Perpetuation of automobile and mall culture is not exactly forward thinking.

"brandscapes"

Finally, a new entry on the List of Words to Loathe. It may dethrone McMansion!

I would look into any large retailers that may be based in the Boston area. Most of these large companies (that have their own retail presence) will have a branding department. If you move to Philly you could work for Anthropology/Urban Outfitters which would be fun

Miles, The point is to take auto-oriented shopping destinations and transform them into pedestrian friendly, walkable places that you can arrive to by car.  Most buildings today are geared towards cars, and I don't see a point in designing some utopian pedestrian community when industry, culture, and politics give that about a 0% chance of ever happening.  Public transportation, high speed rails, small urban centers... it would be ideal, but its not a reality.  If you want reality, go look at a giant Walmart with parking to the horizon.  I think everyone, even non-architects, acknowledge that its ugly, yet we still build them.  The USA is a car culture.

Its also a consumer economy-- we don't build anything, we just buy it.  The mall culture is our culture.  I dont' want to perpetuate it per se, but guide it in a direction.  Shopping is going from a "convenience" base to an "experience" base now, where businesses want customers to stay longer.  Look at Barnes & Noble, Starbuck, Whole Foods, and even McDonalds' newer strategies.  The focus now is starting to be on quality spaces, not convenient spaces, and I think thats something worth perpetuating.

Token, the word "brandscaping" is being thrown around a lot in the literature I've read, and I can't find another word that works.

mdler, thanks.  I figured as much, but I was I hoping to find firms specializing in it.  I've found a couple online, but not many.

I spoke to a principal of Shook Kelley in Los Angeles, and it sounds pretty interesting, especially as it relates to the built environment.  Place branding is certainly something that some architects and urban designers help their clients with as part of normal practice.  (http://www.shookkelley.com/pages/urban_intro.html) 

I also recall seeing abook by an architect back East who specializes in "brandscaping"... she may have even helped coin the phrase.  I think it's a useful term descriptively, but it does have kind of oily, negative connotation to it.  Part of your job as a future practitioner: come up with a better word!

Malls ARE pedestrian thoroughfares populated by corporate brands. Existing marketing strategies include opening malls early to provide indoor exercise (walking) and other so-called "community" benefits that are really designed with only one purpose in mind: increased traffic and revenue.

Along the lines of other threads here about the social power of architecture and urban / suburban planning, and with attention towards the coming revolutionary changes in society, I find extending this system of values as a whole to be both counterintuitive and counterproductive.

Imagining / designing future uses for malls as vehicles to enhance or create sustainable communities would be far more forward looking, timely and productive.

They're pedestrian on the inside, not on the outside.  Most of the "mall" is actually just parking lot.  How would you suggest that get fixed?  I'm looking at making these and the big box stores more pedestrian, and possibly integrating public parks, while still acknowledging the car as an important factor.

"Imagining / designing future uses for malls as vehicles to enhance or create sustainable communities would be far more forward looking, timely and productive."

Most of the research I've done revolves around just that.  Still, the average American is still dependent on the car.  Anything that isn't easy to access by car isn't visited if there's an easier alternative.  Its getting to a point where malls are being built in urban contexts.  

You'll never get the scale down from where auto-mobility has put it... I can hardly imagine a local corner store Best Buy.  Big box stores will always exist.  The question is what you do with them.  For every good, urban influenced idea there's always someone that comes up with an uglier, easier to get to, more lucrative alternative.  The average person choses to buy from that place.  If they were to chose a different place, there would need to be a reason.  I believe that reason can be the brand experience.  Lots of retail businesses are using it now, and whats different here is that unlike the "convenience" economy of places like McDonalds in the past 50 years, where architecture is a place for the convenience to happen, today's "experience" economy RELIES on architecture to create an experience.

Brands function very much like communities do:  a sense of belonging, familiarity, identity.  They even define a person.

The point is they won't go away, ever, and will continue to be ugly unless we embrace them.  Community space used to be based around political and religious things, but today they are based around the consumer lifestyle.  Thats why I propose a synthesis.

"Never" and "ever" are ridiculous concepts, even more so in radically unstable and rapidly changing times.

The country is littered with derelict shopping malls that went under when mega malls and big box stores were developed. It doesn't take a genius to see that this cycle has pretty much reached it's end. You can choose to ignore economics at your will, but doing so will make your entire premise obsolete before you start.

The notion of  getting the public to, first of all, even want to invest tax dollars in establishing public transportation in suburban areas, get it through the political system (auto companies will lobby and kill it), and finally build it so that we can have smaller scale pedestrian lives (even while we're even in an energy crisis) is an equally ridiculous concept.

I personally don't see any of that happening.  Its far more realistic to work with the auto-oriented system we already have and address the problems if you actually want to accomplish something.  I'm not saying we shouldn't think ahead, but the gap between what we have now and what you want is just way too big.

Create the change you want to see. You are in the perfect place to do just that, but instead you choose to cling to an obsolete corporate-economic world view while the planet moves with increasing rapidity in a different direction.

Good luck with that.

How do you see auto-oriented life and big corporations as obsolete?  There's a clear difference between not liking something and no accepting that its a major part of life.  I'm just trying to work with what we have in a realistic manner.  

Why is it that the architectural community always looks down on you if you're not some kind of go-green, quasi-socialistic crusader for a grander tomorrow, solving world hunger and class struggles while wearing a black t-shirt?  I want to design buildings, not become a social and political force.  One of the reasons why the architectural profession is in the hole its in compared to others in our field is because most of us think we have some kind of moral duty that's somehow more important than having a paycheck to live off of. 

If thats what floats your boat, do it.  But I don't see how having these pipe dream, near-impossible objectives will do anything to change the world we currently live in.  I'd much rather create a plan for something obtainable. You know, ideas that actually get off a piece of paper.

@citizen, I think you may be referring to Anna Klingmann. She came and spoke a few years ago while I was in my undergrad. I wasn't able to go, but talking to others afterward, about one in ten liked what she had to say and the other nine thought it was a pretty depressing subject.

@Due89: "Near impossible" objectives are only near impossible because of attitudes like yours.

Imagine the world you want to live in and create it. If you are happy in a megacorporate branded autocentric world, go for it. But that particular world is the antithesis of positive change. 

I'm about halfway through her book actually.

Thanks, henrybriank.  I haven't read it, and don't know what she covers.  But the general topic of work to shape public opinion about specific places and types of places is timely.

"Smart Growth" is branding.  "New Urbanism" is branding.  "Apartment homes" is branding, and so are "Go Metro"  and "liveable communities."  People shouldn't think that focused public relations (or what some call planning-by-persuasion) is limited to the kinds of places that they don't like.  It isn't just developers putting up billboards to trumpet their latest subdivision; it's also non-profits publishing and advocating for denser, mixed-use projects linked by public transit.

Good point citizen, which reminds me that early LEED was foremost a tool to transform the green materials marketplace. Basically looking to produce green consumers rather than guide a holistic and sustainable design process.

Also, I don't know why it posted me as henrybriank. As far as I know I wanted to post as Brian Henry. I should show up as myself this time.

Probably my mistake then...

These near impossible objectives are near impossible because nobody outside of the architecture community cares.

You need to start living in reality.

Dude, you need to expand your world view. The topic of the moment is the direction of society, and everybody cares.

What is impossible for you is what you make impossible for you.

when was the last mall built? i'm guessing 2007. 

i wish there was a mall near here.  the closest one is a 30 minute train ride away from our house.

malls are cool.  cars are also cool. they don't exactly add up to lots of goodness the way they are done in america maybe but that don't mean there isn't a way they can be used.

agree with citizen that new urbanism is a huge marketing driven product.  intuitively am doubtful that consumerism is the way out of any problem.  it could be worth a shot though before dismissing it. even somethign as successful as new urbanism has hardly made a dent in creating sustainability in north america, so you know, why not?

anyway as far as the original question jon jerde has done some successful work with that sort of thing...

well, thanks mdlr for actually answering the question.

in response to everything else:  the world today is market driven, and the usa is a car nation.  neither of these two things are going away without big decisions made by people that aren't architects.  all i want to do is find a way to do them better, so the environment i live in look halfway decent.  that's all.  i'm being realistic in my goals, and the most you can accuse them of being modest.  i don't understand how improving something can not be considered "positive change."

on the side... i'm personally sick of seeing all my classmates try to solve world problems with their thesis... the whole "I want to create a building that forces upper, middle, and lower class people the interact as a community" bunch, or the "I want to bring the outside, inside, and make it sustainable... in New England" people.  I really doubt any of those projects are going to go anywhere after they present them and get their degree.

pardon me for wanting actual results.

There's two issues with 'branding' in architecture— it's "branding" and architecture.

As citizen points out, ""Smart Growth" is branding.  "New Urbanism" is branding.  "Apartment homes" is branding, and so are "Go Metro"  and "liveable communities."  People shouldn't think that focused public relations (or what some call planning-by-persuasion) is limited to the kinds of places that they don't like.  It isn't just developers putting up billboards to trumpet their latest subdivision; it's also non-profits publishing and advocating for denser, mixed-use projects linked by public transit."

While wording plays a significant part in the marketability of whatever plan you're proposing, contrived or not, there are some truths to aspects of it. While architecture is a technical field with binary problems, there's a significant artistic aspect to it with a visual and literary field. Planning, however, is frequently limited because it works in a domain with a fair amount of criticism and oversight. It relegates the practice into a position of soft science where one creates hypothesis and models based on assumptions of observed behavior.

One can create an accurate hypothetical model but those models always have significant variables in real-world applications. That's why it's called a "plan."

But back to the issue of technical versus artistic, the technical [scientific] aspects of architecture and planning can be answered in very short answers— e.g., "This rainscreen prevents 200w/m^2 of direct sunlight from entering the building envelope between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. from the months of March to October," or "This neighborhood plan provides transportation access points to 95% of the residents of real distances traveled, measure from the center road line, being approximately 1 mile or less."

The problem is that the technical aspects are not very marketable because people frequently can't make the association of a tangible real world experience and the number the technical aspect presented by the data. Walking a mile, for the sole purpose of doing non-leisure activities, might not be something a lot of people experience. Likewise, 200w/m^2 doesn't translate over too well because few have any experience with working with light intensities.

The issue with marketing and branding in architecture [and planning] is that it distorts the choices present in society that should be presented rationally and clearly. And considering transportation is a major force in planning, all things transportation should be presented with similar standards.

There are positives and negatives to urbanism, new urbanism, suburbanism and even ruralism. For instance, the tax benefits of suburban building development has largely been a race to the bottom. If we look past the cultural and social issues that are often used as the reasons for an expanding suburban environment, a larger and often silent issue is that favorable taxation policies and lack of city ordinances has been favorable to many national chains and companies.

However, the race to the bottom isn't without issues. A company may have skirted laws that would have outright prevented their establishments or taxes that would have amounted to tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars. But many of these companies are finding out that at lower and lower densities, they have less of a workforce to choose from and their workforce faces increasingly more problems with regards to housing, education and healthcare.

Conversely, urbanism's high-density arrangements that allow greater social, cultural and economic access can be ticking time bombs of social discord. And because urban environments often have multiple industries, these industries may, intentionally or unintentionally, price each other out as their respective businesses expand and contract. And these socioeconomic changes can bring substantial stress to the service-oriented economy that provides the basic essentials.

@ due89, not all improvements are positive.  better bullet is not necessarily a good thing.

it is not a surprise that many see suburbs as intrinsically bad and wonder why you don't too.  i don't have that negative view of suburbia, but the argument against settling for incremental change is easy to make, since we are in a crisis.  status quo but nicer is probably not going to do much for climate change, whatever the koch brothers want us all to believe....

due89, it's hard to believe that you actually made it to architectural grad school. Exactly which university program are you a product of?

Please pardon me for being harsh, but when I read your crap about the impossibility of "sustainability" in New England, and "big decisions" that architects have no power over, it became absolutely clear that you are utterly clueless. If all you want to do is put a pretty face on things you should switch to politics or advertising because you are going to be an utter failure when it comes to doing anything creative, imaginative or socially responsible. It is exactly this kind of attitude that created the auto-mall society you want to beautify.

Be the change you want see. Or not. The choice is yours, and apparently has already been made.

what you call 'practical' is what some of us might call lazy...namely, design without consideration of any implications your product (building, signage, display, whatever) might actually have in the world, as well as acceptance of a status quo world order and your own small part in it.  most architects aren't going to be too friendly towards this approach, since we have accepted a social responsibility as part of our discipline.  so basically, you're in the wrong forum.  talk to an audience of advertising people or real estate people or people who work in the entertainment industries and you might get different answers.

you're probably one of those rare people who grew up in the suburbs and liked it, and went into architecture because you wanted to do something cool and creative and fun and not too intellectually demanding.  but you will find, if you ever actually try to do the kind of branding work you're looking for, that the people who do it well are not that different from your classmates and are considering many different aspects and layers of experience, and even the world's problems, in their design work.  design is hard, whether you're doing a sign or a toothbrush or a park or a building, and it's pretty much impossible to do well if you're not willing to consider the problems that need solving.  so--if this doesn't interest you, avoid the creative professions altogether.

Its also a consumer economy-- we don't build anything, we just buy it.

to hear a young person say this un-critically sends chills down my spine.  you do realize that by accepting this, you are admitting the unsustainability and eventual collapse of your society, right?

before you get that mba, spend a few months waiting tables, save up some money, and take a page from steve jobs--spend a year traveling the world.  seriously.  it may sound 'impractical', but will be the best thing you'll ever do for yourself.

Well THANK YOU ALL VERY MUCH for helping me find branding architecture companies.  You've all been a great help.

"what you call 'practical' is what some of us might call lazy...namely, design without consideration of any implications your product (building, signage, display, whatever)..."

thats not at all what my thesis is about.  its about taking a brand's identity and reflecting it in architecture-- an often under-designed aspect of a lot of buildings, along with parking lots.  the point is to get rid of the signs and that kind of thing.  read my posts.

all i want to do is take something that people design every day and make it work better.

In response to sustainability in New England, thats not what the project was about.  I was criticizing the project which currently only works in the summer.

I'm actually a decent designer and graduated within the top 10 in my major, so I honestly don't know how to take your comments seriously when you say I shouldn't be in the design profession.

I know this forum is heavy on theory, but I didn't expect it to be completely intolerant to other people's ideas just because they don't line up with your world view.  The idea seems perfectly fine with my thesis advisors and classmates.  I suppose all the architecture books I've been reading for my thesis are also by people who don't belong in the design profession.

You could do without the rudeness.  

i didn't mean to be rude, but i do think you are aspiring to something without a lot of depth, and certainly not enough depth (in my view) for a graduate-level program.

in response to your question, however, try a place like ideo.

also, you might consider an in-house design department for a retail company--many companies have them--tiffany, coach, ralph lauren, etc...where they design stores all over the world that are in line with the company image. 

"taking a brand's identity and reflecting it in architecture":

"I'm actually a decent designer and graduated within the top 10 in my major, so I honestly don't know how to take your comments seriously when you say I shouldn't be in the design profession."

You could try taking them seriously.

As to the "decent designer" part, after what you've written here, that is not easy to visualize. You have turned down everything offered because it does not fit into your preconceived notions and belief system. Real designers are not bound by such restrictions. That is why you are headed toward the wrong profession.

get off your high horse

Yes, Due89, it's unfortunately true that the forums here on Archinect tend to skew away from enlightened discussion and more toward op-ed hyperbole.  (I said tend because rational discourse does rear it's lovely head now and then.) 

And, as the poster who actually named two (well, one-and-a-half) firms doing this kind of work: you're welcome. 

Without knowing more detail, I think this is a terrific (and timely) thesis topic. 

neigh.

What school do you go to?

I can see this discussion has turned into a full fledged fight, but Due89, I think there may be a need to critically analyse what you actually want to do. There may be a lot of positive criticism in this forum that you could use to strengthen your proposition.

The important idea behind a thesis (and at that, an architectural graduate thesis) is to challenge a conventional notion or understanding of an idea. I think what a lot of people here are trying to say is that maybe your thesis could be more loaded, for the lack of a better term at 1:30am, if it questions it own premise. For example, would a mall need a 'brandscape', when you have adverts for commodities surrounding you all the time <Facebook ads/Google Ads/TV/ the pesky little advert that shows up right before watching a news report on CNN/Amazon coupons landing up in your mailbox>? Would you need a mall at all when you could actually go somewhere locally to buy exactly what you want after viewing this virtual brandscape ten times over? 

These questions are just off the top of my head - but I am sure if you brainstorm a bit, you would be able to come up with questions that you would probably not know the answer to yourself.

Challenge yourself in your own thesis. I am sure a thesis presentation that sparks an intense debate (for the better of course) is way more interesting than a review where questions are met with answers and that's the end of it. 

I appreciate the constructive criticism, citizen & citizenwalker, and perhaps I haven't explained my thesis as well as I could have.  I wasn't planning on having to defend it.  There are a lot of things I've taken into consideration.  Most of my research has been centered around blending ideas that are most defined in these two books:

Retrofitting Suburbia

Brandscapes:  Architecture in the Experience Economy

I've talked about Brandscapes, but Retrofitting Suburbia is a book about stabilizing the suburbs so that they are sustainable (not in the green sense of the word) in the long term.  Sprawl happened (and is still happening) in rings, and the older ones tend to fall into disrepair.  Along with the rise of suburbs came the commute:  work in the city, live in the suburbs.  This gave rise to roadside convenience, like strip malls.  What suburbia lacks is what the author calls "third places"-- basically places that aren't home or work.  Most of these today are actually commercial strips.  Other sources of mine (like this one) tend to agree with the fact that shopping areas are today's most prominent form of public/community space, taking the place of civil and religious spaces. The book looks at a variety of projects that try to establish "third places" in suburbs.  What this amounts to is walkable, commercial and residential neighborhoods, which accomodate the car but encourage more pedestrian activity.

Other books I've read are on parking and the reasons why our culture puts up with dedicating so much space to it.  By finding out the reasons why it exists in the state it is (and its much more beyond the obvious answers to this question), I hope to find ways to make it work in a different way-- possibly by combining certain suburban retrofit strategies, as well as brandscaping (marketing is actually a major reason for why parking is the way it is).

On the Brandscaping end of things, other people have written things besides Klingman.  One of the most important things about brandscaping is that it turns a store into a stage and a lifestyle-- turning the shopping experience into something very much like the choreographed experience you'd get when you step into a cathedral.  Look at places like Niketown, or some of BMW's buildings (Zaha's included).

Because shopping spaces have become the community/public spaces (although public is a term I use loosely), it only makes sense that the experience should be more important in today's world.  Community spaces create a sense of identity to those who inhabit them.  Creating an a brand is the same thing-- people identify with it and aspire to live the lifestyle of those who are perceived to use the brand.  Its economically motivated, yes, but like it or not, its reality.  I personally don't have a problem with it.

McDonalds in this case is catching on-- some of the McCafe's they're building are gorgeous (at least by fast food standards).  They don't just want to be a place where people buy food, they want to be a place where people would be inclined to stay for a while (the opposite of what initially made McDonalds successful).  The atmosphere and the act of being somewhere is becoming integral in today's "experience economy".  What makes the different here isn't the product:  its the architecture, and the experience of buying a product.  Other examples of places that have been using this philosophy to some degree are Starbucks, Whole Foods, and Barnes & Noble.  I'd personally like to take it a step further.

This is also a perfect opportunity to implement Suburban retrofitting strategies and create a new form of community/public space for suburban areas, as suburbia is the worst when it comes to big box stores with signs pretty much everywhere.  The project I'll actually be producing will be on a slightly smaller scale, (hypothetically) replacing the Fresh Pond Mall in Cambridge MA.  It will be based around a Whole Foods anchor and have more of every-day-necessities type buildings (food instead of ipods), providing an experience for food shoppers with related stores and possibly civil and residential uses.

I don't really want to spend too much time trying to validate my own interests with people on the internet, but I hope that sheds some more light on the research I'm undertaking.  Any further and I'd just be reword in full my entire thesis thus far.

I do have an interest in this, and would like to work with things like it in the future.  I don't necessarily want to work in the design department of some chain, because those just leads to cookie cutter, uninspiring designs.  My understanding is they usually outsource that stuff initially when it needs to be creative and then keep it going internally afterwards.  I might be wrong.

Anyway, thats some more detail.  Hope it clears some things up.