In this interview, Sam Jacob reflected on FAT’s 1990s design approach, relating its iconic forms and kitsch surfaces to the rise of the internet and the broader media environment. Drawing on Marshall McLuhan and on French Theory encountered through Kevin Rhowbotham, particularly the work of Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Roland Barthes, and Jean Baudrillard, Jacob described an ontology in which experience was mediated through representations.
He situated FAT’s pop-semiotic aesthetic alongside other responses to the period’s media-technical conditions, such as smooth, fluid forms and minimal high-tech structures. He also traced its postmodern lineage through Robert Venturi, Rem Koolhaas, the Independent Group, and Alison and Peter Smithson, emphasizing a flattened, eclectic landscape of popular architectural imagery. Jacob illustrated this approach through the Brunel nightclub in Swindon, conceived as a tribute to OMA’s Parc de la Villette entry. Its printed carpets and furniture formed strips evoking a running track, swimming pool, and airport security. Through fragmentation, artifice, and juxtaposition, the project extended the postmodern tradition within a poststructuralist and ontological framework.