the sign remains the same
urbanism | recognition by michael summerton
cities change history brands subcultures
Actually about a little thing that hasn’t happened; this is a discussion of businesses that take on the name of the previous occupant and how it works for them and us.
While I was at home in London a friend invited me for a drink one Friday after work. Meet me at Dream Bags Jaguar Shoes , he said. What? I asked; please clarify. He gave me the address. On arrival I saw Dream Bags Jaguar Shoes was indeed a bar and was housed like a greedy hermit crab in the shells of two adjacent retail units, now combined. Dream Bags said the sign on number thirty-four; Jaguar Shoes said thirty-two next door. I liked this. It required people to break the semiotic link and share surreal sentences as my friend had. It created a sense of expectation which gave way to surprise on my first visit. On entering I saw there had been no attempt to re-brand the space. In fact it was a kind of anti-branding but certainly effective – the place was packed. So could the new owners not be bothered to change the storefront? Teresa, the co-owner explains: We were young, skint and creative and we were desperately trying to think of a name. Nick and I stood outside and the penny dropped. It looked f***ing amazing as it was! It kept a nice underground vibe and it kept some of the original history of the area. We also felt at that point that branding was all wrong. Nick continues: It allowed people to discover the venue for themselves and refer to the venue as they pleased. It has many mantles as a consequence – Dream Bags; Jag Bags; Glad Rags; Jag Shoes ... whatever. Nick, the other owner, explains that having made the decision to keep the sign they chose a consistent approach inside the venue: Architecturally honest, with lots of the raw materials on show and we change the entire space on a 6 week program, handing it over to another artist-designer to completely re-decorate. Remembering how I felt that night, I like what had been (or rather not been) done at DBJS. Beyond its syntactical absurdity, it encourages a fuller communication of tacit knowledge and the acknowledgement of the city’s past. It also signals a use of space that feels short-term, experimental and exciting. Here in Toronto the same approach is being taken, but perhaps with more consideration. Czehoski , previously a butcher-cum-deli catering to Eastern European Immigrants, now a ‘hip new restaurant and bar’ according to its website, has lovingly retained its 1924 sign and promises ‘after more than two years of respectful restoration … a quirky blend of downtown sophistication and heritage warmth’. There is a cultural turn wherein obsolete industrial or commercial space makes way for our capricious contemporary lifestyles, and much has been written of that, but what of this wholesale adoption of a previous business’s identity? Isn’t that like dancing in a dead man’s shoes? Alexander Gutzmer, whose PhD addresses the relationship between branding and architecture, bravely offers an answer: The whole issue of branding is a quest for a certain kind of authenticity. Brands want to be authentic and they want this to mean something for the customer. With the adoption of another brand’s identity, however, you do not adopt another company’s identity, but play with the idea of changing your own by connecting it with the other. Architecture is the perfect area for that, as the ghost of the old occupant is still there.
Nevertheless, I think that this is risky. If the visitor does not make any connection between the two brands then the effect is not only neutral but negative; the old brand will impact as an irritation on the new one. It is one of those cases where capitalism intends to conquer new territory but at the same time risks losing control. This risk is intensified in the field of architecture, as it has what Gutzmer calls ‘a certain stubbornness’. Those ghosts he mentions can be very powerful. And what happens when things become too elusive, too tenuous, too transitory, when curiosity or tacit knowledge is overwhelmed by ghosts? I heard tell that the guerilla-like, anti-success attitudes of hipsters combined with volatile urban real estate markets had led to sheepish punters in Berlin and Amsterdam talking nonsense and wandering lost amid dead streets or worse, into corporate, mainstream watering holes. In response Mark Cremins of Rush Hour Music , Amsterdam, a man with a keen nose for urban subcultures, assures me: You shouldn’t be too distracted by the superficial phenomena of lost hipsters and look deeper, bigger and longer. Even though particular places might move on or even die off, the overall creative and constantly replenished energy of a city ensures that people find the next thing – as a basic function of supply and demand. This process is never ending. It’s the nature of urbanity. So it’s ok with business, academics and the culture industry. What is the opinion of mainstream planning? The urban design principle of legibility was hammered into me at university and, albeit slightly softer, the notions of mystery and joy. Sometimes these conflict and this trend seems to be a victory for the latter. I contact Carolyn Humphreys, Graphics and Visualisation Manager at the Urban Design Department, City of Toronto and find a fellow fan of the phenomena. She tips me off to retained signs in my own neighbourhood and urges me to think about being somewhere without the local language. I’m always reminded of falling out of a train in Greece. Faced with a wild hangover and street signs that included triangles as part of the written alphabet made the trip that more exciting. Many a wonderful stumble or the willingness to go beyond the sign or lack of sign has left me feeling like the great insider, and that is where I get my sense of belonging and urbanity. What a wonderful angle. Point of entry as a point of departure. Here’s a conclusion of sorts: while it reverses the sub-cultural orthodoxy of naming anew which advances social capital, this phenomena is far from conservative. It’s a statement of positive urbanism for at least the six reasons that I can enumerate here. It asks us to look harder at what’s actually going on rather than passively taking the city ‘as read’. It forces us to observe urban life as it is being lived and then talk about it. Physical change is minimised so it is likely cheap, low impact and encourages experiment in how we occupy urban space. It nurtures a sense of communal history – the retention of the vestigial identity of space rather than its eradication – positions cities as dynamic, evolving and alive. v
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On Site review 23
Small Things
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