Title : World Architecture Festival 2015
Year : 2015
Client : Emap Publishing
Services : Brand Identity,
Brand Strategy
Campaign,
Environments,
Publications
The World Architecture Festival (WAF) is an annual festival and awards ceremony, one of the most prestigious events dedicated to the architecture and development industry. Under Paul Fintch’s directorship, the festival has gone on to become the world’s largest international event celebrating architecture. It includes the biggest architectural awards programme in the world and by entering, one has the chance to become part of a great archive of contemporary architecture.
Ahead of WAF 2015, we were asked by EMAP Publishing to create a new campaign with a view to revitalising its reputation amid growing competition from the international architecture conference industry. Our intention was to position WAF as the biggest international event in the architectural world and at the same time, to celebrate architecture by creating a campaign that would truly resonate within the architectural world. On that basis, we used the arrows that Guy Debord and the Situationists used in their 1950s map of the ‘Naked City’ – a project that is highly prominent within the architecture education because of its psychogeographic principle of reorganising the city. By using these arrows against royalty free images of famous cities in the world, we wanted to create a connection between WAF and the culture of architecture. At the same time, these arrows were arranged as if they are fireworks pointing towards all possible directions, ultimately celebrating that architecture is about building a future of endless possibilities.