On March 16-19, Architect Jimenez Lai led a workshop at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) with graduate students in architecture from UC Berkeley and CCA to create collaborative foam towers based on architecture featured in Lai’s drawing insideoutsidebetweenbeyond, acquired by SFMOMA in 2015. The multi day class included discussions about Lai’s work, hands on demos and a final collaborative effort to construct architectural structures that resemble models made by students in the class. The final product mirrored forms designed by architecture studio Bureau Spectacular. The master class was taught in conjunction with SFMOMA’s current exhibition Bureau Spectacular: insideoutsidebetweenbeyond, on view through August 13, 2017.
In its first museum presentation on the West Coast, architecture studio Bureau Spectacular has designed a large-scale installation that further develops the studio's ideas on past, current, and future architecture seen in the drawing insideoutsidebetweenbeyond. Led by Jimenez Lai, the Los Angeles-based Bureau Spectacular views architecture as a medium capable of rewriting cultural narratives. Questioning the banality of the existing typical urban environment, Lai suggests that economic efficiency is driving its character-less architecture — and that, as monuments to civilization, modern cities’ ubiquitous skyscrapers reflect a predictable, mono-cultural society. Reconsidering urban architecture inside, outside, between, and beyond the monotonous rectangular buildings seen in most city skylines, the exhibition offers an urban landscape littered with surrealistic architectural forms and jarring environments. In this installation, Lai prioritizes the value of architecture over efficiency, imparting a more diverse urban sociology.
Below are pictures of the master class courtesy of SFMOMA.
