Between two boxes: the interstitial imaginings of Jimenez Lai

Founder of experimental practice Bureau Spectacular, Jimenez Lai is among a new generation of designers in the tradition of the architect-provocateur. His body of work, from installation art to graphic novels, is not easily categorized. As Lai was designing a pavilion to represent Taiwan at the Venice Architecture Biennale, an exhibition in Chicago offered a preview and, of course, a provocation.

Jimenez Lai’s work can feel disorienting. For one, its scale is unfamiliar; Lai has said that it’s somewhere between furniture and buildings. For another, it asks viewers to suspend disbelief, as if entering into a universe where the magical is plausible. In a profile of Lai for Newcity magazine, I speculated that Lai labored at the level of the collective architectural unconscious.

As he prepared to ship off to the Venice Architecture Biennale, I curated an exhibition of Lai’s models, drawings, paintings, and objects — along with a new “stained glass” commission of dense drawings that spanned four massive panels. In interpretive text, I described the stained glass piece as “a dense, absorbing microcosm” that is part reality, part fantasy.

Along with the exhibition, presented by real estate firm Clayco in partnership with AIA Chicago, I organized a series of public programs, including a talk at AIA Chicago and a conversation between Lai and Stanley Tigerman at the Chicago Architecture Center.