Spring 2014 Syracuse Architecture visiting critic Jimenez Lai is an Assistant Professor at University of Illinois at Chicago and Director of Bureau Spectacular. He graduated with a Master of Architecture from University of Toronto. Previously, Jimenez Lai has lived and worked in a desert shelter at Taliesin and resided in a shipping container at Atelier Van Lieshout on the piers of Rotterdam. Before founding Bureau Spectacular, Lai worked for various international offices, including OMA. In the past years, Lai has built numerous installations as well as being widely exhibited and published around the world, including the MoMA-collected White Elephant. His first manifesto, Citizens of No Place, was published by Princeton Architectural Press with a grant from the Graham Foundation. Draft II of this book has been archived at the New Museum as a part of the show Younger Than Jesus. In 2012, Jimenez Lai has been named a winner to the Architectural League Prize for Young Architects. Lai won the Debut Award at the Lisbon Triennale in 2013 and will be representing Taiwan for the 2014 Venice Architectural Biennale.
In his lecture, Jimenez Lai will use his body of work to explore the part-to-whole relationships of architecture, and places a focus on the socio-political impacts that the composition that part-to-part nuances could suggest.
