Sam Jacob On The "Post-Digital

Phase"
By James Taylor-Foster | Nov. 25th, 2014 Send to Kindle

Sam Jacob On The "Post-Digital Phase"

Eco Ruburb, a community hybrid of the rural and the urban (with Hawkins\Brown). Image © Sam Jacob
Studio

In an interview with Core77 Sam Jacob, formerly of FAT and now principal at Sam
Jacob Studio, has "always pursued an idea of design practice as a combination of
criticism, research and speculation that all feed directly into the design studio." This
approach has allowed his ideas to "cross-fertilize, find connections and directions
that make the practice stronger, more agile and able to respond intelligently to the
problem at hand." Jacob, who is also a Visiting Professor at Yale and the University
of Illinois at Chicago whilst simultaneously director of the Night School at
London's Architectural Association, recently saw the end of FAT's final project: the
curation of the British Pavilion (alongside Dutch architect and academic Wouter
Vanstiphout). In the UK, former partner Charles Holland is bringing a collaborative
project with artist Grayson Perry to completion in Essex.

Read more and see some of Jacob's drawings after the break.

+5

When
asked what
is currently
exciting him in design, Jacob suggests that "we're moving into a post-digital phase -
or perhaps it should be christened the real digital age." For a while, he argues,
"there's been a real obsession with digital tools in terms of what they can technically
do. Now I think we're getting over that. Instead what we're beginning to see is a kind
of convergence of intelligence in the design process—that cultural, physical,
representational, sociological issues are becoming far more entwined in the way we
can piece things together. Just as all kinds of information converges on our screens, I
think it is beginning to in the things we design."

Read the interview in full here.

Watch ArchDaily's interview with Jacob at the 2012 Venice Biennale:

Cite: James Taylor-Foster. "Sam Jacob On The "Post-Digital Phase"" 26 Nov

2014. ArchDaily. Accessed 23 Dec 2017. <https://www.archdaily.com/572314/sam-
jacob-on-the-post-digital-phase/> ISSN 0719-8884 ›