Aesthetic Intelligence: A Real Estate Superpower?

Photo by Eric Masi of T3 by Hines in Atlanta, GA

We’re in a time when people are realizing different values and having new priorities. Developers have long been driven by a passion for the operational aspects of their properties: architecture, efficiency, location, size, amenities, and programming. Tenant experience has been in mind (to compete for leases), but it’s been more a means to the end, rather than to truly create an overall and meaningful experience. And this more elevated idea of an experience is what helps create well-being.

This lack of pursuit of a bigger experience vision is partly because there is little language for the passion that helps define those experiences. But particularly these days, there is a stronger desire for it. And now there might be a language for it. Pauline Brown is the author of a new book: Aesthetic Intelligence, How to Boost It and Use It in Business and Beyond.

Brown explains Aesthetic Intelligence as our ability to understand, interpret, and articulate feelings that are elicited by a particular object or experience. Essentially, aesthetic intelligence is the development of “taste”—the ability to discern what is desirable and why and how to attain it. The term serves as the foundations of brand and culture that Torque seeks to identify when we create the message, story and visual branding of properties and real estate companies. 

What drives successful real estate investors, developers, asset managers, and brokers? Passion and vision. When sustained over time this passion and vision become culture and experiences. But these are all ambiguous terms and ethereal ideas. Aesthetic Intelligence (the other AI as Brown calls it) legitimizes and codifies the capabilities to define a vision for an experience and culture. It suggests ways for leaders and managers to develop those capabilities and put them to work to make their investments and developments thrive. 

For Torque, the concepts embodied in Aesthetic Intelligence provide potential toeholds for building the property and the ownership brand, by getting at the ownership vision and passions, as well as the efforts of all stakeholders who make it happen. And of course the fruit of those skills efforts and investments translates to buildings that create experiences that tenants and surrounding communities value over many others. And ultimately it creates investor profit. 

We know people today care more about the intangibles, and value emotional well-being. AI is a powerful tool in bringing that to fruition.