#235 - ARCHIE LEE COATES IV, Co-founder of PLAYLAB
SUMMARY
This week Archie Lee Coates IV, a Co-Founder of the multi-disciplinary design studio PLAYLAB joins David and Marina of FAME Architecture & Design to discuss the evolution and future of PLAYLAB, naïveté in design and art, social equity in design practices and design, believing in humanity, design office as permeable amoeba, working with Virgil Abloh for the Louis Vuitton Show, and more. Enjoy!
ABOUT PLAYLAB
PLAYLAB, INC. is an extremely multi-disciplinary Los Angeles-based creative studio founded in 2009. With no particular focus, we explore themes using art, architecture, and graphic design to initiate ideas for ourselves and others. PLAYLAB, INC. is: Archie Lee Coates IV, Jeff Franklin, Dillon Kogle, Ana Cecilia Thompson Motta, Peter Deering and Gabriel Chan.
HIGHLIGHTS
TIMESTAMPS
(00:00) Archie discusses his college education, why he chose to switch from architecture to graphic design at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and the early beginnings of PLAYLAB with his business partner Jeff Franklin.
(03:20) The importance of social equity in design and design offices.
The world’s always been fucked up and it’s just that we’re becoming illuminated year after year of the realities of the world—especially 2020. So as two extremely white co-founders of this studio, we now know that we have an extreme privilege that we need to examine every day, every week, every month, every year for the rest of our lives as the studio exists. So now the hard work begins, which is, how does this place, the studio, become a place of access and opportunity for everyone else who doesn’t look like us. And that is the hard work. (04:55)
(07:50) +POOL (the world’s first water-filtering floating pool) and the variety of work PLAYLAB does.
(24:02) Things that inspire Archie, issues of diversity and equality, architecture school, and how it all shapes the office and his everyday life.
Everyday there are ten things in the world that break your heart and it’s a constant battle to understand where you fit in to do something. And it’s also a constant battle to understand who you are as an individual and what you want to be doing with your time and where those two things meet or where you have to step out and change yourself and your goals as a person. That’s the studio growth. How do we do that? It’s a huge question—it’s every day and it’s an ongoing conversation at home. […] I have a four-and-half-year-old son and we’re talking about these things every single day… about how to be better human beings. And I think in concert with art it’s important. (27:19)
(41:14) How the office is structured and why they intentionally limit putting out information about how it functions.
We know we’re not perfect, so we just don’t need to have the conversation with other people about why we’re not perfect or why our square peg doesn’t fit into your round hole. I care, but I don’t care. If I care, then we’re opening it up to too many, too many things. I have enough to deal with, to solve this studio for the next 50 years. I got my work cut out for my me […] so we have to keep the whole thing tight. […] As much as I’m saying this thing [the office] is sacred. The walls are permeable. The thing itself is an amoeba—it’s constantly changing—and the walls are permeable. So we love adjacencies that are weird, for lack of a better word. Things that don’t necessarily feel like they belong together. (49:10)
(55:30) PLAYLAB’S design process, history, growth, and end goals.
I can equally see nobody being here, us not having a studio, and it’s Jeff and I in a desert in a one-room apartment doing the same thing. And I think that’s the difference… is that it doesn’t matter. It matters because I really want to be around people and I find that to be the success, but if it scaled back down to Jeff and I… and maybe it does someday, maybe it scales back down to two old men attempting something together, that would be great too. Because that’s our journey and I’m good with that. If I went through this whole world with all of the crazy people in it—evil people, bad people, good people, in-between people—and I came out with one person that I trusted, I hit that jackpot. So once you have that, why would you want anything else? (01:21:51)
(01:30:15) PLAYLAB’S move from New York City to Los Angeles.
(01:38:20) Getting to work with clients such as Drake
(01:44:17) THE experience of working with Virgil Abloh on the 2020 Louis Vuitton Show.
It’s magical. It’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen in my life and maybe ever will. When you watch these shows, when you watch what’s he’s [Virgil Abloh] built and how he’s done it and how he’s involved people and the messages they are dripping in […] It’s the best form of art I’ve ever seen. Truly. (01:50:27)
