One of FAT's numerous urban interventions, The Street as Gallery, involves art as a substitute for estate-agent signs outside residential properties. As I write, the first installations created for the King's Cross Millennium Artwork project are due to be completed in November 1999. The project uses hoardings and neon lighting to examine civic symbols such as clocks, fountains and flags from a more populist perspective. Although FAT's projects contribute to the architectural discourse, one wonders whether the firm's inquiring approach provides worthwhile answers or whether its function lies largely in the realm of sensationalism. I met with two of the firm's four directors, Sam Jacob and Sean Griffiths, to find out more about what informs their work.
Taste is ignored . . .
Like my mother's interiors. In and of itself, their stance reveals FAT's ambition to be accessible, to move away from elitist connotations of fine art and good design. In other words, the same understanding of proportion, spatial sequence, form and light applies to both FAT's work and that of the architectural meritocracy. It's a bit like a double bluff, but even more complex. For instance, the ability to key into the current pulse of things, to unlock the door to 'fashion', gives the work a provocative flavour that instantly satisfies our underlying, semi-rebellious, teenage sentimentalities.