Gremlins

While the town of Chickasaw may seemingly be public, it is in fact private, despite “its design signifying a traditional public space” (Lonsway). It seems as though the town of Chickasaw struggles to keep itself independent, due to the many spatial connections which service a town, whether it attempts to remain off the grid or not. Although these spatial conflicts seem outrageous, as architects a provocative issue comes to fruition when considering public vs. private, and how to design and develop a project which may interact with its public surroundings, but must remain private, thus autonomous. It is within these spatial connections that one may make a link to the architectural discipline and the idea of ‘brand gremlins’, which are “the people and processes responsible for seemingly small but repetitive mishaps…that progressively undermine a brand” (Farquhar). Along with the notion of the ‘brand gremlin’ comes the challenge of identifying a strategy to turn what is wrong with a particular product, use its assents, and develop it into something which benefits the brand. These so called ‘brand gremlins’ hold a significant relationship to architecture as a discipline, despite the fact that they seemingly hold no spatial concept.

In relation to ‘brand gremlins’, an architect/developer may go into a project with a specific idea about how their project could react with the landscape, thus developing a formal strategy based off of the existing site. After further land testing, the developer reveals that the ground contains some contaminates from future use, thus some land must be manipulated. It is then that the architect must use the assets of the land, despite that it has changed from the original concept, to still design and build a project which remains seamless to its surroundings, and “…turn gremlins into advocates for the brand” (Farquhar).