Product Description

This is a one-liner: Architecture as imprint, as brand, as the new media of transformation - of places, communities, corporations, and people.In the twenty-first century, we must learn to look at cities not as skylines but as brandscapes and at buildings not as objects but as advertisements and destinations. In the experience economy, experience itself has become the product: we're no longer consuming objects but sensations, even lifestyles. In the new environment of brandscapes, buildings are not about where we work and live but who we imagine ourselves to be. In "Brandscapes", Anna Klingmann looks critically at the controversial practice of branding by examining its benefits, and considering the damage it may do.Klingmann argues that architecture can use the concepts and methods of branding - not as a quick-and-easy selling tool for architects but as a strategic tool for economic and cultural transformation. Branding in architecture means the expression of identity, whether of an enterprise or a city; New York, Bilbao, and Shanghai have used architecture to enhance their images, generate economic growth, and elevate their positions in the global village. Klingmann looks at different kinds of brandscaping today, from Disneyland, Las Vegas, and Times Square - prototypes and case studies in branding - to Prada's superstar-architect-designed shopping epicenters and the banalities of Niketown.But beyond outlining the status quo, Klingmann also alerts us to the dangers of brandscapes. By favoring the creation of signature buildings over more comprehensive urban interventions and by severing their identity from the complexity of the social fabric, Klingmann argues, today's brandscapes have, in many cases, resulted in a culture of the copy. As experiences become more and more commodified, and the global landscape progressively more homogenized, it falls to architects to infuse an ever more aseptic landscape with meaningful transformations.How can architects use branding as a means to differentiate places from the inside out - and not, as current development practices seem to dictate, from the outside in? When architecture brings together ecology, economics, and social well-being to help people and places regain self-sufficiency, writes Klingmann, it can be a catalyst for cultural and economic transformation.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #358210 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 378 pages

-Michael Sorkin
"In the endlessly recombinant formats spawned by globalization, the meaning of architecture is forced to negotiate a slippery territory between identity, representation, and branding. With a rigorously jaundiced eye, Anna Klingmann unpacks this new place, offering a fascinating tour of both its perils and its possibilities."

-Keller Easterling, Associate Professor, Yale University School of Architecture
"Heir to the heraldry of ancient kingdoms, today's experience economies attempt to link the caprice of themed environments with thoroughly rationalized market strategies. As various strata of space making become increasingly reliant on psychic signaling as symbolic capital, the architecture profession indulges in another of its perennial crises about authenticity and meaning that never existed. Klingmann's Brandscapes allows us to eavesdrop on this soul-searching, but she also whispers, in aside, 'Where's the tragedy?' Indeed, she argues that commodified desire may only give designers more precise and penetrating control over business plans and urban politics now under the affable spell of brand longing."

About the Author
Anna Klingmann, an architect and critic, is the founder and principal of KL!NGMANN, an agency for architecture and brand building in New York. Her work has been published in AD Magazine, Daidalos, Architectural Record, Architecture d'Aujourd'hui, and other periodicals.

Customer Reviews

Eye-opening study on branding
The mall where you shop, the coffee shop where you take your breaks, the museum that you visit - wherever you go, you are walking through a "brandscape," or branded world. Anna Klingmann describes this aesthetic experience in her eye-opening study of branding in all its forms, with a special focus on architecture. Offering a unique perspective, Klingmann breaks down the strategy behind well-known brands such as Disney, Apple and Starbucks. She also parses the experiences that brandmakers create everywhere from cruise ships to casinos to that "urban entertainment district" where you might have suffered your latest attack of brand overload. Klingmann's text meanders at times, yet her trenchant analysis is rewarding. getAbstract recommends this book to anyone seeking a perceptive analysis of branding strategies - with an unusual recognition of how architecture and landmarks serve to generate a brand image.