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.

Imagine a House - the movie

[IMAGE: STILL FROM IMAGINE A HOUSE BY JOANNA ZAWIEJA, 2007]

Joanna Zawieja is a Polish/Swedish architect whose contribution to the conference was a movie screening and a poster about the movie. The 14 minute long movie Imagine a house - investigating narratives of domesticity (2007) was Joanna’s thesis project from the KTH.

Joanna writes this about her movie: “Taking the emergence of the bourgeois interiors in the 19th century and its image-based condition as a starting point, this video looks into the making of the modern home during the early days of British industrialisation. An empty house in East London is the scene. 
   A story of Victorian domesticity is played out in the house where fallen women are trained in the art of homemaking and working class men are taught political consciousness.
   By dissolving the distinction between building and storytelling Imagine a House presents an act of rebuilding, where the story told by each repetition slowly transforms the abandoned house.” From www.joannazawieja.com 

The movie is beautiful and a nice patchwork of Joanna's voice telling historic facts from her research on the place; bustling sounds from the street; images model shots and stop motion animations. All put together as an intricate weave of before and now.

View the nice movie here in Quick time