SUMMARY

In this interview, Nigel Coates discussed his trajectory from studying and teaching with Bernard Tschumi at the AA, to founding NATO and later Branson Coates, and eventually becoming head at the Royal College of Art. The conversation focused on the unique sensibility that informs his work, which synthesizes influences from Italy, Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception, performance art, postmodernism, transavantgarde painting, punk, nightclub culture, and queer culture.

Although his influences might appear eclectic, Coates explained that a consistent argument underpins his work: bodily presence, sensuality, richness, concreteness, and urbanity carry critical and political significance. His approach challenged the blandness of 1960s architecture experienced as an undergraduate at Nottingham University, the sanitized developments in Thatcherite London, and contrasted with the vibrancy and sensuality of Italy. Experiences in Italy as a young man exposed him to a more sensual culture, while working at the AA with Tschumi emphasized the subjective, experiential, erotic, and transgressive as political forces, informed by readings of Marcuse on eros, Foucault on madness, and Barthes on pleasure.

Coates also discussed his engagement with Renaissance and Baroque architecture in Italy, which he integrated into his early work through a sensualist lens rather than a traditional postmodernist lens. His first designs for restaurants and cafes in Japan included historical artifacts, from classical columns to nineteenth-century ironwork, selected for their evocative and sensory qualities. These elements were incorporated as salvaged and collaged components of his emerging punk-cum-new-romantic aesthetic.