Jimenez Lai - cartoon as a weapon of choice

[IMAGE: TOWER OF BABEL - CENTRAL PARK EXTRUDED, 12 KM]

Jimenez Lai’s presentation at the Constructing Knowledge conference was the very last one but entertaining and thought provoking. Jimenez borrows his title (this and that) from Victor Hugo who claims that Architecture is dead and was killed by the printing press. Jimenez Lai is fighting the aparent uncoolness of architecture outside the academies and claims the cool. Using the power of ideology and narrative methodology, Jimenez draws architectural narratives in graphic novels with sceneries of direct references to architecture theory of fx Rem Koolhaas in this story – the tower of Babel (Delirious New York) in which Central Park is extruded to the limits of the stratosphere.

[Image above: Cartoon by Jimenez Lai]

 

[Image: Phalanstery Module (2008) designed by Jimenez Lai, Photo by Scott Mayoral ]

Another project is derived from travelling in space for generations in order to get to distant planets where the human race can live...When weightless in space Jimenez considers how plan and sections must constantly change. Jimenez has built a physical model for a capsule for weightlessness during which the object and/or user will rotate and all elevations of an object become plans. As such, all surfaces can be inhabited. The pavillon turns 360 degrees in one hour. Here's Jimenez web site Bureau Spectacular.