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Established in 1991, FAT – an acronym of Fashion Architecture Taste – is a company that markets itself as a maker of ‘architecture and art and all the things in between’. That means that when they are not involved in Dutch town planning, FAT’s directors – Sean Griffiths, Charles Holland and Sam Jacob – are busy putting artworks in bus shelters, billboards, estate agents’ ‘For Sale’ signs, or on plastic bags. And they say it’s all part of a mission to expand the 20th century’s narrow definition of what architecture can be.





In keeping with that, FAT has produced an eleven-step guide to becoming a world-famous architect that doesn’t require its users to do any building at all. Instead it’s all about writing good press releases and learning to exploit the media. It’s the 21st century after all, and anyone can be a designer if they have access to a scanner and Photoshop. What matters more is that your project is well packaged, with an air of intellectual mystery (hints at revolutionary politics and French philosophy will do) and an exciting and catchy name. ‘If it sounds good it is good,’ is their main tip for young designers looking for a fast track to the top. As long as you remember that, you’re guaranteed to surf your way to designer stardom on the back of an unstoppable wave of media hype.

Despite their undertones of gently mocking cynicism, such statements are more than yet another Situationist-inspired attempt to destroy the gap between the evil media illusions of twentieth-century spectacular culture and the harsh realities of the environment in which we live. For FAT, marketing and the media really are crucial forms of communication, simply complaining about them would be at best naïve and at worst a continuation of architecture’s general association with elite high culture. (As architects tend to have to go through at least five years of training, they generally like to think that they know a lot more about everything than anyone else.) So FAT are very proud of the fact that they are moderately famous and that their work has appeared in lifestyle magazines like The Face, i-D and Dazed & Confused, national and regional newspapers, and has been further promoted by their numerous appearances on TV. It proves that architecture can be popular and connect with a wide audience. And they can’t imagine how they would get along without Photoshop, a scanner and books of copyright-free architecture designs.

Architecture is not so much about what you build, they say; it’s more about how you use buildings. ‘When you talk to architects they always say that space is the stuff that they do,’ says Griffiths. ‘But when they build a building, space is only the stuff that’s left behind. Artists tend to have a different view of space. It’s something that’s produced by an interaction with the viewer. We use collage a lot because it’s an easy way of bringing value and meaning to our designs.’

So FAT champion content above form. Early experiments included Adsite (1993) for which they hired advertising space in 100 London bus shelters and then used them to display 100 works of art. ‘We realised we’d designed an art gallery in the fabric of the city’, claims Griffiths. And by fusing the communication techniques of culture and commerce, this gallery was one that engaged its audience more directly than those more conventional gallery designs that have four walls and a roof and require their audience to walk through a door.

FAT’s 1998 conversion of a church into the offices of the maverick Amsterdam advertising agency Kessels Kramer is a perfect example of how their theories and collage aesthetic are put into practice. The brief was ‘go crazy,’ and that’s pretty much what FAT did. The church now houses a huge Baywatch-style beach house, a wooden fort, part of a shed, a fragment of football pitch, and a bust of Lenin bought from a flea market. While it’s certainly an entertaining way of creating clear divisions of space, everything is on different scales and you could spend weeks trying to figure out what it all means. ‘It seems to tell a story but actually it’s nonsense’ explains Jacob. So it’s a neat summary of what most advertising is all about. After all, FAT say, Kessels Kramer did ask for something that would let their clients know that they had come to the right place.

While everyone and their mother seems to be fusing art and architecture these days – Anish Kapoor is trotting off to Naples to design an artful subway station, people like Diller + Scofidio are stuffing galleries full of their ‘conceptual’ architecture, even Britain’s pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale was essentially a collaboration between painter Chris Ofili and architect David Adjaye – what makes FAT special is that they seem to have a lot of fun as well. They can’t stop laughing when they describe their projects and even their downloadable design for a paper lampshade comes with a joke printed across its side: How many Essex girls does it take to screw in a lightbulb? None, they only screw in Cortinas. As Hoogvliet is a typically run down example of a Dutch postwar new town which, despite its leafy setting is located between a motorway, a busy shipping port and a large chunk of the Dutch petrochemical industry, its residents could probably do with a few laughs. ‘Optimistically, it has all the beauty of the countryside with the convenience of modern living. Pessimistically, it has all the loneliness of rural life coupled with urban ugliness,’ say FAT. Their task is to make sure optimism wins out.

FAT’s work in Hoogvliet is part of the Dutch WIMBY project – Welcome into My Back Yard! – an alternative to the increasing prevalent NIMBY(Not in My Back Yard)-based planning that is most obviously manifested in the form of gated communities. Its design focuses on the creation of a community hall and a landscape that incorporates a series of recreational facilities including a boating lake (with the pet cemetery on an island in the middle), an open-air cinema and some riding stables. Even the earth dug up during the landscaping and building will be put to recreational use as a site for monster-truck rallies and a festival of mud. The overall design concept is simple: to let Hoogvlieters express themselves. And you couldn’t imagine a more direct way of achieving that than giving them a bloody big sign. With the ‘H’ of HOOGVLIET doubling up as a motorway bridge, no one who travels through the area is going to forget that the Hoogvlieters are here.

Along with its grand gestures, FAT work with the people of Hoogvliet in more personal ways. The community hall and landscape are a very public advertisement for the residents’ private hobbies and leisure pursuits – from parties and barbecues to bingo and horse riding – combined with something of the feel of an old-fashioned village green. FAT’s initial research analysed the unconscious suburban symbolism of Hoogvlieters’ doorways and backyards as indicators of some of their hopes and dreams. Topiary framing the front door of a first-floor flat hints at fantasies of the grand entrance to an English stately home. An overgrown garden path is a miniature version of a quiet country lane. And a decorative anchor provokes visions of a carefree nautical life. The façade of FAT’s community hall harnesses a similar (but more exaggerated) idiom, featuring cut-out tree shapes and a cheerful sunrise to promote a vision of happy community life.

Of course, whether giving the people of Hoogvliet the appearance of the good life will help stimulate the real thing is another matter altogether. Only when the first stage of the project is completed in 2004 will anyone have a chance to test that out. But at least FAT can be relied upon to provide engaging designs that bring their clients a sense of fun. And in a world that now considers every building to be either a monument or memorial, that’s often more important than it seems.

Mark Rappolt is the Architecture Editor for contemporary

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