For some, contemporary architecture means stale geometric boxes and frigid minimalist interiors filled with snooty elitists sporting black turtlenecks. Principals Sam Jacob, Sean Griffiths, and Charles Holland, of the London-based firm FAT Ltd., are doing their best to upend this tired conception by creating rich, playful designs, weaving disparate concepts together to form a wholly new architectural vernacular. The English trio, whose name is an acronym for Fashion Architecture Taste, uses myriad narrative themes in their work, often contrasting fun and quirky ideas with more academic concepts. Think of them as paper architects who actually build things.
At FAT, the goal is to engender a more varied architectural landscape, one that reflects the interests of a building’s inhabitants as well as its streetscape. Says Jacob, “I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s postmodernism, but that kind of eclectic approach—one that isn’t based on an architect having a specific style, but having a process which can embrace very diverse interests.” While the forward-thinking firm doesn’t have a signature aesthetic, there is a concurrent feeling in each of their buildings. Staid traditional archetypes are often mixed with colorful, cartoonlike forms, creating something between life-size Playmobil sets and Memphis-does-Disney; walking into one of their buildings is a little like Alice going down the rabbit hole.
Since the firm’s inception in 1995, FAT has generated an impressive list of accomplishments in a relatively short period. Among them are numerous awards (including the Architecture Foundation’s Next Generation Award in 2006), inclusion in an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and a feature on the face of a Dutch stamp. Add their recent lectures at such hallowed institutions as the Tate Modern, Royal College of Art, Yale University, and SCI-Arc to the tally, and the offbeat outfit’s prowess starts to come into focus.
The principals at FAT aren’t shy about revealing their affinity for all things funky and contrarian, as evidenced not just by their variegated design sensibility, but also by their appreciation of Phil Collins’s drum fills. But it’s not all about an architectural laugh track for these innovative designers. We sat down with Jacob to see what’s behind their playful façade, and discovered some pretty serious stuff: philosophy, the purpose of architecture, and the perils of fast-food consumption.
We were all studying in different schools in London at about the same time, and got to know one another through a tutor we shared. When we came out of college, it was a really terrible time in the building industry—right in the middle of a recession. Absolutely the most stupid time to decide to set up an office—there was zero work. To start with, it was really about exploring some of the ideas we’d been interested in at college, which didn’t have much to do with building things. It was much more about exploring the margins of what architecture might be through a series of art projects.
Yeah, to try and take work and put it in a very public place. That meant putting it into bus shelters, onto “For Sale” signs that estate agents put up outside of houses, business cards, all kinds of things that already existed out in the world, and had a dialogue about the way in which they were used. The projects we were exploring were about how to make architecture without any walls, that didn’t have any physical fabric—what that might mean, how that might change relationships between the artist and the spectator, and how it might alter the way in which we use the city.
Yeah. We knew and were taught by some of the people at Archigram. When we were starting out, that [ideology] was definitely something we were thinking about. But it was a world of difference here; it was a time when young practices didn’t really exist in the UK.
Yeah, it was a very exciting time in London, when the YBA [Young British Artists] sensation was just starting. So there was lots of opportunity for interesting, creative things to occur. And that was a great context to be working within. Gradually, we thought, Well, hold on a minute, we don’t want to be like Archigram at all! We want to build! The real challenge is to take these ideas and pursue them through real, built bits of architecture.
The way that we work with a client is to try and look for the point within the project, and the points within the participants of the project, which are slightly undercover. We try and tease those moments out so that they become the focus. That means trying to identify the elements of personality, and then looking at them in relation to the influences and sources that we might begin to refer to in the design. A lot of projects at the moment are very narrative in a sense. They’re quite pictorial, and make a lot of references to things which are familiar, things that exist every day, or something that’s more historical, and then kind of recombine and retask them in new, progressive ways.
It’s partly to do with an idea that architecture’s quite a complex thing to experience. It’s about layering different kinds of meanings and readings, and allowing them to overlay one another. From one angle it can be a fun project, but at the same time it can have more depth to it. It can be explored with a particular set of ideas or theory if you like—a philosophy. The intention is that the work operates on different levels. The motivation for that is how a building works within the city; how it’s occupied; or how it’s seen as an object, a destination, or a background. Playing up a variety of aspects, which as you say are sometimes at odds with each other, adds to the richness of the project. It’s also about trying to get away from the idea of a perfect iteration of a single object or idea.
We're trying to do a couple of things. On one hand we’re trying to explore an alternative to that singular idea or aesthetic; we’re trying to upend that. At the same time we’re trying to reconnect with certain traditions, which have been randomly plucked from the last 100 years or so, beginning with Arts and Crafts up to Archigram. It’s that kind of idea that you can combine very different things. It’s not about pastiche, not about re-creation; it’s about using a language. It’s about using techniques, technologies, and materials in ways that encourage a more diverse use or understanding of architecture.
Yeah. It’s also a celebration of things that architects are usually fairly shy of. Architects usually aspire to things like timelessness, and we say, “Hold on a minute, that’s a ridiculous thing to aspire to in the 21st century. That’s a very obsolete notion. To embrace things like fashion and taste, things that change and shift colorfully, and alter—it’s an absolutely valid and important thing for architects to do.” The other side of the name is about being fat, consuming stuff, about consuming too much, and the architectural condition that arises when you graze on too much fast food. I suppose in both senses it’s about posing a question: What are the aspirations of architecture in the 21st century?
