AAP News 13

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Profiles

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Matthew Bannister: Leading an Emmy Award–Winning Branding and Creative Agency to New Heights

After earning a master’s degree in architecture from Princeton, Bannister contacted one of his friends from Cornell AAP—James Gibbs (B.Arch. ’95)—with the idea of starting a business. Operating out of a Manhattan design company’s closet, the pair called in another friend from AAP, Charles D’Autremont (B.Arch. ’92), set up two computers in their cramped office on East 7th Street, and created a company they called dbox. “We had a vague idea that we were going to explore 3D computer graphics somehow in relationship to architecture,” Bannister recalls. “There was no business plan, we had very little equipment, and we had no money.” What they did have were drive and determination, and dbox quickly earned a reputation for excellence in architectural visualization. At a time when most architects were rendering their designs in watercolor, dbox became one of the first companies to specialize in photorealistic 3D illustrations and animations of architectural work. “I had a solid art background, and this technology was essentially a new paintbrush,” Bannister explains. “We pushed each other—and the technology itself—to find more effective and powerful ways to visualize and express unbuilt architecture.” It wasn’t long before some of the top architectural firms in the country were gravitating to dbox for its rich and bold imagery. Since the company’s inception, they have produced major works for international architectural emissaries, among them Foster + Partners, Frank Gehry, Santiago Calatrava, OMA, Jean Nouvel, and Richard Meier. The company’s success in computer-generated imagery led to opportunities in related marketing services and dbox soon evolved into a full-scale branding and marketing agency, focusing on brand strategy, graphic design, film, web and interactive design, social media, and—true to its roots—the design of branded architectural spaces. As the workload and scope of projects increased and its staff grew to 54 employees, dbox moved to a series of larger offices in Manhattan and is now located on Leroy Street in the West Village.

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photo / provided

As a student at Cornell in the 1990s, Matthew Bannister (B.Arch. ’94) became intrigued with the idea of presenting architecture in threedimensional computer images when he and two friends began beta testing a new generation of software. At the time, architecture was just beginning to embrace 3D computer graphics, and Bannister was at the forefront of bringing the field into the digital age.

To better serve its international clients, dbox opened its first office outside the U.S. in Taipei in 2006, followed by another in London in 2010. By this summer, it will have opened its fourth and fifth offices in Buenos Aires and Miami. As an outgrowth of its work producing animated computer graphics, dbox has recently ventured into new creative outlets that have attracted critical acclaim. Last September, the company received an Emmy Award for its work developing the computer graphics and branding for the six-part miniseries, Rising: Rebuilding Ground Zero, executive produced by Steven Spielberg and Danny Forster for the Discovery and Science channels. Sitting at the ceremony at Lincoln Center, Bannister remembers that when dbox was announced as the category winner, he was surprised and overcome with emotion. “Having been nominated, it was not like I didn’t believe we stood a chance,” he says. “I was just honored for dbox to be nominated and to be there on that night with my colleagues.” The Emmy capped nearly a decade of work by dbox on the World Trade Center site. Since 2002, dbox has been responsible for showing the world what the future of the site will hold. The firm created the visuals for the winning master plan designed by Studio Daniel Libeskind, as well as images and animated works at key benchmarks while working with other architects involved in the project. In the miniseries, which aired in 2011 as part of the tenth anniversary commemorating the events of September 11, 2001, dbox created two types of visual strategies for the documentary: photorealistic representations of the completed buildings and animations that represented a physical architectural model. “A great deal of footage in the program is computer-generated imagery of what the World Trade Center site will be upon completion,” says Bannister. “Our goal is to give the world a window into the future, to raise optimism about the rebuilding, and in a sense make it a ‘reality’ before it actually is.” In the past few years, as the direction of work at dbox has shifted to branding and graphic design, dbox has developed a special focus on architects and architectural firms. Among those who have hired dbox to rebrand them are Calatrava and Robert F. Fox Jr. (B.Arch. ’65), a partner in the New York City firm, COOKFOX. Rebranding an architectural firm can involve changes to its logo and visual identity, color and typography choices, print collateral, web and

interactive offerings, copy tone, and, in some cases, the business name itself. For Bannister, architects may need to rebrand themselves for the same reason other businesses often rethink their identity. The rebranding may be necessary due to changing market conditions, a need to differentiate in a crowded market, changing personnel, or simply to more accurately reflect the services it provides. “The way an architectural practice represents itself to its potential clients is critically linked to the type of work it will attract,” Bannister says. “If a firm doesn’t get this part of the equation right, they will be drawing buildings they don’t want to build instead of building buildings that they do. The very successful architects naturally understand this. There is as much to learn about branding from characters like Mies and Corb as there is design.” Another recent project dbox has embarked upon is a branding and advertising campaign for the developer Harry Macklowe and California-based CIM. Together they are building a luxury tower on Park Avenue that is projected to be the tallest residential structure in the Western Hemisphere. At 1,395 feet high, the building will be taller than both the Empire State Building and One World Trade Center (not including the spire). This is not simply a branding project, but a “branded experience,” as Bannister calls it, including a Hollywood-quality film, an app, website, lifestyle magazine, music, and a dbox-designed exhibition gallery to display the project’s intentions. “These homes will be the most expensive real estate in the U.S.,” Bannister says. “The tower won’t be completed until several years from now, so we will be selling these homes from the brand experience we have created.” Bannister, along with his colleagues at dbox, has taught at AAP NYC, using his office as a classroom. Whether it’s redesigning a website or producing a computer graphic of a new skyscraper, Bannister thrives on the changing pace of work fueled by his creative energy. “What I loved about my architecture education is how multidisciplinary it was,” he says. “I’ve created a company where I can be a photographer, a filmmaker, an interface designer, and still be an architectural designer and thinker. That’s refreshing to me. I get to wear many of these hats every day of the week.”AAP Sherrie Negrea

News13 | Spring 2013


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