The argument, in person.
James Andrew Smith lectures on Emotional Architecture: the deliberate design of how places, products, systems and organizations make people feel. Each lecture is drawn from a volume, for conferences, schools, leadership teams and podcasts.
- L-01
There is no neutral room.
Every place, product and organization makes people feel something, by design or by chance. The case for Emotional Architecture, and the six principles it works by.
- L-02
Brief the feeling. Function follows.
Most briefs list what a room must hold. A feeling brief starts with what the room must do to the person in it, in a few plain words, before anything is drawn. The method comes from store planning: twelve rooms, one brief each.
Keynote or workshopFrom Vol. 04 · The feeling brief
- L-03
The interface is disappearing. What remains is how it feels.
AI is making the making cheap. What is left to design is how a thing feels, and who decides it.
Keynote or conversationFrom Vol. 01 · How we got here
- L-04
Every waiting room tells you what you are worth.
Consulates are designed for security and throughput, and the building says: we suspect you. The same hall, briefed in three words: respected, informed, seen.
KeynoteFrom Vol. 05 · The visa line
- L-05
A room designed for everywhere belongs nowhere.
How a brand arrives somewhere new: start with what the place has that no other can buy. Two applied specimens, from Regent Street and the King’s Road.
- L-06
Design the day, not the visit.
One place is six places between first light and midnight. Plot the sun first, then brief each hour.
Keynote or workshopFrom Vol. 06 · Twenty-four hours
- Keynote
- 30 to 45 minutes, with the figures from the volumes on screen.
- Workshop
- Half a day. Each team writes a feeling brief for one of its own rooms.
- Conversation
- An interview, a panel or a podcast.
- Short biography
- James Andrew Smith is the principal of Bureau St. James, a studio of applied imagination that practises Emotional Architecture: the deliberate design of how places, products, systems and organizations make people feel. Former global director of store design at URBN. Trained in Milan and London. Oxford EMBA.
- Longer biography
- James Andrew Smith is the principal of Bureau St. James. He came to the work from fashion, by way of Milan and London. For a decade he built and led URBN’s in-house design studio across its four brands, including Anthropologie, Urban Outfitters and Free People: more than two hundred stores, no two alike, as the company grew from 140 to more than 400 stores in eight countries. He led store design for Anthropologie’s launch in Europe on Regent Street, named Retailer of the Year at the International Retail Design Conference. He writes Wildcat, a serial novel on how place shapes people. Oxford Executive MBA. A member of The Explorers Club.
- Photograph
- On request.
- Language
- English.
- Based in
- Houston. Available to travel.
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