LIVING.BRAND — HD#5
Branded Living
How we will room tomorrow
Have you ever wondered why we are surrounded by brands in all aspects of our lives, but yet it seems like our living situations are not really touched by them. Of course, we do have brands in our homes that sell us our furniture, plates or even cleaning supplies, but there is not really a brand that sells us our apartment or the living in it. There are brokers and property managers, but they basically present spaces to us as some sort of white canvas. In Germany for example, where it is very unusual to rent a furnished apartment, you normally look for a flat on one or two websites and end up finding an empty space that is, at the most, branded by the area and maybe the street. From there, you visit the spot, if you were lucky enough to get a response from the landlord, and eventually move in, if you were also lucky enough to get picked out of the 50 other people that visited the apartment as well. After you signed your lease, you now temporarily own an empty space with white walls and that’s it! From this moment on, you are basically on your own as you have to find your own electricity or network provider to start with. You also have to take care of everything you want to bring into the apartment and the only communication you will have with your property manager if ever, is going to be about complaints from the neighbors.
Branded Buildings
My home in Berlin, for example, is my address (area, street, and number). I am not saying, I live in the “XYZ” building / apartment for people to understand, but I tell them my street. In New York, on the other hand, the branding of at least buildings is a little more ahead. “40 Bond” on Bond Street, for example, designed by architects Herzog & de Meuron, is a building known by its brand name rather than its address.
Funnily enough, in this case, the brand name is also the address, but I am sure you get the point. An even better example for a branded building is the “New York by Gehry” tower from the image in our title or the “Central Park Tower” to the left by Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill. People living in these buildings enjoy some sort of identity with or through the building and the structure itself enjoys some sort of character as well. In Germany, you can now slowly see such types of branded buildings as new constructions start and finish.
Functioning as a good example, a new building called the “Alexander” in the heart of the city will be the tallest residential tower in Berlin and is set to open in the upcoming years. The idea behind naming constructions in a specific way is interesting but after all, mostly a Marketing gimmick as there is usually not that much more to it besides the name. However, the idea of branded housing living sticks with me, because I feel like there could be a lot of advantages connected to it and not only a way of letting the building sound a little more appealing.
The Living Brand
Imagine your tenant experience would be handled by a brand, the same way all of the other products & services in your life are handled by companies, which try to develop their businesses with customer-centric design. Trying to elevate the offering for a renter should be the highest priority for a living brand and would be the ideal starting point for branded housing.
The urban tenant experience needs to be streamlined in a way that really fits the requirements of different target groups. Historically, apartments were built for multi-family households with a focus on their needs and up until today, most of the flats are still created for theses types of cohabitation. However, there is already an entirely new generation with different characteristics — the Millennials. They do not get married early, they do not own cars, they have unstable jobs, and they enjoy great flexibility. These customers book a shared scooter within a couple of seconds and work from different locations in cities or across the globe. They value on-demand access much more than long-term commitment and don’t want the liabilities (housing-saving, own cars, long contracts) in their lives that the previous generations looked forward to.
Over the last year, most industries have adapted to these new needs and endless startups have been founded with the Millennial customer at their core. However, the only aspect of a Millennial’s life that has not really been touched by such firms yet, is the living situation. 10 years ago our world changed as co-working became a thing and it is about to change again.
In 2009, there were no branded offices until WeWork. In 2019, there are no branded living concepts until now, and there will be plenty in 2029.
As living comes in various forms and types, I would not necessarily confirm that the future of living needs to be co-living as it was for work, but it will be an experience where the tenant sits at the center of the concepts rather than on the periphery like today. There is room to build a brand with a focus on:
- Maximum convenience
- Maximum flexibility
- Maximum comfort
Execution should start with a focus on existing real estate, followed by its transformation through the usage of a design & aesthetics playbook with enough flexibility to handle constantly changing apartment setups and a curated community that enables great relationships between the renters.
Please check out our website www.livingbrand.ninja or our IG channel @livingbrand.ninja where we will post all of our content and would love to start discussions about the way we should and will live!
