Boundary Breakers

Photo courtesy Mark Foster Gage

Architects can seem like tyrants when it comes to their work: They often think a space is flawless until people mess it up by filling it with things. But for Nicola Formichetti's outrageous pop-up retail shop, which combined fractured mirrors and laser lights, the design firm Gage/Clemenceau took a more interactive approach. "We had this idea of a mirrored disco ball -- so that anything you put in it would reflect out thousands of times," Mark Foster Gage explains. "So, in a sense, the architecture was boring until you put fashion in it." This integration of both high and low culture and design concepts--they also designed costume pieces for Lady Gaga -- has allowed Gage/Clemenceau to push the boundaries of what architecture can accomplish. Gage, who is also assistant dean of architecture at Yale, met his design partner, Marc Clemenceau Bailly, while studying at Notre Dame, a bastion of conservative architecture training. Computer technology provided the catalyst that shaped their practice, which created designs representing the United States in the 2010 Beijing International Biennale, as well as displays at MoMA and the Art Institute of Chicago. "I think the boundaries are coming down in many ways," Gage says. "I think the relationship between technology and design directly parallels the breakdown as far as equal rights. That's what makes today so exciting."