The premise of this exhibition is that branding and architecture have in recent decades developed an intimate relationship in which they feed off one another. For example, Prada, BMW, and other leading brands progressively employ architecture as a central part of a larger marketing strategy. But architecture, real estate development, and urban planning also increasingly borrow from branding. From the perspective of our current media- and marketing-driven environment, branding in architecture equates to the expression of identity, which in turn translates into an elevation of status or value.

Cities such as New York, Bilbao, and Shanghai, have in recent years all successfully used architecture in order to enhance their image, generate economic growth, and elevate their position in the global village. And if you count all the buildings that are currently under construction in the Far East, the U.S., and Europe as part of an attempt to redefine urban, regional, and in some cases also national identities, you will notice how integral architecture is to branding and vice versa. Examined in a socioeconomic context, architecture today no longer constitutes merely a part of branding our environment; it has become the essence of it.

Within the unstable economic context of global hyper-capitalism, branding can be seen as a strategy to provide cities with a marketable image, part of the struggle of cities to secure a position in a competitive environment. However, as seen in many revitalization efforts, branding strategies are often limited to constructing a microcosm of the past or a panorama of the future, and presenting this landscape by techniques of historic preservation or futuristic new construction that are completely detached from the particular cultures of specific places. The paradox of the brand’s intended application as a catalyst for generating a distinct message in the global marketplace lies in the simple fact that it has contributed to the growing homogenization of people and places. More often than not, branding strategies fail to establish sensitive connections to particular contexts by imposing standardized forms and formulas on the urban or suburban landscape. By favoring the creation of architectural objects over more comprehensive urban interventions and by severing their identity from the complexity of the social fabric, today’s brandscapes have, in many cases, resulted in a culture of the copy, imitating one another in their offerings and aesthetics.

Without a social and material context, the organizing principle of many iconic buildings to date is simply a visual theme, an image, or a signature turning cities into landscapes of consumerism that have no connection to the surrounding context. Aside from the cultural aspect, studies of the processes of place marketing have revealed that re-imaging strategies have tended overwhelmingly to homogenize places, with an endless repetition of standard devices, from advertising slogans to building types. And yet it is precisely this condition that—as architect Michael Sorkin aptly observes—makes architectural and creative production even more crucial: "As the local particulars of culture are winnowed by globalization, artistic strategies for the production of locality will become more and more valuable."

It is precisely within the context of an economy, which favors the short-lived standardized formulas of accepted marketing schemes, that the necessity of architecture that counters fetishized abstractions with authentic solutions—becomes ever more pertinent. As experiences become more and more commodified, and the global landscape progressively more homogenized by the same regurgitated dogmas and formulas, it falls to architects to infuse an ever more aseptic landscape with meaningful transformations.

This process entails a strategy that emanates from the creative potential of a specific environment, instead of, as current destinations from around the world seem to tell us, from the proliferation of templates. It involves establishing associations with particular lifestyles, contexts, and people—creating relational frameworks that are at once specific and open-ended and that encourage new cultural, economic, and social possibilities to take root and evolve. The implication is that architecture, when viewed as a brand can no longer be solely assessed as an artifact but must be evaluated based on the effects and experiences it generates for people and places.

By exposing and documenting the recent branding boom in New York City as a case study, the exhibition raises a critical awareness of this controversial trend by examining both its potential and impact from several angles. By exposing a wide spectrum of current projects, ranging from well-established architects to emerging practices, the exhibition raises more questions than it provides answers.

How can architects use branding as a means to differentiate places from the inside-out—and not as current development practices seem to dictate—from the outside-in? How can architects negotiate cultural values that respect the heterogeneity of places while promoting an architecture that aligns private initiatives with the broader, more inclusive objectives of urban development? How can architects insert themselves into the highly contentious “liaison dangereuse” between their own cultural ambitions and the exigencies of the market—not by smoothly bridging them but by emphatically intersecting them? How can architects achieve an added value for the public in an environment that is largely ruled by economic forces?