Pop-Up Retail” and “Experiential

Maps” redefine what the service of retail in the city. While the mechanics of shopping is well studied, and

fully exploited, advertisers are seeking to create above and emotional connection between the consumer and

the brand. Both architecture and advertising seek to incorporate the desires of its users in an abstract yet

comprehensible form (Coates p. 163).

Storefront

Retail environments are indisputably the most active public spaces and the centres of our urban

environments (Chuihua). In recognizing the needs of the consumer and providing a participatory program,

shopping centres have become integrated into urban life in Montreal as both necessity and recreation. A

crucial element of urban retail is the storefront. More than a sign, a storefront is mediation between the

experience of the brand and the shopping environment. The RESO’s new Storefront will provide an

interface between the above ground condition and the branded experience of Montreal’s indoor city. Acting

as access point, this program provides a transition to the underground, and an above ground presence that

incorporates retail, public space and a tourist information centre. The continuity of the underground will

enable flexible re-programming that extends outward from the storefront and retracts during peak transit

times. Above all, the aim is to create a relationship between the underused and quasi-retail space of the

underground with the ordered space of the city.

In addition to consumption of brand experiences, the program for the storefront will incorporate

offices for a prominent advertising agency. The interaction between the production and consumption of

brands will create an architecture that follows the close relationships the consumer has with a brand, and

the blurring of the differentiation between brand producer and brand consumer.

Node

Square Victoria, constructed in 1813 and recently altered in 2000 is a public square that links old Montreal

to Montreal business district. Enclosed by high rise buildings, this square with Metro station linked to

underground pedestrian network. Adjacent to Old Montreal in Montreal’s “International District”, this

public space is contains two smaller stand-alone entrances to the Metro and underground network. This

historic site provides opportunity to contrast the historic and vast public space with the confusing and

labyrinthine nature of the underground pedestrian network. Square Victoria is an opportunity for formal

public space to overlap with the contemporary media experience that is the retail environment.

The underground spaces beneath Square Victoria are continuous and currently empty tunnels, reminiscent

of what architect and theoretician Rem Koolhaas calls “Junkspace”:

Junkspace seems an aberration, but it is essence, the main thing... product of the encounter between escalator and air conditioning, conceived in an incubator of sheetrock (all three missing from the history books).

Montreal’s indoor pedestrian network is an architectural instance of quasi -public space becoming

increasing dominated by corporate advertising. Users' behavioural patterns then become the generator of

the architecture/advertising strategy. Beyond simply a well structured advertising scheme, the architectural

intervention will seek ways to mediate branded space in the underground environment.

Storyboard

Retail consultants craft experiential sequences for their customers based on their understanding of the user’s

desires and the profitability of the scheme. Storyboards are created to test the sequence of events within a

design before creating the form itself. This method is frequently used in the design of themed spaces such as

casinos and resorts (Klingmann, 2007). Crucial to understanding consumerist architecture would be the

production of such sequences through photography that explain the devices employed by retail designers.

As an experience-centred industry, advertisers are extremely specific in associating emotions with their

brand and delivered through products. Borrowing this emphasis from the film industry, an architectural

product would be created around a consumer experience (Figure 1). The storyboard can be a sequence of

photographs, or collages, and will be suitable to the sequential experience of the underground.

This first step will involve the documentation of the existing underground condition in the form of a

storyboard creation of narrative sequences. Next, these experiences will be translated into a three-

dimensional computer diagram (Figure 2).

Conclusion

The field of advertising is extremely diverse and highly adaptable to our urban condition. Where there is

overlap between corporate motives and intensely designed spaces, new architecture is created that is

effective in its delivery of its message and unquestionably seductive. There is much that can be gained by

studying an architectural typology that obsessively seeks to understand the habits of its users, as well as

anticipate emotion within the consumer. When viewed critically, there is little use in debating the moral

stance of corporations that employ market researchers. The brand is a reflection of the ability for the free

market to organize society along its own terms. The critical study of branding and its impact on design

allows us to question our role as architects and our relationship with our end users. As advertising has

shifted to address the consumer’s experience, architecture must grow to understand the reality of public

space.

Committee and Resources:

Of most relevance to this topic is the specific study of advertising strategies and how they can be made

applicable to architecture. The Faculty of Management at McGill will become a valuable resource in

understanding the psychology of marketing. With respect to Montreal’s underground, there have been

numerous studies on its usage and form.

List of Primary Sources

Chuihua Judy Chung, Sze Tsung Leong, ed. Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping, Project on the City. Madrid: Taschen, 2001. A comprehensive analysis of retail space and its development, written by researchers in Harvard's Project on the City. The premise of the collection of essays is that shopping is the “last remaining public activity”. While the volume presents many ideas within the context of the market, consumerism, branding and the city, it remains closer to an assembly of relevant facts rather than a judgement on our culture. Klingmann, Anna. Brandscapes: Architecture in the Experience Economy. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007. This book aims to explain how architects can improve the quality of their architecture through an understanding larger issues in corporate branding, primarily the emergence of “The Experience Economy” a text they by Pine and Gilmour that emphasizes experience of product as the main commodity in our economy . This text summarizes the nature of advertising and marketing and suggests new approaches to considering the user in architecture. Venturi, Robert et al. Learning from Las Vegas. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1977. Learning from Las Vegas is a case study in commercial vernacular, written to question the modes of architectural communication and appropriate the tools of consumerist architecture for all programs. This text provides the basis for both Subject and Mode of Production. It presents detailed analysis of an architectural typology, and later explains how the knowledge “learned” is incorporated into their architecture. List of Secondary Sources Coates, Nigel. Guide to Ecstacity. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2003. Lefaivre, Liane. ""Populism Redux?"" In What People Want: Populism in Architecture and Design, edited by Michael Shamiyeh. Berlin: Birkhauser, 2005. Martin, Reinhold. The Organizational Complex: Architecture, Media and Corporate Space. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2003. Pavitt, Jane. Brand.New. 2000. Princeton University Press. Princeton, NJ. Rushkoff, Douglas. Coercion: Why We Listen to What "They" Say, Riverhead Books, Penguin Putnam Inc., New York, N.Y. 1999. Terzidis, Kosta. Algorithmic Architecture. Boston: Architectural Press, 2006.

Tierney, Therese. Abstract Space: Beneath the Media Surface. London: Cromwell Press, 2007. Tschumi, Bernard. Architecture and Disjunction. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994. Vernet, David and de Wit, Leontine, ed. Boutiques and Other Retail Spaces: The Architecture of Seduction. New York: Routledge, 2007.

von Borries, Friedrich. Who’s Afraid of Niketown? 2004. Episode Publishers. Rotterdam.

Figure 1. Sample storyboard from Barb Dickey’s Blade.

Figure 2. Klein bottle. UN Studio.

Figure 3. NikePark, Paris. From Brandscaping by Otto Rietwolt.