I've been thinking a lot lately about Jon Jerde and his renowned global architecture firm, The Jerde Partnership. If you're not familiar with these folks, they've designed many thematic environments, from Horton Plaza and Universal CityWalk in southern California, to the Fremont Street Experience and the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. The guy's done work all over the country, and worldwide. Jerde's portfolio extends well beyond entertainment projects. Yet it is his work in this area and his philosophy with regards to the process of 'placemaking' that have distinguished the partnership in the architectural community. On my vector between pure simulation and pure brand, Jerde stands smack in the middle—where theming and brandscape overlap.
Jon Jerde describes his firm's approach in the introduction to The Jerde Partnership International: Visceral Reality. Jerde contends that modernism alienated us from our relationship with the spaces we create and inhabit. Before industrialization, mass production, and the modernist movement, people had a more intimate connection to their man-made environments. "The cohesive, experiential fabric of the older order had been destroyed...architectural works that have in the past contributed to an isolated, combative world are no longer viable. Our new age requires inclusivity and connectivity as design premises." The mission of the Jerde Partnership is focused not on the perfection of the object, but on the "transformation of the subject," to quote Anna Klingmann.
"We are instead dedicated to the experiential over the ideological, driven by intuition rather than cognition" Jerde states. "We put people in a popular and collective environment in which they can be most truly and happily alive."
Jon Jerde's place in THEMERICA™ is a middle ground between the intensely scripted simulations of the Disney parks, and the empty logo-neering of Niketown. Acknowledging that the market has been a traditional place of community gathering ever since the rise of townships and cities, he champions retail spaces "designed for citizens, not just consumers."