The work of artist team Haddad|Drugan is an experimental inquiry into methods of manipulating environmental phenomena in the built environment. Fusing the temporal with the spatial, and the conceptual with the functional, the art engages with its context to form a continuously transforming medium of exchange between systems, ideas, and interventions, with a goal of inventing provocative experiences dynamic at different scales, speeds, vantages, and light conditions.
Haddad|Drugan specializes in conceptually driven public art that is often integrated into large-scale infrastructure projects. Past and current work includes art for roadways, bridges, transit stations, public utilities, architectural facades, industrial artifacts, museums, libraries, and urban plazas and parks. Working in the public realm, the artists pursue their interest in using site conditions as inspiration for art concepts. This creates an aesthetic resonance of place in the memories, imaginations, and perceptions of viewers. Haddad|Drugan strives to create poetic one-of-a-kind artworks that on one level act as place-making icons but on another are layered with subtler complexities that unfold over multiple viewings.
The studio’s site-specific approach to new projects includes research and investigations about a site’s physical, functional, natural, social, and historical aspects. From this the artists establish a conceptual framework for the art and develop specific forms and materials that best express the idea. Haddad|Drugan operates at the scale of both sculpture and planning and approach the thematic or sequential linking of individual artworks as a form of conceptual art unto itself.