Los Angeles- based architect Jimenez Lai's firm Bureau Spectacular opened its new exhibition insideoutsidebetweenbeyond at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), which will be on view February 11 through August 13, 2017 in SFMOMA’s third-floor architecture and design gallery.

Bureau Spectacular's installation features a large physical model of an urban landscape populated by surrealistic architectural characters. Narrated by white-hollowed vertical spaces, the architect reinterrogates the banality of the existing typical urban environment. 

Bureau Spectacular, insideoutsidebetweenbeyond, 2017 installation view, SFMOMA. Image © Don Ross, courtesy SFMOMA

Lai suggests that economic efficiency is driving architecture lacking character—and that, as monuments to civilization, modern cities’ ubiquitous skyscrapers reflect a predictable, mono-cultural society. 

Bureau Spectacular, insideoutsidebetweenbeyond, 2017 installation view, SFMOMA. Image © Don Ross, courtesy SFMOMA

Reconsidering urban architecture inside, outside, between and beyond the monotonous rectangular buildings seen in most city skylines, Bureau Spectacular: insideoutsidebetweenbeyond offers an urban landscape littered with diverse architectural forms and jarring environments. In this installation, Lai prioritizes the value of architecture over efficiency, imparting a more diverse urban sociology.

Jimenez Lai, insideoutsidebetweenbeyond, 2014; collection SFMOMA, Accessions Committee Fund purchase. Ilustration © Jimenez Lai, image © Katherine Du Tiel

Bureau Spectacular is a small, Los Angeles–based architecture studio that engages the design of architecture through telling stories. Conflating design, representation, theory, criticism, history and taste, the studio often begins the design process from Lai’s cartoon narratives, and views architectural installations, models and small buildings as characters in these stories.

Bureau Spectacular, insideoutsidebetweenbeyond, 2017 installation view, SFMOMA. Image © Don Ross, courtesy SFMOMA

Spectacular embraces the intersections between many intellectual human discourses by practicing architecture through the contemplation of art, history, politics, sociology, linguistics, mathematics, graphic design, technology and storytelling. 

Bureau Spectacular, insideoutsidebetweenbeyond, 2017 installation view, SFMOMA. Image © Don Ross, courtesy SFMOMA

The studio designed and built a 52-foot tall Tower of Twelve Stories for the 2016 Coachella Music Festival, and is a finalist in PS1’s Young Architects Program (YAP) for 2016. 

Jimenez Lai, Tower of Twelve Stories (installation view) 2016. Image © Jeff Frost

Jimenez Lai is principal of architecture studio Bureau Spectacular, which Lai formed to write new, culturally relevant narratives through architecture. The Taiwanese-born Canadian architect teaches at UCLA in its architecture and urban design program. 

Jimenez Lai. Image © Matthew Messner

In 2012, Lai published an architectural graphic novel, Citizens of No Place, published by Princeton Architectural Press, and in 2015, he organized the Treatise exhibition and publication series at the Graham Foundation for Advanced Study in the Fine Arts. 

He also participated in the 14th International Architecture Exhibition at the 2014 Venice Biennale with a large-scale installation titled, Township of Domestic Parts. Lai has won various awards, including the Architectural League Prize for Young Architects and the Debut Award at the Lisbon Architecture Triennale.

Bureau Spectacular is also participant of the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial. 

Top image: Bureau Spectacular, insideoutsidebetweenbeyond, 2017 installation view, SFMOMA. Image © Don Ross, courtesy SFMOMA

> via SFMOMA