Alex Coles

As the first university professor of Transdisciplinary Studies Coles is drawn to the emergent interface between art, design and architecture.

This interface is explored through the written word in the multiple-volume book series The Transdisciplinary Studio. Volume 1 was released in Spring 2012 by Sternberg Press, Berlin, and focused on Olafur Eliasson, Jorge Pardo, Konstantin Grcic and Åbäke. Volume 2 is currently at the pre-production stage.

With the founding of EP in 2013 Coles pursued the transdisciplinary at an editorial level. EP is the first critically underpinned series of publications that fluidly moves between art, design, and architecture. The series creates a discursive platform between popular magazines (“single play”) and academic journals (“long play”) by introducing the notion of the “extended play” into publishing: with thematically edited pocket books as median. EP1 ‘The Italian Avant-Garde: 1968-1976’ was released in 2013 and received strong reviews in the mainstream press (New York Times, Times Literary Supplement), specialist arts press (Domus, Icon) and academic journals (Journal of Design History, Design and Culture) alike (see Esteem). EP2 ‘Design Fiction’ was published in 2016, and EP3 ‘Post-Craft’ is to be released in 2017.

Coles’ investigation into the dynamic relationship between disciplines in the arts commenced more than a decade ago with the book DesignArt released by Tate Publishing in 2005. This was followed by the critical anthology Design and Art (MIT Press/Whitechapel, 2007). Both books triggered exhibitions and conferences on the subject of “designart,” with Coles being widely acknowledged as leading research into this new field. The catalogues and published proceedings from these exhibitions and conferences all heavily cite the author and led to designart becoming a growing area of practice and academic research (see Esteem).

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