“I see architecture as a form of communication over time.” FormCommunicationArchitecture Author:Jimenez Lai
“What'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.” PeopleWayUsedCultureInterestingCitiesArchitectureDiggingOther CulturesArchaeologyDiagrams Author:Jimenez Lai
“If I were to arrive at a foreign country like Czech Republic, I don't have to speak Czech to understand the feeling of the local sensations through architecture. That is a kind of communication that no language can perform.” IfsKindCountryFeelingsSpeakLanguageCommunicationArchitectureLocalsSensationsRepublicForeign CountriesCzechCzech Republic Author:Jimenez Lai
“Architecture, in itself, at the end of the day, is a rational profession.” EndsProfessionArchitectureRationalThe End Of The Day Author:Jimenez Lai
“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.” SchoolIndividualMy OwnTrainingBuiltPhilosophicalArchitectureDebateVisualsDiscourseAestheticsRefined Author:Jimenez Lai
“I think of architecture as language, and I look within the intra-communication between architects.” ThinkingLooksLanguageCommunicationArchitectureArchitect Author:Jimenez Lai
“In 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.” ThinkingOrderLanguageEvolutionDrawsArchitectureCopiesArchitectOngoingConstraintsBylaws Author:Jimenez Lai
“The 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.” IfsWayHouseRoomsEnvironmentBuildingProgramArchitectureTinyVillageLinksInteriorsBathroomDiningDining RoomsTiny Houses Author:Jimenez Lai
“The role of architecture, in terms of communication, is not going to drastically change either.” TermRolesCommunicationArchitecture Author:Jimenez Lai
“I 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.” ThinkingBelieveAbleIndividualI BelieveArchitectureOutputArtifacts Author:Jimenez Lai
“I think architecture could be understood as the construction of realities, or the construction of worlds.” ThinkingWorldRealityUnderstoodArchitectureConstruction Author:Jimenez Lai
“Communication 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.” ThinkingEnoughAbilityTechnologyCommunicationArchitectureManageMessLogicalQuotations Author:Jimenez Lai
“In 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.” PeopleBelieveTermTechnologyChangedCommunicationRateArchitectureHard Times Author:Jimenez Lai
“I 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.” ThinkingMomentsRealityPastLanguageModernPaintingWallArchitecture Author:Jimenez Lai
“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 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.” ThinkingWritingKindCultureAttentionArchitecturePay AttentionMake SenseHelpful Author:Jimenez Lai
“I 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.” ThinkingWorldKindRealReasonRealityImaginationPhilosopherArchitectureMake SenseConstructionArchitectConcrete Author:Jimenez Lai