🕶 #TheFutureofRetail: We believe retail isn't dead, boring retail is. A new study by IBM & the National Retail Foundation shows that 67% of Gen Z shop in-store most of the time, with another 31% shopping in-store sometimes, revealing 98% still shop in physical retail stores. If you're going to expect customers to visit your in-store, it should be an experience that goes beyond products on a shelf, it should entertain, surprise & delight. See our roundup of our favorite retail concepts.

📎 For The Wills Group, a new corporate HQ space was a critical component in their broader corporate transformation that included new ways of doing things for existing employees, and a need to attract a new generation of talent to fulfill the company’s strategic aspirations. Our design touched every aspect of the 50,000 square foot project designed to house up to 400 employees, including reception areas, workspaces, collaboration areas, conference rooms, training facilities and dining facilities.

🌳 #UrbanPlanning done right: As the summer season comes to a close, we're enjoying the transition into Fall at our favorite NYC parks. James Corner's urban planning practice, @FieldOperations, has us tapping into our inner-horticulturist at these two New York City gems, The Highline on Manhattan’s west-side and Domino Park in Williamsburg.

🌿As nature enthusiasts & advocates for the Environment, we love to see the mass adoption of vegetarian eating and meat alternatives that help significantly reduce the impact of our food consumption on the Earth. Tofu, lentils, chickpeas, oh my! Check out our top tips for delicious, earth-friendly, eating.

🌙 “Architecture, at its best, is the power to make the world a little bit more like our dreams.” Our architectural spirit animal is most definitely @BjarkeIngels, his architecture group, @big_builds, designs "buildings that defy convention." Dive in to explore our favorite projects they’ve launched around the world.

📊 File this one under #GraphicGenius: The latest addition to our office bookshelves is by the witty Michelle Rial - her book of artistically illustrated and inventive infographics, “Am I Overthinking This?” is a fantastic compilation of her creative charts over the years - spanning the vast meme-scape of millennial tropes.

☁️ If you could re-live your dreams, what would they look like? We went on a hunt to find out exactly that. In the wide sea of VR, we were pleasantly surprised with our recent field trip to the newly minted Museum of Future Experiences in SoHo - an experience that will stay with you, far after you’ve exited their doors.

🇫🇷 We’re studying his commitment to a single idea, the parabola, expressed through his visionary fashions, iconic architecture and sculptural industrial and furniture design. At 97, he continues to stay curious and invent his vision of the future, which is fascinating to say the least - hop aboard the Cardin Express with us!

💆🏼 Re: #SlowLiving x #HumanCenteredDesign - We’re studying how to authentically incorporate these principles to our latest experiential design for retail, a few thoughts: some people have reverse-engineered SLOW as an acronym - Sustainable, Local, Organic, and Whole, specifically in regards to Food Sourcing. Read more on this philosophy after the jump.

✈️ Curious Architecture Lovers seek Eero Saarinen’s 1962 Utopia - in the form of the infamous TWA Terminal at JFK Airport. This architectural icon lived as a closed time capsule since 2001. This month, it makes its comeback as the @TWAHotel, where Space Odyssey dreams can come true #hellodave

🌵Just in time for Spring, DesertX lured us to Palm Springs, a city rich in mid-century style, architecture and retro signage - three things we love and tend to seek out. On through April 21, 2019 in the Coachella Valley, this freshly minted biennial is a brilliant fusion of art and environment, where contemporary artists stage their works against the dramatic landscapes, leaving us in a state of hypnosis.

📍The experiential grounds of The Vitra Campus are a thrilling place to discover modern architectural and built environment concepts. The Campus is open to the public via tours of key structures and the architects behind them. With over 330,000 visitors a year, this special campus has the most concentrated collection of buildings by world-famous architects, than anywhere else in the world.

🛋“Design is an expression of the purpose.” Charles Eames // As the most important exponents of organic design, Charles and Ray Eames demonstrated how good design can improve quality of life and human understanding and knowledge. One of their top lessons here are the Case Study Houses - built in 1949, No. 8 was a celebration of indoor-outdoor living, and for the Eameses it became a laboratory for their shared life and work.

🌺 Assouline’s ‘In the Spirit of...’ series may cause severe cases of wanderlust (and should be read with your travel planner in hand). This iconic book publisher is known for the best of the best editorials on iconic travel destinations and specialty subjects. From Gstaad to Rio, Harlem to the Hamptons, we’ve found great design inspiration in these beautifully-curated pages.

🌈 We’re in a Gerhard Richter frame-of-mind, and this gorgeous book, Panorama is the most extensive representation of his career to date. Including his work from the 1950s to present - from paintings to sculptures, drawings and photographs - it’s a fantastic deep dive into the artistic journey of Richter. And when it comes to squares, they haven't been the same since Josef Albers applied his spectrum of colors to them.

🛵 While in Venice exploring the Architecture Biennale, we enjoyed a private visit to the Furnace of Orsoni - the only mosaic tile furnace still functioning in the historic center of Venice. Orsoni has revived the city's Byzantine mosaic style and remains an icon in the artisan craftwork communities. They use the same techniques since 1888 to produce 24K gold leaf mosaics, colored gold and Venetian smalti in more than 3,500 colors.

🗣A lot of companies treat their brands as "stories to be told". In this post we explain how this framing makes brands overly reliant on third parties, typically media companies, to keep them in the public eye. We also show why this approach is so damaging to long-term brand health, and propose a different way of understanding your brand that can lead to long-term growth and success.

⏳The so-called Shirky Principle states that institutions only survive by NOT solving the problems that they set out to solve. In this post we explore what this means for brands. Specifically, we look at how framing a brand promise that's forever slightly out of reach might well be the best path to success for a business. 

💾 The inexorable march of the software industry across the global economy continues unabated. Incumbent and after incumbent goes from skepticism, to panic, to obsolescence. It's now apparent to everyone not living in a bunker that the level of disruption, great as it has been, will only increase. There will be no more "status quo", at least, not for the rest of my life, or yours. What's a business to do?

📈 Traditional brand metrics are too slow, internet era brand metrics are too superficial; brand managers need a third type of metric for a complete and actionable view of brand health.