Friday, March 27, 2009

Branding & Architecture

As a strategy, branding differentiates one brand from the others. Through various prospects, such as the visual identity and the retail environment of a product, branding is able to reinforce the consumers' impressions to a product. The need for branding has become prevalent in the past decade worldwide. Many fashion brands hire famous architects to design their flagship stores around the globe.

As brand-name stores in major cities over the world get bigger and bigger, design of the retail space goes beyond being a billboard for the brand image. In fact, multi-level façade that front a city corner or a plaza, present another realm of possibilities to interact with the brand. For instance, with its white glass façade, the Louis Vuitton building conjures up an image of a "stalagmite" in the city on one of the most prominent corners in New York. Interestingly, this particular image created with such a recognizable brand becomes inseparable with the city context and in turn with the city brand itself.

LV New York, a monumental crystalline stalagmite in the city, located at the corner of 57th Street and 5th avenue in Manhattan.

1 comment:

jessica said...

Wow,a crystalline stalagmite looks really fascinating.
But as long as it's in the Big Apple,there seems to be less fascination of it. It is the way it should be.