Making Sheds Beautiful

Industrial buildings often pull the short straw when it comes to the thought, care and effort put into their promotional visualisations. 

‘It's just a shed’ seems to be what is being expressed in lacklustre marketing and promotional materials. 

I've seen it too many times. And it hurts me every time I do. Because those buildings are always so much more than just a shed. 

They are where business happens in the 21st Century. Fascinating, innovative, world-changing business – from the datacentres that make up the backbone of the internet to the huge and hugely impressive logistics operations that power ecommerce, the highly sophisticated advanced manufacturing, and the tiny start-up companies who will one day change the world and bring prosperity…

It's all hidden behind those unassuming fa?ades. 

And whilst their fa?ades may be unassuming… that doesn't mean there is nothing to shout about. You know that. So do those using them. So why would you not want to bring all of that to light in your marketing?

If your marketing material is basically saying ‘these are just undifferentiated sheds‘ then why should your offer be singled out in a crowded market? 

Yet your offer should be singled out. Because there will always be something that makes your development special. Whether it's special to a particular tenant, or special in the realm of industrial developments generally, or special in what you offer as a landlord. 

So there's no reason industrial ‘sheds’ shouldn't get the same treatment – when it comes to top-quality visualisations that are reflective of the building's own quality, value and benefits – as other types of development. 

There's no reason they shouldn’t get the treatment they deserve. 

The beauty is in the detail

‘Unexciting’ industrial buildings are typically designed that way for a reason. Cost, space, functionality, safety, etc… there are a whole host of reasons, specific to the intended use of an industrial site, that warrants the more pared down (particularly from an exterior perspective) design. 

So their beauty isn't as obvious. But that doesn't mean they're not beautiful. 

Beauty is subjective, and it's also to be found in different places. Part of the beauty of an industrial building… of any building, really… lies in what it is capable of. 

What purpose it provides. What output it enables. What its tenants can achieve from working within it. 

What it is capable of offering in terms of staff wellbeing – an increasingly important criterion for companies searching for space nowadays: the quality of the building, its welfare facilities, its landscape, the environment and amenities you design around it… 

How it is environmentally superior to industrial developments of the past… Surely there is a significant beauty to anything that helps protect our planet, rather than contributing to its demise, whilst still enabling the continued manufacture and innovation that we need?

Focus on all or any of that and you're onto a winner.

You're highlighting the ‘beauty‘ of the scheme through the benefits it provides. You're focusing on the reasons your scheme should be singled out… 

But ‘hidden’ benefits aside, the minimal fa?ade of the industrial ‘shed’ can in fact also be beautiful in its own right.

Time to make industrial 'sheds' the new Bauhaus 

The very concept behind Bauhaus – arguably one of the most influential architectural movements in the past 100 years – is that a successful union between utilitarian and beautiful IS possible. 

Bauhaus is all about ‘adapting art to society's needs’… combining individual artistic vision (in whatever form that may take… we all know how varied art can be after all) with function. 

Which is exactly how industrial buildings should be viewed. 

Industrial buildings will always be functional – you could argue that's their primary purpose. But that's not to say they haven't been designed, or crafted, in the same way as any other type of building. That's not to say they're lacking in individual artistic vision… 

Crisp simple forms, gleaming metal, glass envelopes DO all have a beauty to them. Glass in particular is an inherently interesting and beautiful material; it's ever-changing reflections, it's reaction to light, it's transparency…

No architect wants to design something ugly. Even if it only needs be a simple structure, they'll always make it as unique, as innovative, as forward-thinking, as ‘something’ as possible... which in itself, is a beauty: a beauty of ‘care and thought’. 

And it's those design features that make it beautiful. That make it different. And they need to be highlighted. 

If the care has been taken to put them into the design, it stands to reason that the same care should be taken to present that to prospective tenants… after all, care and thought automatically suggests a degree of quality, so more-carefully-considered marketing is only ever going to encourage a better quality of interest. 

Yet, all too often industrial buildings are still just illustrated in a dull, overly simplistic manner. Read the sales blurb that comes with it, and the detail, the thought, the care that has gone into the proposition's design is evident… then compare that to the image and there's inevitably a mismatch. 

If they've got as far as reading the text assigned to the uninspiring image, there's high chance that disparity in message will send any prospect onto their next option for consideration. 

Humans are visual creatures, so it's vital that the imagery lives up to the words… and simply by focusing on the Bauhaus theory of design, one can remember that functional doesn't need to mean boring. 

Functional – whether because of its functionality, because of the individual artistic vision attached to it, or because of the combination of the two – can be very beautiful indeed. 

Sheds really can be beautiful.