Experience Masterplanning
Expertise
We are architects, urbanists, graphic designers, product designers and visual communicators, united by a single focus: the human experience of space. Working across urban analytics, destination strategy, communication design and spatial design, we call this discipline experience masterplanning.
Experience Masterplanning
Experience Masterplanning builds the user's perspective into complex masterplan and building projects. Where masterplanning designs the hardware of a place, experience masterplanning designs its software — the vision, principles and strategy that determine what visiting it will actually feel like.
It runs alongside the physical design process rather than competing with it, spanning a connected set of human-centric services — from destination positioning at the outset through to post-occupancy placemaking once a place is open and in use.
The value of that perspective lies in what it surfaces: working from how people will actually use a development reveals opportunities a purely spatial process tends to miss — shifting focus from transactions and functions to what visitors perceive, feel and remember. Better end-to-end experience drives repeat visits and raises the perceived value of the place itself.
Deeply engaged in the value of people's experience of the built environment, we capitalise on our combined expertise in urban, architectural, digital and visual design to integrate disparate elements of places into immersive destinations. We believe that defining a clear vision for places helps them define and manifest their place in the world.
Visitor journeys provide insights into the needs of customers, capturing valuable criteria for each project’s offer relevancy. By researching how people will move through spaces and their physical / digital interactions along the way, we have built up an understanding of the basic social layout of space. A careful analysis of pain points and planning out of touchpoints keeps the focus on innovative service designs that will smooth navigation, transitions and anticipate user needs.
Wayfinding is central to our practice. We have delivered wayfinding and signage systems across the transport, events, retail, sport, hospitality, commercial and cultural sectors — at scales ranging from individual buildings to multi-venue and city-scale masterplans. We use pedestrian modelling to ground every solution in real movement data rather than assumption.
We use powerful graphic communication to tell the story of places. Spanning from public artworks and installations to urban supergraphics, place identity creates stronger recognition and sense of belonging. What makes us unique among environmental graphics practices is that we have the detailed architectural skill base to work alongside larger design teams to seamlessly integrate our work directly into the fabric of the architecture and landscape, avoiding add-on solutions.
Combining our joint expertise in graphic, product and spatial design, we craft unique narrative environments. Our exhibition design work begins with a conceptual framework — a spatial interpretation of the exhibition's themes that determines form, material and graphic language simultaneously. The result is an environment where content and design are resolved together rather than applied in sequence, producing a coherent experience from the scale of the room to the detail of the page.
Where We Practice
219 projects and counting: A Global footprint from California to Europe, the Middle East, China and Australia
With studios in London, Milan and Guangzhou, we work across five continents — as lead consultant, as specialist subconsultant, and as a collaborative partner embedded within larger design teams.
Our clients include municipalities, cultural institutions, developers, transport operators and global brands. We work alongside architects and multidisciplinary consultants as an integrated part of the wider design team.
People
Our work always starts with people. We help clients define the strategic positioning of their development through insight into the needs, behaviours and motivations of their target audiences — gathered through direct research and spatial behaviour modelling.
Two of our most significant current commissions sit at almost opposite ends of the world. In Riyadh, we are wayfinding consultants on the masterplan team for Expo 2030 — the third consecutive World Expo we have shaped, following Astana 2017 and Dubai 2020. In Hong Kong, we are developing the visual identity, wayfinding and signage for the West Kowloon Cultural District, one of the region's most significant cultural destinations.
Where We Work
What We Design
Vision and Narrative
The result is an Experience Vision and Narrative - a synthesis of research insight and client ambition, grounded in the particular opportunities and constraints of each project.
Together they give every stakeholder a clear, shared understanding of how the project will develop: a stable reference point the wider design team can plan toward and test against, in place of subjective preference and ad hoc judgement.
Place
Memorable places have site-specific, defining characteristics — ones that can be unearthed through research into history, culture and geographical context, then translated by design into spatial form, use and story. Choreographed holistically and united by a common narrative, those characteristics turn a sequence of moments into a resonant, coherent sense of place
Countries of Practice
User-Centric Design
We work at the intersection of disciplines that too often operate in isolation - united by a single focus on the user's experience of a place.
Together with our clients and project partners, we build this through a deep understanding of the built environment, human behaviour and visual communication - keeping the user's perspective at the heart of every decision we make. User-Centric Design
Vision
We then set that insight against the client's own ambition for the development, resolving the two into a guiding Experience Vision: a north star the wider design team can plan and test against as the project develops.
Spatial Analysis and Methodology
Spaceagency employs a methodology developed at the Space Syntax Laboratory at University College London, tested in practice for over 30 years to forecast patterns of movement and use within cities and complex buildings. It uncovers how the layout of an environment shapes people's behaviour before a single sign goes up.
We use this to map how people will actually experience a space — their movement, decision points and interactions — and translate it into design solutions grounded in real behaviour rather than assumption. At building scale, we extend this thinking into the digital realm, opening up new possibilities for how visitors use and interact with the spaces we create.
Tobias Wallisser
Laboratory for Visionary Architecture (LAVA)
Signage for Expo 2020 during mock-up reviews
We Deliver Excellence
Our work is underpinned by meticulous attention to detail and artful execution, we ultimately seek to inspire: from those we work with to those who use the spaces we design.
Francesco Amato,
Dar wa Emaar - Cityscape Global 2023
Making complex processes intuitive and natural
We think strategically, led by innovative thinking and supported by cutting-edge technology, including the latest analytical tools and computational models to predict and interpret movement and behaviour, delivering excellence.
The "spatial framework" can be complex on large-scale projects. This is why we always seek to create a visual metaphor that synthesises our research into a comprehensive design concept. Creating topological maps - just as Harry Beck did for the London Underground in the 1930s - helps us simplify this complexity and create a solution that feels natural and intuitive.
Jamie Geller
Audrey Irmas Pavilion at Wilshire Boulevard Temple, Los Angeles
Unique Product Design
Every project begins with a close reading of its context — the cultural heritage, local craft traditions and natural landscape of the place. That research feeds directly into the physical design: form, material, colour, typography and mapping are each resolved in relation to where the work will live, rather than imported from a generic system.
The result is a signage and product design language that is specific to its site — one that speaks to the architecture, reflects the client's brief and is legible within the cultural and social conditions of the region.
Powerful Graphic Design
We use graphic communication to tell the story of places - from place identity systems and urban supergraphics to public art and installations.
Unlike many environmental graphics practices, we bring a detailed architectural skill base to this work, which means our graphics integrate directly into the fabric of the architecture and landscape rather than being applied on top of it.