Griffin Frazen

Griffin Frazen is an American architect, designer and former actor born in Los Angeles on 8 October 1987. He worked as a child and teenage actor, most prominently as Jimmy Finnerty on the television series Grounded for Life from 2001 to 2005, before redirecting his career toward visual and spatial practice. He completed a Bachelor of Arts at New York University in 2009 and a Master of Architecture at Princeton University in 2013.

Frazen’s Princeton work developed around architecture, public space and political events. His thesis, Loss & Recovery of Tahrir Square, examined protest and the occupation of urban space under the guidance of Axel Kilian. After graduation he moved across architecture and visual media. Work at Imaginary Forces led to an Emmy for main title design on Manhattan, while projects with SITU used spatial modelling and visualisation for human-rights and investigative contexts.

His later practice has expanded into performance, installation and cultural production. Frazen has developed environments connected to musicians and artists including Solange, Grimes, Yves Tumor, Jamie xx, Thom Yorke and Oneohtrix Point Never. He also worked as an architectural consultant on Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, contributing to the conception of fictional architecture for the film.

Frazen established an independent New York studio working across architecture, installation and performance. Khaite became a major part of this practice as the brand developed proprietary retail spaces and increasingly complex runway environments. Documented projects include the 165 Mercer Street flagship, later American stores and major show environments at the Park Avenue Armory and The Shed.

His Khaite role is spatial, with collection design remaining Catherine Holstein’s responsibility. Individual stores and shows are realised with architects of record, lighting designers, fabricators, production teams and other specialists whose authorship remains distinct. Frazen’s contribution lies in the concept and design of named environments, linking material, movement and perception across Khaite’s physical presence.

Frazen treats architecture as an experience that unfolds through movement. Entrances, thresholds, partial views and changes in light are used to slow perception and control how a visitor encounters a room. His work favours strong spatial decisions over decorative accumulation, with the route through an environment carrying as much weight as its photographed appearance.

Material expression is central to the studio. Concrete, hot-rolled steel, glass, plaster, bronze and timber are used for weight, reflection, abrasion and ageing as well as for structure. Retail spaces can feel monolithic while remaining carefully calibrated around clothing, circulation and touch. Details preserve the character of the material without disguising it behind a polished luxury finish.

Temporary environments allow Frazen to work with a different kind of instability. Circular runways, broken terrain, mist, pools of water and large LED surfaces alter the audience’s orientation and change how garments move through the room. Lighting and moving image can become architectural components when they reshape depth, scale or the path of the viewer.

His background in title design, investigative visualisation, film and performance gives the work a strong temporal dimension. A space is conceived as a sequence of views and events whose meaning changes as the visitor moves through it. That approach connects his independent cultural work with Khaite while leaving room for collaborators in lighting, engineering, production and statutory architecture.