As a visual discourse, architecture requires trained individuals to work on the refined philosophical debates. School gave me the necessary training, and I've built on this based on my own aesthetics, as most do.
Jimenez LaiIt is possible to construct small realities that contain political or philosophical responses, not necessarily just practical or economical responses.
Jimenez LaiCommunication requires cultural context, and technology facilitates our ability to cross-reference ideas over time. Charles Moore were saying: Enough with the sterile, context-less architecture. Enough with the functional-minded frame of operation. How about a little mess? How about a little, let's say, syntax? A little quotation using history? How about some other meanings or symbols? I think that's the only logical reaction when you have to thoughtfully manage the communication of a lot of information.
Jimenez LaiThe dining room is a building; the bathroom is a building. If we scatter this single-program architecture inside of a domestic environment, we can link an interior urbanism in a way similar to a village or a township of tiny houses.
Jimenez LaiI think architecture could be understood as the construction of realities, or the construction of worlds.
Jimenez LaiThe moment you put something down on paper it forces you to organize and arrange these thoughts a little better.
Jimenez LaiThe idea of morphology of languages is something that I'm really interested in. How does German turn to Dutch, and how does Dutch turn to Anglo-Saxon and eventually English? Morphology is actually taking place through things like Twitter or GChat today, where we're changing how things are spelled, and those spellings are accepted as standard now. Morphology happens over time. It's not necessarily a bad thing.
Jimenez LaiI'm thinking about the idea of poetic license. People say that about certain writers: "Oh, the grammar sucks, but it's just the poetic license." We accept it as being an art form of sorts: the incorrect rearrangement of meaningful things. Unlike sciences, literature as art relies on societal acceptance of a certain vocabulary. We're just making sounds out of our mouths if we don't both accept that what I'm saying has very significant meanings, and I'm accurately targeting what vocabulary I use and how I arrange each word.
Jimenez LaiTo apply poetic license or to apply incorrect arrangements requires the idea or the understanding of correct arrangements - becoming an expert of the conventions of correct arrangements in order to misplace them. In other words, misplacing things with the understanding, or even the mastery, of normalcy is actually quite poetic. These are rule-based operations.
Jimenez LaiAesthetics is both politics and philosophy, a series of agreements and disagreements between subjective minds.
Jimenez LaiI think architecture could be understood as the construction of realities, or the construction of worlds. One of the reasons why architects are often attracted to philosophers, partially, has to do with making sense of the world around us as well as the making of worlds, and in our case, the realities we create can be as real as concrete. These kinds of ideas, of wild imagination, go into the question of how you make a world.
Jimenez LaiI believe architecture is a cultural output and I think Rem Koolhaas is one of the rare individuals who was able to really output architecture as cultural artifact.
Jimenez LaiThe diagram of the house is a portrait of the family, a true portrait, whether it's sad or happy.
Jimenez LaiIn 500 years, English has changed a lot, and right now we're undergoing an extremely rapid rate of accelerated advancement in terms of technology, but I still have a hard time believing that we're going to stop speaking to each other. The role of architecture, in terms of communication, is not going to drastically change either. It's going to continue to create a cultural affect where people will be able to understand something beyond function that may otherwise be foreign to them.
Jimenez LaiWhen I would present my work as a student, often I would hear, "Your project is too formal" - it's too form-based; it's too form-driven. Which is kind of shocking for a visual practice, for someone to say something discouraging about a focus on an exploration of aesthetics.
Jimenez LaiMany artists I enjoy have a large body of work, and eventually the message is derived out from the sum of its parts.
Jimenez LaiI think of architecture as language, and I look within the intra-communication between architects.
Jimenez LaiIn order for architecture to experience its ongoing evolution as a language, there has to be a lot of adjusted copies between how architects draw, think, engage bylaws and constraints.
Jimenez LaiThe role of architecture, in terms of communication, is not going to drastically change either.
Jimenez LaiEvery time I traveled to a new city, I would learn about local heroes I did not know about, and I would learn about their very impressive contribution to their cities.
Jimenez LaiIn some cases there are ways of thinking about what an architectural program produces - interior and exterior - that is not necessarily directed by an economic requirement, but is a diagram based on human actions, selfish or otherwise.
Jimenez LaiWhat's interesting in archaeology is that we always understand other cultures by digging up their cities; architecture is almost always a way for us to formulate a diagram of how people used to live.
Jimenez LaiArchitectural drawing is a language with conventions where the rules can be deliberately misused; a well-composed architectural drawing can both contain correct and incorrect arrangements of meaningful things.
Jimenez LaiI think regionalism was a little easier before mass communication was made possible. This is not to say that regionalism doesn't exist anymore. I think it does.
Jimenez LaiSetting up absurd worlds with rules to violate - it's one of the things I hope to achieve with my work.
Jimenez LaiI recently wrote a piece on comics in architecture - I was talking about the three kinds of comics I pay attention to: the Franco-Belgian, the Japanese manga, and the American comics. I started thinking about the relationship between Japanese manga and Japanese architecture, or Franco-Belgian bande dessinée versus Franco-Belgian architecture, it began to make sense; there are parallels to the modes of operations and the cultures they belong to. If I didn't force myself to write, I would have no forum to clarify these thoughts. Writing is really helpful.
Jimenez LaiUnlike sciences, literature as art relies on societal acceptance of a certain vocabulary.
Jimenez LaiEvery time I traveled to a new city, I would learn about local heroes I did not know about, and I would learn about their very impressive contribution to their cities. There are nuanced senses that only people from the region can understand, and no amount of globalization can change that. It's almost like a maxim of a sorts, when you think about language, the way that people speak in a location. It does happen with architects, in terms of how they engage cities.
Jimenez LaiOne of the reasons why architects are often attracted to philosophers, partially, has to do with making sense of the world around us as well as the making of worlds.
Jimenez LaiI don't really know what's going to happen 10,000 years from now. We've been biologically modern for, what, almost 200,000 years? Let's go back to the cave paintings: I think the moment that someone landed a charcoal on a wall to describe reality, that's language already - that happened on a vertical surface, which, even though they didn't build it, somehow we could understand it as architecture because there's a cavity that separates the inside and outside. That's 40,000 years in the past.
Jimenez LaiThe obsession was so real and so prolonged. Sleeping was kind of like taking breaks from continuing the obsession.
Jimenez Lai