“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
“I 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.” ThinkingLittlesDoeMadeCommunicationEasierMassMass CommunicationRegionalism Author:Jimenez Lai
“In 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.” ThinkingWayHumansActionCasesEconomicProduceProgramSelfishRequirementsInteriorsWay Of ThinkingExteriorHuman ActionsDiagrams 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
“Every 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.” PeopleThinkingSpeakLanguageTermHeroArchitectGlobalizationImpressiveVery Impressive 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
“I'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.” PeopleThinkingArtLiteratureAcceptingAcceptanceMeaningfulSignificantRelyPoetic 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