ModerLand

Everyone has a word for the place they come from, and most people have feelings about it they would rather not air at dinner. Motherland is one of those words: large, warm, a little solemn. ModerLand changes one syllable. 'Mother' becomes 'moder', and inside that small change sits the word modern. The homeland stays put; the accent moves forward a century.

Medieval English sometimes spelt mother exactly this way, so the twist has older roots than it looks. What it does now is practical. A builder, an estate agency and a chain store all sell a version of the same thing, which is a place to be: a home, a neighbourhood, an aisle where the weekly shop gets done. Most names in those trades borrow the trade's own vocabulary, all towers, homes and marts. ModerLand borrows the vocabulary of belonging instead, and that travels further. It can stand on a site hoarding in one city and over a shop entrance in another without explaining itself.

The first set of sketches imagines a construction group. Two concrete frames rise between tower cranes, an excavator works the ground, and two site managers in high-visibility vests point at something the rest of us cannot see yet. The next two frames jump to what such a company might hand over: pale stone apartment blocks around a planted courtyard under the line 'Modern Neighborhoods, Thoughtfully Designed', then terraced homes stepping down towards a bay with 'Modern Living, Thoughtfully Built'. Rebar to sunset in three pictures: that is the whole case for a builder's name.

The second set tries the name on a chain store, and here the plain wordmark pays off. Spelt out in grey capitals across a pale façade, above an entrance where shoppers wheel out trolleys stacked with flat boxes, it looks as though it has always been there. Inside a warehouse-sized hall, three hanging banners, two white and one navy, carry nothing but the name. A brand that needs no symbol to hold a ceiling that high has done much of its work already.

Real estate gets a quieter image. A cream poster pairs the wordmark with 'A Place for the New Everyday', a woman at a curtained window looking out to sea, folded linens, a low house beside a still pool, and two more lines: 'Where Modern Becomes Human' and 'Design Meets Living'. An agency with national or international reach would want exactly that register, which suggests a way of life without shouting about square metres.

ModerLand sits in the Diamond Club at $12,000. Whoever buys it will have to choose which of the three lives to lead with first; the name, conveniently, does not mind which.