Know Your Place
£15.00 — free UK postage
Have you ever looked at your surroundings and wondered why so much of it looks the same? Many of the places that surround us were designed by committee to achieve little more than to create sellable spaces and shareholder value. But sometimes it happens differently. And when it does, those places feel great. We want to come back to them again and again. That’s because those places were built with purpose. Here’s how.
Placemaking as it has been adopted in the competitive arenas of the built environment is no longer enough. It’s time to find a new definition. The business world has been focusing on purpose for years, but the world of place creation has been slow to catch up. It is now a business imperative.
Let’s leave the term placemaking for the important job of ensuring the creation of public community spaces. Let’s add to our lexicon a new term, Place Purpose, which is a tool for places in competition looking to improve on their odds in the game of supply and demand. After all, if we want to create economic advantage and attract customers, we should give them more than just space. We should give them a place that has a reason for existing. A purpose. Otherwise, who cares?
It’s not enough to build, advertise and sell anymore. The world is changing at an ever-increasing pace: the retail apocalypse, co-working, co-living, the fourth industrial revolution and other shifts will change what people demand of places. Customers want an experience. They want to be part of something and they want their decisions to contribute to who they are as individuals. It’s time we forged a much deeper understanding of who we’re building places for.
| Size | 134 × 210mm |
| Pages | 92 |
| Colour | Four colour litho + 1 PMS |
| Features | Ota-bound, screenprint + black foil cover |
| ISBN | 978-1-9998231-1-5 |
