How the Zaha Hadid look arrived

Now that the "Zaha Hadid look" has become a part of the American design vocabulary, I dug through my image file to find how the look became a part of our language. Despite the fact the we don't have any of her buildings in the US, the New York Armani store staircase mentioned several entries ago shows how her influence is being expressed. In 2006, she designed a "Futuristic Kitchen" in conjunction with Corian® for the Milan Furniture Fair in April. At the end of that year she was the first woman to be honored with the most prestigious prize in architecture - the Pritzker Award. In 2007 she showed a collection of tables at Art Basel Miami in her signature shapes. With the Pritzker comes the status of starchitect and she has build for major clients in Europe such as Vitra and BMW.

Corian® Europe has an uncanny way of picking winners, the following year they worked with Jean Nouvel for the Milan Fair and he later that year also won the Pritzker. Architecture and design are truly global arts and as both companies and media are global, both European and Asian influences will continue to be felt, however the time span of influence to implementation will continue to be as unpredictable as ever.

Meet trend prophet Li Edelkoort

euronews | Meet trend prophet Li Edelkoort
Listen to an interview with the "wise woman" of the trend industry. She says that in our recent buy-buy-buy society "creativity was stalled." As she looks forward to a new era of creativity, we can already see the changes taking place in the architecture and design worlds. I don't think it was so much that creativity was stalled - there has been an ongoing undercurrent of ideas flowing freely, but the marketplace only wanted more and more of the same opulence thereby stalling much of the implementation of creative ideas since luxury items have always been highly conservative in any era.

Giorgio Armani Opens 5th Avenue Store

We may be past the Bilbao era, but there is always something new around the corner. The opening of the new Armani store in New York heralds the landing of the Zaha Hadid era on U.S. shores. Armani stores have previously been clad in limestone from top to bottom, so this store marks a visible change in aesthetic for Armani. Keeping the opening simple in the spirit of the times, Armani donated $1M to New York public schools instead of having a splashier event. The exterior is clad in the oft-mentioned LED's, that now frequently replace other materials as exterior cladding in the retail environment.

On GreenBuild

I was finally prompted to comment on GreenBuild when I found Nathan Shedroff's presentation which conveys my sentiments on sustainability - exactly. In reality I found only one booth at the November show that truly conveyed the spirit of what GreenBuild should be about - no further comments are needed. Antron gets it!

Getting Branding Right

The Forbes Wealthiest List has been great fodder for thought. Seeing the Mars family on the list, I wonder how important their vigilance at branding is to this 4th generation family-owned business is to their success. The Branding Strategy blog's entry: Don’t Make A Naming Compromise reminded me of Mar's Milky Way Midnight - their is no question that is a dark chocolate Milky Way, and that is the way naming should work, yet too many brands allow confusion in their naming. Visiting the Mars website you entire their galaxy, complete with a spinning globe (that can be viewer spun) to show the extent of their reach. Mars brings a rigourous consistency to their brand presentation.

Power over Brands

After realizing the mass-market retail has created some of the greatest wealth globally, it is interesting to note that the blog Branding Strategy Insider has an entry titled: Why Retailers Call the Shots that analyzes the current power of retail chains over manufacturers. The numbers are staggering, The still growing Aldi chain does not sell Coke products in Europe, while Coke is losing millions in sales. P&G refused to make private label diapers for Costco, consequently were delisted as a supplier - estimated to be losing over $2M in sales annually according to the article. Survivors in today's economic climate are playing hardball and those closest to the consumer - retailers hold the power over manufacturers brands.

Is the Bilbao Age over?

Blair Kamin writing the the Chicago Tribune thinks so in his article entitled: "Goodbye, icons; hello, infrastructure: Obama inaugurates a new era of architecture." As an architectural critic he finds a lot to like about "starchitecture" "...yet, icons divorced from infrastructure are nothing more than empty set pieces, objects divorced from the fabric of everyday life."

As The Donald finishes America's tallest building since the Sears tower, I have to mourn the passing of an era that brought us Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. In both direct and subtle ways, this icon had a huge influence on the way our interiors products and spaces looked.

The raw material suppliers had pearlescent pigments available, but it was not until the brilliant reception of Gehry's building that pearlescence and metallic looks made their way into interior finishes.The end of this exciting era speaks to the fact that there will be little "material" innovation during this recessionary period. Judging by the recent GreenBuild, there is not much in the way of aesthetics to get excited about. My post and images of GreenBuild are yet to be processed, as I found it to be generally uninspiring.

Creating Iconic Brands

The website of the Zyman Institute of Brand Science at Emory University has an excerpt from How Brands Become Icons: The Principle of Cultural Branding, Harvard Business School Press (Sept. 2004)

In his research for the book, author Douglas Holt was unable to find a single example in which conventional consumer research contributed to the building of an iconic brand. Iconic brands are created by playing off cultural texts that other culture industries have already put into play.

Icon creation is about myth building - as only a few companies such as Budweiser, Nike and Harley Davidson have been able to create. Creating a mythic experience is not about consumer behavior "truths" or emotional hot buttons-the usual language of consumer research. It goes beyond documenting people's attitudes and emotions to acquire an embedded sense of what life really feels like if one were in their shoes. The kind of knowledge required to build an iconic brand is more like what an author requires to write a great novel or screenplay. Holt says that managers must get close to the nation-the social and cultural shifts and the desires and anxieties that result in order to give specific direction to their creative partners in order to build an iconic brand.

Forbes shows us the Money

Throughout my entire career I have witnessed companies ignore the needs and desires of the masses - aesthetic and otherwise. The excuse was always that it would cannibalize the high end products, and all the pundits even had me believing the most recent excuse that "there is no middle." It was the rising tide that kept everyone in the gravy, meanwhile those catering to the masses were shoveling in the money with little competition. All you have to do is take a look at the Forbes Wealthiest List. You will find the founder of IKEA at #7, the (Trader Joe's) Aldi brothers at #10 and #16, and the WalMart family at #26, 27, and 29. If their father were alive today, he would top out with Warren Buffett and give the USA 4 billionaires in the top 25 instead of just the 3 there are in the most recent list.

Bernard Arnault alone represents the luxury business at #16, his diverse LVMH group held up surprising well in 2008 given the amount of competition in that segment. What is most obvious about this list is how few Americans are on the list - anyone who tries to put the brakes on free trade will quickly discover exactly where the power/money lies. In this Olympics of Billionaires, Forbes list shows that the USA is no longer the dominant financial power.

Legos are forever

The Forever Young line is Atlanta artist JacQueline's Sanchez award-winning signature collection. The diamond is discrete enough for today's understated look. Rumor has it that Hermes is offering to wrap purchases in a plain brown wrapper for those customers that can still afford to buy their luxury goods.

Trendease DesignVision Episode 4: Heimtextil Trends 2009/2010 (from www.trendease.tv)