As Argent’s development of King’s Cross Central reaches the final straight in a journey that began back in 2000, and as counterweight to last week’s post on Songdo, it’s worth reminding ourselves of how it all began, and why it is feted throughout the industry as a model for experience-led city planning.

Using technology to both replace the culture of non-information industries and exercise control over the traditional spontaneity and unexpectedness of the public space, Songdo has the feel of a city that remains in a state of perpetual design. It’s uncomfortable clean, way too safe, and completely predictable. It’s hyper-hygienically unnatural. It’s a technocrat’s 1950s wet dream. It’s not home. It’s not my smart.

Today, be it in the coffeehouse at the end of the road, on the website of an international brand or in the city we call home, the whole world is obsessed with the quality of the experience. Has this not always been true? This little film reveals how we humans have always been in the business of masterplanning our great, shared experiences.

‘If you can dream it, you can do it!’ – Walt Disney
We want to inspire 1 billion people by 2027 to have taken positive action in the realms of innovative city making!

The key first job is not 6 months of wordsmithing nor is it drawing a building, the key first task is to describe five steps of a journey. That’s all. Here’s how.

How do we win an audience and get them talking about us, remembering us? Recently, a large mobile network asked us this and our reply was that they needed to get some mud on their wellies.

Whether singular executions or multiple identities, most brands are flatlining. Branding values coherency – with the result that corporate identities are constructed as a blandly steady state of being.

It all begins with an experience. Experience Design is a journey. It is an opportunity to programme the brand as we travel together through what I have come to think of as five stages.