With a graphic language that on the one hand refers to manga aesthetics, on the other is in debt to the architectural research of the last decades utopian avant-garde, “Citizens of no place,” by Jimenez Lai, talks about the role and destiny of architecture nowadays. Despite its subtitle –an architectural graphic novel-, “Citizens” does not have the continuity, the narrative coherence, the logic or temporal progression typical of a novel. The book is in fact a series of essays or short stories and Lai uses comics’ communication skills to combine topics and reflect on different aspects of architectural theory and criticism; they are explored, or rather investigated, not looking for answers, but in an attempt to bring out issues and question. To understand Lai’s point of view on architecture, the joint sense of the collection can be drawn tracing the constants, the recurring ideas arising from the narrative.
To Lai, architecture is basically an expression form, a language able to convey emotions, give rise to changes, create new models of beauty. Clashing whith this potential are the market economy mechanisms, the rigid system of formal and cultural sedimentation, the logics of globalization. Architecture, born bridging two natures -art and technology-, seems more and more forced to identify with its latter part, the one more rational, manageable and instrumental to the needs of the market; architects, lost their visionary ability, tend to become mere instruments of formal conformity, hardly able to create objects and places capable to inspire emotions. Lai’s book is a call to the origins, to the rediscovery of an architecture that is also passion, contamination, in which beauty recoveries the central role that’s its due. What emerges is Lai’s great love for architecture, his faith in its power to contribute to the creation of a better world. Obviously, as everybody should know in the comics world, “with great power there must also come great responsibility”; “Citizens of no place” is a recall to this responsibility, in Lai’s opinion nowadays largely disregarded.
Jimenez Lai is currently an assistant professor at University of Illinois at Chicago and the leader of Bureau Spectacular. He graduated with a Master of Architecture from University of Toronto. Previously, Lai has lived and worked in a desert shelter at Taliesin, AZ, and resided in a shipping container at Atelier Van Lieshout on the piers of Rotterdam. Professionally, Lai has worked for MOS, AVL, RE X, OMA /Rem Koolhaas in Rotterdam and New York. Since 2008, Lai’s work has been exhibited in many cities including New York, Boston, Athens, Madrid, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Louisville, and Toronto. His short stories / drawings have been published in numerous journals around the world. You can buy this book on Amazon at the link below.
