Brand Avenue

An Olympic Sense of Place

In advance of Friday's meeting of the International Olympic Committee--generating outsize amounts of buzz for the Obamas' involvement in the pitch of their home city--the logos and selected videos from the four candidate cities: Chicago, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro, and Tokyo.

Chicago:
Madrid: Rio de Janeiro: Tokyo:

Regardless of all the other ramifications of something as massive as the Olympics, I find their marketing completely fascinating. (Some earlier examples of my enthusiasm for this topic here and here.) It is, among so many other things, a gargantuan exercise in place branding, and a massive projection of local qualities--culture, geography, language--to a global audience. What are the graphics, sounds, colors, that convey a sense of place that is, at once, both specific and universal? Separate from logistics, architecture, and politics, how do you package, express, and demonstrate something as complex and ever-changing as a city of millions, in a supposedly homogenizing world? Even without the Olympics, what are these four world cities' brands?

Britain A to Z

Following reports that an Australian graphic designer "found" an entire alphabet of letters on Google Earth in just six months, news emerges about an injured English picture researcher who did the same thing, using satellite imagery of the United Kingdom, in just 15 hours.

Together the images provide meditative fodder on different forms of urban development, the hidden texts of the built environment, and the image technology that allows us to read them.

More of the aerial alphabet of Britain, here. The Australian version, here.

Laneway Neighbors

A quick look at a great idea: a microhousing concept for Vancouver called Lanefab. More than just a hip-looking infill housing scheme, it's one that is uniquely suited to the specific urban fabric of Vancouver, which apparently has an extensive network of alleys, aka laneways.

The concept plumbs the possibilities of new municipal legislation in that city that legalizes the conversion of garages and sheds into secondary housing units. It's a great concept, and it ties into a few things I've hit on before, out of a generalized curiosity about alleys, and the roles they play as public space and transportation route: what potentials do they hold? How could they be transformed? Need they be decrepit and utilitarian, or could they be play another role?

Lanefab, founded by a carpenter and a designer, aims to realize those potentials through its low-impact, compact home designs, specially suited to tight alley sites. In a dense, burgeoning city like Vancouver, the need for such a product is apparent.

 

“Vancouver’s lane system [presents] a real opportunity,” says [Lanefab founder] Davidson, who five years ago founded the Dynamic Cities Project, a nonprofit organization designed to help communities respond to the challenges of climate change and oil depletion. “I think between seventy and ninety thousand lots in the city are now open to laneway housing.”

That's a lot. Now multiply that across all the North American cities with languishing, neglected, eclectic systems of alleyways threading through their old neighborhoods. Even in cities where the population has long fled, think about how a radical reconsideration of the alley could play a part in changing a place (not to mention the perceptions about that place).

Check out some Lanefab prototypes here, and check out some not-so-distant cousin-type projects, here. Also check out Smallworks, another Vancouver company poised to fill--literally--this interesting niche.

(Earlier, somewhat related.)