“The waterfront was seething with tourists and yuppies in summer. But for the rest of the year, the whole area was dead”, says Herman Dyrø. From 2010 to 2015, he oversaw a 2.5 billion NOK investment to revitalise the area, on behalf of Norwegian Property.
Up until this point, the fact that Aker Brygge sat on perhaps the best real estate in Oslo wasn’t taken advantage of. Moreover, the mall felt cheap and failed to communicate in any coherent way what it wanted to be, or who it was for.
“You’d read ‘Welcome to Aker Brygge’ in five languages at every entrance, while no one was talking to the primary, local market”, says Dyrø.
The challenge was to reposition it from a cluttered mall to a thriving city district.
Early on in the repositioning process, Bleed was involved on a strategic level and was tasked with developing Aker Brygge’s new visual identity.
Central to the overall strategy was to highlight the contrast between old and new, and between traditional craftsmanship and innovative technology.
But prior to all that, one vital task was to convey the vision for the new Aker Brygge to the desired tenants — a huge challenge, considering that virtually everyone familiar with Oslo would have already made up their mind about the place. Besides 3D visualizations, one of the tools used was a lavish-looking leather book.
In the end, Aker Brygge got the desired tenants in both the office and retail segment. Today, the area is thriving. The combination of a clear vision and the right visual identity tightly knitted with the architecture and the business strategy have given the desired results.