Today sees the launch of our first project delivered specifically for a South American audience. The United Nations Social Housing project, funded by Caixa bank, is a huge home-building enterprise currently underway in Brazil – with 16 Million new homes being built for vulnerable and homeless people across the country.
With the United Nations Development Programme’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the core of this life-changing project, we were delighted to be chosen to incorporate their planet-saving initiative into our progressive design; helping to future-proof the social housing programme for generations to come. Our client, Caixa, are the second largest government-owned financial institution in South America, with over 100,000 employees, and more than 80M customer accounts. They were founded in the mid-19th Century, by Emperor Pedro II, fundamentally to collect and protect savings from poorer people – meaning that we were designing for not one, but two organisations with a renowned history of reaching out to help people and improve lives.
Following similar, previous social-housing projects in the country, a problem had regularly arisen once the homes were built, and the new residents moved in. A trend in the whole-life-performance of the homes had been for them to slowly fail, with maintenance of administration failing on monitoring occupants and suitability of the buildings. Their maintenance had also simultaneously deteriorated, leaving entire communities in lower-spec accommodation, and the bodies in charge of the homes with limited opportunities to bring them back up to standard – and then maintain them accordingly.
Because of this ongoing problem, leading building research institute, BRE, were approached to compile a suitable set of guidelines for maintaining the homes. The Unknown Creative were subsequently recognised as the design agency to brand the materials in a way that would regularly re-engage with the target audience of the project – 16M new homeowners AND their families!!
Our research took in the large communities being built (in more ways than one!), as well as the rich history of all the organisations involved in the enormous project. Encouraged to promote the prominent Caixa brand, we designed a brand identity, composed the brand guidelines, and created a quirky suite of original characters, infographics, and a short promotional animation with which to effectively launch the social housing sustainability standard that will oversee the homes now, and in the future.
During the course of this project we have communicated with clients in the UK and Europe – as well as across the Atlantic – and we are delighted to see our first South American brand identity ready to go in its home country, and ready to work for millions of new homes.