PLAYLAB, INC.

PLAYLAB, INC. is a multidisciplinary creative studio based in Los Angeles, working across architecture, spatial design, contemporary art, fashion, publishing, furniture and film. Established through a creative partnership in 2004, the practice developed from experiments by two Virginia Tech architecture alumni into a studio producing projects at scales ranging from editioned objects to monumental public installations.

Its approach embraces having “no particular focus,” allowing ideas to move between disciplines rather than following a single design format. Creative and art direction sit alongside strategic consultation, concept development, prototyping and production. The resulting work includes runway environments, retail interiors, exhibitions, skate installations, independent publications and sculptural objects.

Spaces, spectacle and everyday objects

A longstanding collaboration with Virgil Abloh brought the studio into Louis Vuitton menswear, for which it produced eleven runway and set designs. These included the cloud-filled FW20 Heaven on Earth environment and the giant yellow toy racetrack installed in the Louvre courtyard for SS23. Childhood imagery, playful disorientation and exaggerated scale recur across its work, connecting these fashion environments with public art and installations.

The studio’s Grown Up Flowers project placed monumental inflatable flowers along Manhattan’s Avenue of the Americas in 2018. Its work with Vans and OTW by Vans has explored sculptural skating environments, including installations at Sacré-Cœur in Paris and during Los Angeles art week. For Madhappy, the practice translated the apparel brand into physical retail spaces through interior architecture, custom fixtures and spatial concepts.

Other projects extend into exhibition architecture, including Rimowa’s 125th-anniversary retrospective, and interactive gallery environments for American Express. Furniture and editioned goods provide a smaller-scale expression of the same practice, including the Teamwork Chair and housewares released through Please Look.

Originally established as a physical studio in Brooklyn in 2007, the company later relocated to Los Angeles. Its expanded Arts District base opened in 2025, bringing design work, making, an archive and public-facing retail together.