Ways of Experiencing: Virgil Abloh

In the Fall 2023 semester, GSAPP’s course Ways of Experiencing challenged students to redefine the avant-garde in the 21st century. When we drilled down what represented innovation in architecture and contemporary art, the answers were surprising. For the former, it was not an engineering feat or radical design, but rather the participatory nature architects were adopting, such as collaborating with the neighborhood to design a monument or organizing a Mahjong Club to convene an intergenerational community. For the latter, students bypassed museum artists and declared the disruptive fashion campaigns of Balenciaga as the most progressive visual culture of their generation. Embedded in those answers is the oversized impact of the designer Virgil Abloh.

The media has focused primarily on Abloh’s autobiographical narrative — his polymathic ability to traverse creative disciplines — a practice that is not only sustainable (and lucrative) but one that blurs boundaries and breaks rules. Abloh reimagined a career path privileging architectural language as a thru line to create work outside the built environment’s domain. His example influences and inspires kids like himself, someone from the margins who named his luxury label Off-White and instigated a movement to sit at the table and claim the center for a new generation of creatives.