“Architecture is morphing into a pan-disciplinary practice”
Tucked into her smart piece on “luxury scaffolding” in Curbed — featuring the recent Prada work done by 2x4 — Lauren Sinclair writes:
The Prada scaffolding is sophisticated architectural thinking; it just didn’t come from a traditional architecture firm. Architecture is morphing into a pan-disciplinary practice, where architects leave conventional practice to apply their thinking at the intersection of strategy, branding, graphic design, and spatial environments. 2x4 isn’t the exception; it’s an indicator of where architectural thinking is migrating toward and what it’s capable of when it gets there.
Putting aside the surprise to find discourse on pan-disciplinarity in Curbed, Sinclair, in two sentences, summarizes my project of the last decade. What’s been subconsciously interesting to me is why architecture — and architects — appear more comfortable in this form of expanded practice in a way graphic designers are not. Even here, Sinclair is writing about 2x4, a firm that emerges from graphic design not architecture, but it’s framed as architectural thinking.
My work is an attempt to show that graphic design, too, is a pan-disicplinary practice where graphic designers can leave traditional practice to apply their thinking at the intersection of strategy, branding, graphic design, and spatial (and digital) environments. Perhaps the reason I’ve had so many architects on the podcast over the last ten years is to figure out the comfort they have in leaving the discpline in a way graphic designers don’t.
Of course, this is also the theme of my new book, Graphic Designers After Graphic Design, coming next month!