Fashion Architecture Taste or FAT is an

art Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas. There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...

and

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...

collaborative Collaboration (from Latin ''com-'' "with" + ''laborare'' "to labor", "to work") is the process of two or more people, entities or organizations working together to complete a task or achieve a goal. Collaboration is similar to cooperation. Most ...

first established in the 1990s in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. Their work falls broadly under the

postmodern Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of moderni ...

category with

pop-culture Popular culture (also called mass culture or pop culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of practices, beliefs, artistic output (also known as, popular art or mass art) and objects that are dominant or prevalent in a ...

influences.Pearman, Hugh (15 January 2006
"Your taste or mine?"
''

The Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, whi ...

''. Retrieved 3 February 2009. The group has been described as "very young" and "very controversial" and have a cult following. Over recent years they have developed a large body of critically acclaimed built work in the UK and abroad. In December 2013, the group announced a planned breakup.Merrick, Jay 17 December 2013
"FATs all folks; architecture's biggest jokers sign off in style"
''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...

History

The group formed in London in the 1990s, and challenged the "orthodoxy of

Modernist Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, an ...

good taste", first with

experimentalism Experimentalism is the philosophical belief that the way to truth is through experiments and empiricism. It is also associated with instrumentalism, the belief that truth should be evaluated based upon its demonstrated usefulness. Experimentalism ...

in their Anti-Oedipal House (1993) that separated children and parents, and then at the 1995

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...

by distributing art from vending machines. They did a similar effort later in London's

Carnaby Street Carnaby Street is a pedestrianised shopping street in Soho in the City of Westminster, Central London. Close to Oxford Street and Regent Street, it is home to fashion and lifestyle retailers, including many independent fashion boutiques. Stre ...

on shopping bags (1999), and in 1998, converted an Amsterdam church into the Kessels Kramer Advertising Office in with big playground furniture, a fort, fake diving board, and lifeguard shack. Sean Griffiths, Charles Holland and Sam Jacob are the main members of the group. Emma Somerset Davis has been a previous member and a director of the group and lead artist collaborating on FAT's art exhibitions and projects over ten years. The group operated on a limited budget with their early projects and acted as an anti-hierarchical collective. They were influenced by

Robert Venturi Robert Charles Venturi Jr. (June 25, 1925 – September 18, 2018) was an American architect, founding principal of the firm Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, and one of the major architectural figures of the twentieth century. Together with h ...

and

Denise Scott Brown Denise Scott Brown (née Lakofski; born October 3, 1931) is an American architect, planner, writer, educator, and principal of the firm Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates in Philadelphia. Scott Brown and her husband and partner, Robert Venturi, ...

Stanley Tigerman Stanley Tigerman (September 20, 1930 – June 3, 2019) was an American architect, theorist and designer. Biography Early years Tigerman was born into a Jewish family, the only child of Emma (Stern), a typist for the federal government, and Sam ...

Situationists The Situationist International (SI) was an international organization of social revolutionaries made up of avant-garde artists, intellectuals, and political theorists. It was prominent in Europe from its formation in 1957 to its dissolution ...

Mannerism Mannerism, which may also be known as Late Renaissance, is a style in European art that emerged in the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520, spreading by about 1530 and lasting until about the end of the 16th century in Italy, ...

, the Arts and Crafts movement,

Archigram Archigram was an avant-garde architectural group formed in the 1960s ⁠that was neofuturistic, anti-heroic and pro-consumerist, drawing inspiration from technology in order to create a new reality that was solely expressed through hypothetical ...

, and

Jeff Koons Jeffrey Lynn Koons (; born January 21, 1955) is an American artist recognized for his work dealing with popular culture and his sculptures depicting everyday objects, including balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror- finish su ...

. They "steal copy, collage and make overt references to all kinds of high and low architecture; reusing, rescaling, recolouring; remaking their sources in the wrong materials," with their first projects being redesigns of interiors such as the Brunel Rooms nightclub in Swindon (1995), where a running track, swimming pool, garden shed and lounge were added. One of Fat's directors, Sean Griffiths, built a house in baby blue with cutout wall shapes and artful references to

Edwin Lutyens Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens ( ; 29 March 1869 – 1 January 1944) was an English architect known for imaginatively adapting traditional architectural styles to the requirements of his era. He designed many English country houses, war memori ...

Adolf Loos Adolf Franz Karl Viktor Maria Loos (; 10 December 1870 – 23 August 1933) was an Austrian and Czechoslovak architect, influential European theorist, and a polemicist of modern architecture. He was an inspiration to modernism and a widely-k ...

, and

. The group has been described as "very young" and "very controversial", having "brought work in the ultra-cool Netherlands," success on the international lecture and exhibition circuit. Members of the group describe FAT's work as figurative, eclectic and "not constrained by notions of taste." They view mainstream architecture as abstract, and say their work is direct and traditional like the "Natural History Museum... It’s got little animals all over it." The group started out with a "small powerful, furiously debated body of built work, some of it up before the protagonists hit thirty".

Recent work

FAT's design for a “bicycle surveillance shelter” or guard huts for bikes in Scheveningen is a small pyramid on one side and a battlemented castle on the other. FAT calls the work a "nonument" and it was popular enough to feature on a 69c Dutch stamp. FAT also completed the Woodward Place building in the United Kingdom with a Dutch-gables-on-steroids treatment that "has the functionalists choking on their herb tea" in a rejection of tidiness and uniformity that embraces clients use of crazy self-built fireplaces, half-timbering and nick-nacks. FAT believes that "people should be encouraged to customise their homes," and won a competition to redesign the Brookes Estate tower block in London with a plan for "a matrix from which homes of various styles and sizes sprout, quite literally" and where tenants will choose from various design options. FAT also did the £3.5 million makeover of the Saint Lucas Art Academy in Boxtel with "clever space planning behind a new facade of pseudo-gothic tracery in moulded concrete." FAT was brought in with a limited budget by the KesselsKramer advertising firm, whose church office it had designed 10 years prior, to help establish the technical art college for young students (16–20 years), in a more suitable and striking building. FAT wrapped the school in a precast pop-gothic wall.Staff (26 January 2007) "Works: Gothic novel". ''

Building Design Building design refers to the broadly based architectural, engineering and technical applications to the design of buildings. All building projects require the services of a building designer, typically a licensed architect. Smaller, less complica ...

'' The "shock tactics" of the exterior "may be camouflage for a high architectural project going on underneath" and parts of the Saint Lucas Art Academy project have been described as "high cunning" and "disingenuous, unglamorous and undeniably sensible." Archined.nl, an authoritative Dutch website on architecture, said, "The Sint Lucas academy in Boxtel has been 'pimped' by English design outfit FAT." Other works include a new Dutch town's community park that includes a village hall for hobbyists and a pet cemetery, and a "confidential new eco-village in the English countryside". FAT recognize a connection between architecture and fashion and their approach was described as "folk art for the information age ... It is an architecture that wants to be progressive, radical, and, most importantly, liked."Rose, Steve (May 16, 2006
"Cladding: the comeback; Minimalist glass and steel exteriors are so over. Now fashionable building designers are dressing their works in the architectural equivalent of flared trousers"
''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' The firm designed a

New Islington New Islington is an inner city area of Manchester, in North West England. Historically in Lancashire and part of Ancoats, it has taken a separate identity to reflect its changed status as a regeneration area. History The name "New Islington" ...

social housing scheme in

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

and refurbished a tower block in

Newham The London Borough of Newham is a London borough created in 1965 by the London Government Act 1963. It covers an area previously administered by the Essex county boroughs of West Ham and East Ham, authorities that were both abolished by the s ...

using a "riot of colour and pattern" for the facades drawing on influences from the 1980s. Fashion Architecture Taste designed 35 colorful homes to replace the Parson Cross Deerlands School, which closed in 2005, in

Sheffield Sheffield is a city status in the United Kingdom, city in South Yorkshire, England, whose name derives from the River Sheaf which runs through it. The city serves as the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is Historic counties o ...

. In 2011 FAT completed a 260-metre facade for the

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...

's new TV production centre in the docks area of

Cardiff Cardiff (; cy, Caerdydd ) is the capital and largest city of Wales. It forms a principal area, officially known as the City and County of Cardiff ( cy, Dinas a Sir Caerdydd, links=no), and the city is the eleventh-largest in the United Kingd ...

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...

. The distinctive profile of the facade was said to allude to the nearby docks warehouse and gothic architecture.Murray, C. (ed.) (21 September 2011) "FAT completes 260m facade as part of new £30m BBC production village", ''

Architects' Journal ''Architects' Journal'' is an architectural magazine published in London by Metropolis International. History The first edition was produced in 1895. Originally named ''The Builder's Journal and Architectural Record'', from 1906 to 1910 it was kn ...

'', p.10

Breakup

In December 2013, FAT announced that they were going to split after 23 years. FAT planned to wrap up its business following the completion of A House for Essex, designed for

Living Architecture Living or The Living may refer to: Common meanings *Life, a condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms ** Living species, one that is not extinct *Personal life, the course of an individual human's life * H ...

(a collaboration with

Grayson Perry Grayson Perry (born 1960) is an English contemporary artist, writer and broadcaster. He is known for his ceramic vases, tapestries, and cross-dressing, as well as his observations of the contemporary arts scene, and for dissecting British "pre ...

) and the curation of ''A Clockwork Jerusalem'' at the British Pavilion as part of the 2014

Major works and awards

* Islington Square, a development of social housing in

, completed in 2006 *According to the group's website they have received Architecture Foundation New Generation Award 2006, FX Best Public Building Award 2006 and a 2007 RIBA European Award *Saint Lucas Art Academy (redesign) in

Boxtel Boxtel () is a municipality and a town in the southern Netherlands. The name derives from Buchestelle and is presumably a combination of 'stelle' (Dutch for stable, safe place) and (deer) buck.2019. Etymologiebank.Nl. Accessed April 27 2019 This i ...

, the

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

, a makeover of building constructed in the 1960s *Woodward Place building, United Kingdom * "In a Lonely Place" installation

RIBA The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) is a professional body for architects primarily in the United Kingdom, but also internationally, founded for the advancement of architecture under its royal charter granted in 1837, three suppl ...

(2006) *Bicycle surveillance shelter,

Scheveningen Scheveningen is one of the eight districts of The Hague, Netherlands, as well as a subdistrict (''wijk'') of that city. Scheveningen is a modern seaside resort with a long, sandy beach, an esplanade, a pier, and a lighthouse. The beach is po ...

(featured on a Dutch stamp) *BBC TV production centre facade, Cardiff (2011) *Heerlijkheid in

Hoogvliet Hoogvliet is a borough of Rotterdam, Netherlands. As of 1 January 2004, it had 36,619 inhabitants. There is also a national chain of Dutch supermarkets with the same name. History The village Hoogvliet was first mentioned on 26 May 1326 in the ar ...

, the

community building *A House for Essex, built for

Alain de Botton Alain de Botton (; born 20 December 1969) is a Swiss-born British author and philosopher. His books discuss various contemporary subjects and themes, emphasizing philosophy's relevance to everyday life. He published ''Essays in Love'' (1993), w ...

*Blue House in London *BBC Cardiff, 3.6 ha village in Roath Basin *

Community In A Cube Community In A Cube (CIAC) is a housing development on Windward Way, Middlehaven of Middlesbrough, United Kingdom designed by Fashion Architecture Taste Fashion Architecture Taste or FAT is an art and architecture collaborative first established ...

in Middlesbrough, an 82-home development *Bentley Library in the Midlands * A House for Essex,

Wrabness Wrabness is a small village and civil parish near Manningtree, Essex, England. The village is located six miles (10 km) west of Harwich. Wrabness railway station is served by trains on the Mayflower Line. Wrabness had a population of appr ...

, designed by Charles Holland based on ideas by the artist

(2015). Subject of a

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned enterprise, state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a four ...

documentary in May 2015.

References

External links