I 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 dessinรฉe 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 LaiThe role of architecture, in terms of communication, is not going to drastically change either.
Jimenez LaiSetting up absurd worlds with rules to violate - it's one of the things I hope to achieve with my work.
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'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 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 Lai