360 Degree Experience

To follow up on recent looks at the retail environments of both Starbucks and Nau, here's an article from BusinessWeek underlining the significance of "designing for the complete experience," and in effect demarcating fertile territory between architecture and marketing:

There is still one frontier that remains wide open: experience innovation. This is the only type of business innovation that is not imitable, nor can it be commoditized, because it is born from the specific needs and desires of your customers and is a unique expression of your company's DNA. Yet the design of an experience is often overlooked in the rush to market.

One need look no further than a NYT article from Wednesday's paper about the re-branding of the Le Méridien hotel chain (hotel design covered here earlier; travel being an obvious and rich place to look for "experience innovation") to see how this latter-day gesamtkunstwerk approach draws on broad, disparate cultural influences to become something in excess of architecture or event-planning:

A “cultural curator,” Jérôme Sans, founder of Paris’s exhibition space Palais de Tokyo, has been retained by the hotel to oversee a range of amenities, including creating programs with six institutions, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Shanghai and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. Mr. Sans is also developing in-house amenities like business breakfast menus by the celebrity chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten; specialty Illy coffee drinks; and a Méridien scent, LM01, by the French perfume company Le Labo.

What of the "cultural curator" role described above? Wouldn't it be interesting if architects and even planners did more of the same? Perhaps there's some poetry lost in the segregation of responsibilities.

In addition to perfume and coffee, the hotel chain has commissioned the composition of a "distinct sound" for its elevators, lobby and rooms. In lieu of a chocolate on the pillow at night, hotel staff leave a book of fairy tales instead.

“We’re trying to create a chic culture of discovery,” said Eva Ziegler, senior vice president for Le Méridien brand, “where the sophistication of art, architecture, and cuisine are available to travelers in a way that is subtle yet refined.”

As Sans points out in an article in the IHT from last fall, "Culture is not just deluxe. For once, companies understand that dealing with culture is a key issue, and it needn't be intimidating."

In other words, focusing on user experience, which naturally has cultural dimensions, is not additive to the design process. Big and little touches, such as the design of a hotel's key cards, are all part of a whole:

Key cards will be decorated with artwork, and the hotel hopes that people will collect them. Guests will also get separate cards with information about exhibits at nearby cultural institutions that are partners of Le Méridien.

Above, one of Le Méridien's new key card designs.

I mention these things because I think they're fascinating; but also because I think there's an interesting possible overlap for architects and even planners here. There is the odd architecture firm that already does things like event planning or brand identity, and plenty of architects design furniture, but how many do perfume, or oversee menu choices? Examples of broader and more (for lack of better terms) explicitly experiential approaches to design in the planning and architecture world seem quite rare. Maybe you know of some.

Comments

[mcneli]

I was somewhat surprised to hear this news of Le Meridien's latest effort, as there had been such fanfare over the "Art+tech" opening in Minneapolis a few years back. That property is no longer LM, yet the Le Meridien Turin is still called Art + Tech, and I thought Vienna was also, and though the website does highly that hotel's state of the art technology, it is not called Art + Tech. So as a consumer, I am a bit confused, and as a brandwatcher I am hoping they get everything straightened out.
I also tend to disagree with David Kaufmann that LM is a stodgy fuddy-duddy. Has he been to the midtown Le Parker Meridien? Its handsome and stylish from entrance to rooms, from its art-filled lobby to packed restaurants. Its way more design-conscious than a lot of other hotel brands, but the author makes it sound like Philippe Starck was redoing the Pierre.

[Niki Buchen]

Le Méridien's new key card designs remind me to the Art Nouveau which was actual about 1900 in Europa :-) Greetings, Niki

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[Paris Hotels]

"a chic culture of discovery"- I love it! I am so tired of the bold, and honestly a bit foolish commercials and branding, I think we lost the depth of the experience through the last centuries and it would be great to get some of it back.