Launching a new project
Explain who it is for and why people should choose it. We develop positioning, a launch concept and materials for the first campaign.
When a place’s promise and reality diverge
Architecture can be striking, an idea ambitious and investment enormous. But what does a person actually get, and what life can they have here? These projects reveal gaps between a promise, the design of a place and its use. We look at positioning: what people were promised and how well the place supported it.
Mudurnu, Türkiye
Burj Al Babas
Burj Al Babas was planned as 732 miniature castle villas near Mudurnu. In January 2019, The Guardian described 587 built structures, halted construction and investors withdrawing. An architectural shell is not a finished home or an established community. The report connected the difficulties with the economic crisis and the developer’s problems. This describes the launch period, rather than claiming a current status.
French châteaux in Anatolia — architecture with no relationship to the place. And 732 identical clones packed side by side is the opposite of what a wealthy buyer is buying.
Sources
The Guardian · 2019 ↗Tianjin, China
Yujiapu
Yujiapu is a financial district in Tianjin. APEC’s 2014 report describes plans for a low-carbon business district and green supply chains. Footage made by Karl Lemieux and BJ Nilsen in winter 2015 documented a sparsely occupied cityscape during construction. Investment figures and unfinished-building counts for neighbouring Xiangluo Bay are not attributed to Yujiapu here.
Manhattan is not a skyline. It is two hundred years of money, connections and habits. They copied the shape, and nothing came with it.
Abu Dhabi, UAE
Masdar City
Masdar City launched in 2006 as an experiment in sustainable urban development. Its original model envisaged a larger scale and faster delivery. A 2025 LSE study describes about 5,000 residents, over 10,000 jobs and a shift from zero-carbon rhetoric to low-carbon development. The project continues to develop: this is an evolving promise, rather than a completed abandoned city.
There was a legend, and a very loud one. The place could not keep it — and the promise turned into a bill that gets presented again every year.
Baodi, China
Jing Jin City
A September 2013 South China Morning Post report described Jing Jin City as about 3,000 villas between Beijing and Tianjin. One resident estimated that eight to ten houses in his area of roughly 400 villas were occupied in autumn and winter. This is one person’s observation at a particular time, not a census or evidence that the entire development was empty.
What was sold here was an asset, not a life. An asset can be bought and never visited — and then the place is given no reason to become a place.
Sources
SCMP · 2013 ↗Guadalajara, Spain
Valdeluz
Valdeluz was developed beside a high-speed railway station near Guadalajara. The property crisis slowed its early development. In a 2025 Reuters report, the mayor described a population of about 6,000 and an influx from Madrid. Its story includes recovering demand; today’s town cannot be described solely through its difficult launch.
The concept was never tested against reality. They were selling a future that did not arrive.
Sources
Reuters · 2025 ↗Shenyang, China
State Guest Mansions
AFP reported in July 2023 that Greenland Group began State Guest Mansions outside Shenyang in 2010. Plans included 260 European-style villas and facilities for provincial government visitors. Construction stopped about two years later. In 2023, farmers were using land among the unfinished structures for cattle and crops. The report does not establish one proven cause of the halt.
French mansions in Manchuria, built not for the people who live there but for the people who visit. The place itself took no part in the project.
Sources
AFP · 2023 ↗Independent analyses of public projects, not BrainMadeLab client work. Their difficulties have different causes, including economics, financing, infrastructure and management decisions. Here we examine the connection between a project’s promise and people’s experience. Images are original illustrations, not documentary photographs.
What counts as a place
Square metres or nights — the job is the same
The method is not about a real-estate genre. It is about a place the buyer has to imagine before they ever stand in it. Whether you sell that place by the square metre or by the night, the legend answers the same question: why here, and not the project next door at the same price.
- A village
- A low-rise quarter
- A city apartment complex
- A tower
- A business centre
- A district master plan
- A resort
- A hotel
- A glamping site
- A destination
- A waterfront
- An entire city
This is not a list of real-estate genres, and not a menu of services. It is a list of places somebody has to imagine before they see them — and choose before they compare on price.
For a residential project, we articulate a reason to choose this apartment, house or community. For a hotel, a reason to visit, book and return. The result goes where decisions happen: advertising, your website, presentations and conversations with your team.
For a residential project, we articulate a reason to choose this apartment, house or community. For a hotel, a reason to visit, book and return. The result goes where decisions happen: advertising, your website, presentations and conversations with your team.
Method
From genius loci to the sales desk
The layers run in order, each one built on the last. A visual world built before the narrative is just pretty pictures — expensive ones.
Diagnosis — two to three weeks · full cycle — six to ten
Place narrative
Your territory, audience and neighbours get read, not guessed at — to find the one thing this place can promise honestly, and the project down the road cannot repeat.
- Read the site, the buyer, and the three nearest competitors
- Find the one honest promise — tested against reality, not invented at a desk
- Write the core idea, the name, and the story that carries it
Deliverable: A map of differences, a priority audience, the core promise and the arguments that support it.
Visual world
The narrative made visible: an identity system, an atmosphere, and a bank of photoreal imagery built around your exact buyer and your architecture. No shoots, no models, no locations.
- Build the identity system the narrative implies
- Set the atmosphere — light, season, hour, material
- Produce the bank of frames: every hour and angle a sales desk needs
Deliverable: Art direction, an agreed image set and guidelines for using it in project materials.
Sales touchpoints
The narrative reaches the places where a sale is actually decided: the first screen, the sales-office materials, the way a lead gets qualified on the phone.
- Rewrite the first screen around the legend, not the floor plan
- Hand the sales desk a script that says what the site says
- Qualify leads against the story, not against the discount
Deliverable: Copy and layouts for agreed touchpoints: the website’s opening section, advertising materials and the sales presentation.
Before starting, we agree the deliverables, file formats, approval stages and schedule. We use available project and audience data to assess the concept; interviews and testing are agreed separately when needed.
Every place has a character, the way a person does. The work is not to invent a mask for it — it is to hear its real voice, and to make sure the buyer hears it too.
A lakeside community: a positioning concept
An example of how a place’s features can inform positioning, a two-clubhouse concept and visual direction. Images and scenarios illustrate the proposed idea; implementation and sales results are not claimed.
Author’s concept · demonstration materials
Original territory illustration · conceptual example
- Water
- the one point every path leads to
- Forest
- a boundary, not a backdrop
- Meadow
- shared ground, not leftover ground
- Lots
- 213 addresses around a single centre
How the place was read
Three findings, and the line they add up to
Working hypotheses for the concept; these are not findings from buyer research.
Weekdays
Forty minutes from the office, not two hours
so the place is a weekday, not a holiday
Mornings
The water is busiest at seven in the morning
people come here to start the day, not to hide from it
Accelerating
The buyers were couples with young children and two careers
nobody here is retiring — they are accelerating
From escape the noise to recharge at full speed.
The concept combines positioning, visual direction and example materials for a project team.
The reposition, in one line
From escape the noise to recharge at full speed.
The concept combines positioning, visual direction and example materials for a project team.
What the sales desk left with
The concept combines positioning, visual direction and example materials for a project team.
The deliverable itself
What a legend looks like when it is written down
A demonstration of a positioning document. The story and scenarios belong to the author’s concept.
Fictional concept study
- Core idea
- A place for people who are accelerating, not retiring.
- Name
- Fictional concept study
- The story
Forty minutes from the office is not a summer house. It is a second address for someone who will be back in the city on Monday morning — and who therefore needs the place to work on a Tuesday, not only in August.
That is why the water here is busiest at seven in the morning, not at seven in the evening. People come to start the day. The place is not an escape from a life; it is the part of that life where the batteries are put back in.
So the settlement stops promising silence. It promises return: you arrive with nothing left and you leave with something. Everything else follows from that sentence — including the fact that one clubhouse was never going to be enough.
- What followed from it
- A second clubhouse — one for quiet, one for speed
- A first screen that no longer opens with the word “comfort”
- The sentence the sales desk says on the phone
- A bank of frames for every hour and season
A second clubhouse — one for quiet, one for speed
A first screen that no longer opens with the word “comfort”
The sentence the sales desk says on the phone
A bank of frames for every hour and season
Nobody buys the drawing
Every project can show you this line work. It is honest, it is accurate, and it sells nothing — a buyer cannot stand inside a section drawing. Drag the handle: same house, same camera, same lens. The only thing that changed is that somebody decided which hour it would be remembered at.
One idea, several visual scenarios
Examples of an original visual concept in different light and seasons. The image library and adaptations are defined in the proposal.
Start with a single campaign
For a new residential phase, one apartment type, a hotel season or a specific offer. We choose one task and one audience, develop the idea and prepare launch materials.
- The central campaign idea and argument.
- A key visual and an agreed set of adaptations.
- Headlines and copy for selected channels.
- Recommendations for testing the concept.
Scope, cost and timing are agreed after a short discussion. A campaign can be commissioned separately from full branding.
Discuss a campaignThree depths of reading a place
Three ways into the same place, each one deeper than the last. Take the one that fits where your project is today.
Differentiation audit
$3,500
2 weeks
Understand where the project loses differentiation and which changes to make first.
Includes
- The three nearest projects, read
- Five moves, in priority order
- A working session with your team
Positioning
$12,000
2–3 weeks
Define who the project is for, why people will choose it and how to talk about it.
Everything in the audit, and
- The core idea and the positioning
- The name and the story behind it
- What the sales desk says on the phone
The idea comes first: the imagery, the website and the sales conversation are all built on it.
Take this oneTake this oneFull cycle
$35,000
6–10 weeks
Turn positioning into a visual system and agreed materials for advertising, the website and the sales team.
Everything in the narrative, and
- Identity system and art direction
- An agreed image library for the project
- First screen, sales office, script
Non-standard territories — resorts, master plans, phased releases — are quoted separately.
And after that
Ongoing support
$2,500per month · minimum six months
Develop project materials according to an agreed monthly plan.
Discuss ongoing supportThe proposal specifies quantities, formats, revision rounds and deadlines. Media buying, advertising account management and technical website development are agreed separately.
One-off projects: 50% before work starts, 50% after approval of the final materials. Ongoing support: monthly payment in advance, minimum six months. File and rights transfer are defined in the contract.
Before we talk
What do you need to start?
Send a project link and a few lines about the task. A full brief is not required; we will review the available information about the place and audience.
What will I receive?
Depending on the format: audit findings, positioning or a visual system and touchpoint materials. Quantities, formats and revision rounds are specified in the proposal.
How long does it take?
Audit: two weeks. Positioning: two to three. Full cycle: six to ten. We agree the schedule and approval stages before starting.
Do you use AI?
Yes, under my art direction. Visual concepts are labelled as illustrations. Source materials and accuracy to the real architecture are agreed for each project.
How are files and rights handed over?
Your team receives the materials and usage guidelines. Source file and rights transfer are defined in the contract. Your team can use the result independently.
We already have an agency. How do you join?
I work alongside your team or agency, developing positioning, a concept and visual direction. We agree roles, deliverables and approval stages before starting.
Are you responsible for sales?
My responsibility is positioning, the concept and agreed materials. Sales also depend on price, product, traffic and your team. Before starting, we agree what changes to track and what data is available.
Can we start with a small task?
Yes, with a standalone audit or a campaign for a single offer. Your team can use the result independently of further collaboration.
Can the project remain confidential?
I publish collaboration materials and client results only within an agreed scope. Confidentiality and presentation terms are defined before the project starts.
Maxim Bagaev
Fifteen years in visual communications: branding, photography, art direction. Work with development, event and television projects in Russia and abroad.
Since 2024, this practice has combined place strategy with AI-native production: brand-strategist thinking, a photographer’s eye, and production at the speed of the tools — for you, that means agency-level thinking without agency overhead.
Brainmade Lab is the studio. Genesis Territory is the method inside it — the repeatable way a place gets read, named, and made to sell, project after project.
A place cannot be invented. It can only be read correctly — and then said out loud in a way nobody nearby is able to repeat.
Let’s start with your project
Send a link and briefly describe the task: a launch, updated presentation, a single campaign or hotel promotion. Within two working days I will send three written observations based on the available materials: what works, where the project’s value gets lost and what to check first.
Free. No obligation to commission a project.
Brainmade Lab · Genesis Territory method · Maxim Bagaev
hello@brainmadelab.com · LinkedIn
© 2026 · Visuals produced with AI tools under the author’s art direction