Delivering his speech to celebrate the inauguration of Spangler Hall, Harvard Business School’s newest building, on 22 January 2001 the famous architect Robert A.M. Stern was most contemplative about the place of architecture in conveying and constructing the brand of the university. “Can a building promote a brand, and should it? After all, a lot of building is about functional accommodation”, Stern muses and then continues: “[A building] can take a symbolic role, it can become an emblem, it can become a part of a brand and even be a brand in itself. A building can express the identity of an institution through a stylistic language; it can express both an institution’s inspirations and its aspirations; it can reflect a system of values and place those values in a continuum”.
Although Stern’s speech focuses on architectural expressions of the brand of the university, his thoughtful commentary reveals much about the current institutional conditions of the university. Specifically, his commentary redirects the current ‘hot’ debate on the changing nature of universities to the issue of branding: how are universities creating a brand? Why are they engaging in branding? And, what are the implications of the coming of ‘the brand society’ onto the field of higher education? In this chapter, the authors wrestle with such issues by commenting on the role of the university brand as an embodiment of the university’s evolving sense of community and of identity. Drawing on a survey of university iconography, they describe the institutional character of the branding of universities. Specifically, they argue that the change in the iconography of universities from emblem style into logos reflects the redefinition of the social role of the university and of higher education: universities are currently defined as organizations and higher education is defined as a product or commodity. The authors also argue that these symbolic changes towards branding of universities draw from the professionalization of university management and from the culture of globalization.
