placemaking
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The Little Agency That Makes a Place Feel Famous
The ACE Agency found a durable niche in a slippery business: it sells attention for places people can actually enter. Parks, museums, restaurants and shopping districts become the medium - and the measuring stick.
Unseen Heroes Learned That a Great Event Should Outlive the Folding Chairs
The Sacramento experience agency turned block parties, markets and pop-ups into civic infrastructure. Then the pandemic removed the crowds and taught it a harder lesson: making a place is not the same as keeping it.
Clearstory makes the building easier to read
A children’s hospital, a former shipyard, a campus full of competing destinations: Clearstory turns complicated places into places people can understand. Its most revealing design tool is the question it asks before drawing the sign.
Keith & Co. makes a place easier to read
A confusing hallway, a neighborhood under construction, a museum finding its voice. Keith & Co. turns the practical business of getting people oriented into graphic design with a public life.
Volume Inc. makes places you can read
A painted waterfront, a conference sign, a wall about prunes. The San Francisco studio finds the stories inside places - then gives people a reason to notice.
RSM Design makes places worth finding
A parking garage can borrow the swagger of a concert poster. A former naval base can keep its bearings. RSM Design builds the visual clues that help a place make sense.
Cobu
Cobu is a Boston-based proptech company that turns apartment residents into a real community - and turns that community into occupancy. Its resident-powered, AI-enabled platform runs building-wide chats, interest groups, in-person events, and always-on Google review and referral outreach, backed by a team of virtual community managers. For renters it fights isolation; for owners and operators it drives signed leases, higher renewals, better online reputation, and less busywork for on-site teams. Founded in 2018 as Doorbell, Cobu is used across dozens of U.S. states and by many of the country's largest multifamily operators.
Benjamin Pleat
Benjamin (Ben) Pleat is the CEO and co-founder of Cobu, a Boston-based resident-engagement platform that turns apartment buildings into actual communities. After watching his extroverted mother feel isolated in a well-appointed Manhattan building - and learning that apartment owners bleed money to roughly 50% annual tenant churn - he built a company on a simple bet: a single friend in your building makes you 30%+ more likely to renew your lease. A Harvard economics grad who passed through WeWork's growth team and Goldman Sachs' real estate private equity group, Pleat now leads a company that has powered community in tens of thousands of apartment homes by getting neighbors into the same room for poker nights, potlucks, and chef dinners.