Building Brands: Corporations and Modern Architecture

by Grace Ong-Yan

0 ratings • 0 reviews • 0 shelved
Book cover for Building Brands

Bookhype may earn a small commission from qualifying purchases. Full disclosure.

Between the Stock Market Crash and the Vietnam War, American corporations were responsible for the construction of thousands of headquarters across the United States. Over this time, the design of corporate headquarters evolved from Beaux-Arts facades to bold modernist expressions. This book examines how clients and architects together crafted buildings to reflect their company's brand, carefully considering consumers' perception and their emotions towards the architecture and the messages they communicated.


By focusing on four American corporate headquarters: the PSFS Building by George Howe and William Lescaze, the Johnson Wax Administration Building by Frank Lloyd Wright, Lever House by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and The Roehm & Haas Building by Pietro Belluschi, it shows how corporate modernism evolved. In the
1930s, architecture and branding were separate and distinct and by the 1960s, they were completely integrated. Drawing on interviews and original material from corporations' archives, it examines how company leaders, together with their architects, conceived of their corporate headquarters not only as the consolidation of employee workplaces, but as architectural mediums to communicate their
corporate identities and brands.
  • ISBN13 9781848224070
  • Publish Date 30 October 2020
  • Publish Status Active
  • Publish Country GB
  • Imprint Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd
  • Format Hardcover
  • Pages 240
  • Language English