![]() Behaviours, pacing, the relationship between that which is in motion and that which is static. However, just like music, there’s a lot of room for communication within motion. Like many studios over the last ten years, Perky Bros have had to accommodate an increasing requirement, imposed by the priority of an online experience, to introduce motion elements. The online world has a perceptibly high tempo, dictated by the attention economy. By avoiding the imagined ‘bustle’ often ‘depicted’ in corporate property developments renders, the effect is a sense of stillness, surly a more appealing quality than a fabricated future concerned with projecting (but not building for) a diverse community. There’s a quietness to the art direction. ![]() Even the shadows cast across the case study images belie the temporality inherent to the project. Perky Bros know this, and have embedded this perceptible slowness into the material elements of the Tembo brand through material choices and finishes. Craft takes time and appears quite visibly on the surface, it is felt. The deep impression of a metal die, the pigmentation of paper, the gloss of a foil, or the tactility of an uncoated surface. Conversely, the material contains within it something slower and perceptibly deliberate. ![]() When done well the digital experience appears an effortless and seamless creation. There is a sense that, no matter how long it may take to design and develop a website, or any digital experience for that matter, the impression given when using either is one of immediacy. An animal of this size, treads carefully and purposefully, and the illustration really support this and the mission of Tempo, who speaks of legacy and stewards over the buildings they develop. With this approach, the elephant takes on a story-book-like form, borrowing and transposing the associations of community and family. The elephant is realised, not through rationalised geometry, but using the careful strokes of a pen. And the logo set this all up nicely, the slow purposeful steps of a ‘tembo’, Swahili for elephant, a nod to the South African origins of the company. Tembo appears as a project ideally-suited to Perky Bros. 2013) and Woodland Wine Merchant ( reviewed Jan. You can see it in their work for Bedroc ( reviewed Jan. Perky Bros have always seemed to me to have been a very deliberate studio, interested in the material details as much as practical considerations of system and the behavioural concerns of motion. There’s an impression of the studio, a sense of what they’re like and how they might work, something of their principles and interests, but it’s just outside speculation. Like growing alongside but not really knowing one another. I’ve been sharing an opinion on the work of Perky Bros for almost ten years. Doing this takes time and Perky Bros’ visual identity for Tembo plays on this in a number of ways. Developments aren’t seen as ‘assets’ here, but as ‘parts of a family that enhance local communities’. It is, perhaps, no surprise that from the urgency and alienation created from this alternative approaches emerge such as London’s Hub Residential ( reviewed December 2022) and Tembo in New Jersey. Property development, momentarily paused during the pandemic, seems to have recovered and is again dialled up to frenetic. Corner-cutting and cookie-cutter developments appear to dominate the forever-shifting urban landscape. For real estate company Tembo this notion takes the form of patience the time to grow gently and judiciously. When I first caught Perky Bros’ latest project I misread it as ‘Tempo’, the speed at which music is played.
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