Culture-led city branding: The core value of design reputation for museums from an interdisciplinary approach

The main idea of the research was to review a topic on how the design reputation of museums can be incorporated with successful culture-driven city branding from interdisciplinary design perspective. The purpose of the research is to identify the core value of design reputation of museums in developing cultural city branding. Within the conceptual basis, subordinary questions and research propositions were developed. The scope of the research is to based on secondary sources from 2000 to 2018. The area of focus within the research are: (1) cultural city branding, (2) museums in city branding, and (3) architectural design in city branding. To build a substantial contextual framework, a section of literature review consists of two sub-sections. (1) impact of design reputation and city branding; (2) a theoretical model of brand communication (Kapferer). The review was conducted to suggest a redefined model within the context of the key findings at city brand communication level. Methodologically, construct a systematic framework of ‘meaning-making’ from a qualitative approach was the focus and an analytical method (Onwuegbuzie and Frels) of the literature review process was underpinned to conduct the research. The key findings from the research identified core topics to structure a contextual framework in terms of the relationship between the global phenomenon of museum design and culture-driven city branding. The section of the findings consists of the followings. Firstly, the use of architectural design reputation of museums and its impact on positioning a city towards a culturally-attractive destination. Secondly, the use of flagship brand museums and their further contribution to visible city brand identity. Third, the use of corporate museums and their exhibition contents can function as one of the key tools to value city brand authenticity. Lastly, a re-conceptualized model was formulated to redefine the core value of museums in design, which helps improve essential branding strategies for cities, from a physical landmark to a sense of civic pride. It is hoped that the outcomes of the research can contribute to building a more specified agenda and to define the new role of good design of museums in developing Seoul City branding for a future research project.