PLAY TIME

Many of the remembrances of David Lynch published after his passing in January mentioned his gee-whiz, cherry-pie-and-coffee, Midwestern earnestness. The director always exuded uncanny sunshine in contrast to his penchant for noir. As a trait, earnestness rarely gets enough attention. More often than not, it’s overshadowed by hipness, camp, or irony. PlayLab is earnest. And Archie Lee Coates IV and Jeff Franklin, who cofounded the creative agency in 2009, are also glass-full, milk-fed earnest. Despite running a twelve-person team that caters to some of the biggest names in art, music, and film, these are two guys who just want to a grab some pizza and a six-pack and geek out over Charles and Ray Eames or Tibor Kalman — just like they did when they met studying architecture at VirginiaTech, or for a dozen years in New York when Franklin would work a day job at REX and then come to the studio for all-night brain-storming sessions.

The office moved to Los Angeles in 2020, lured by citrus-scented breezes and local clients. In L.A., however, it’s not so cool to geek out over Eames. Shell chairs are as ubiquitous as In-N-Outs. But Coates and Franklin are all for wearing their hearts on their sleeves. Seated at an Aluminum Group conference table, Coates is clean-shaven and wearing a camouflage hat emblazoned with the words “I love this company” — made for him as a joke by the team. Franklin is scruffier, and a bit more reserved.It takes a moment to see that he’s wearing a PlayLab T-shirt under his jacket. Unabashed, self-referential swag. That’s pure Virgil Abloh. The irreplicable design guru was the force that pushed PlayLab to the next level, from designing the architecture journal Clog or collaborating on + POOL in New York’s East River to creating ritzy runway shows in Paris.

Their designs for Abloh’s Louis Vuitton runways celebrated childhood with bouncy castles and oversized Oldenburg-esque objects, often set against grand Parisian backdrops like Place Dauphine or the Louvre. Inflatables featured widely, inspired equally by Ant Farm’s rebellious experiments in the 1970s and the goofy spectacle of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Amid the whimsy, severe Miesian interiors hinted at the firm’s darker, more seriously architectural side. This connection with Abloh was pivotal, allowing PlayLab to take on more ambitious creative projects while staying true to their interdisciplinary approach.

“As we were developing those fashion shows with Virgil, there were dozens of conversations and references that layered and layered and layered and layered until something important would bubble to the top,” recalls Franklin. “How could all these ideas together make something new that was built from the past?”

Coates and Franklin tend toward faithfulness. Influences are, if not obvious, never terribly obscure. For 2024 Frieze L.A. they designed a massive, tangerine-colored skate park with artist Sterling Ruby for OTW by Vans. Its central ramp recalls artist James Turrell’s many pyramidic studies. Their love of Land Art manifested Adidas’s EQT Track — a 200-meter running track on a mesa outside of Santa Fe that evoked Michael Heizer’s City via Hannsjörg Voth’s Golden Spiral.

And yet, along with Coates and Franklin’s earnestness is also the feeling that something is being held back. Maybe that guardedness has to do with NDAs signed with some of their more famous clients — Drake, Post Malone, etc. — or maybe it is a desire not to reveal how the magic works. Either way, it makes for a rich tension between a sense of incredible wonder and the technical side of working within multi-billion-dollar industries.

With a minimalist website that borders on normcore, PlayLab’s digital presence also avoids all the stuffiness of marketing. The tastiest vibey bits go to social, where, as we all know, our haptic consumption of architecture and design is smooth and seamless. Top of the grid is Post Malone’s album F-1 Trillion, featuring artwork by Gonzalo Lebrija — a photograph of a classic Ford F-100 seemingly balanced on its nose atopa glassy lake. (The image brings to mind another Ant Farm reference, Cadillac Ranch [1974], with just the right touch of Chris Burden.) PlayLab’s creative direction earned them a 2024 Grammy nomination for Best Recording Package.

Their mix of inspirations, bold color, and chunky form could be called postmodern, but not the heady kind of Robert Venturi’s Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. There’s too much source material on display— why bury the sample when it’s the main event? With pure enthusiasm, PlayLab spins all their references into architectural entertainment.