Wish You Were Here

Wish You Were Here is a postcard story, a story of 2D drawings, 2.5D rugs in a 3D room. The hotel room is a fortress of solitude far away from home. It is in this special zone of no place that travelers get to reflect upon the people that cross their minds. The postcard drawings of this installation represent the distant shared connections and influences, as the linework of the notes describe the sensibilities of the rugs. Wish You Were Here features several rugs from the collaboration between Jimenez Lai (Bureau Spectacular) and Urban Fabric, including the piece Shadows of Things We Wished We Had, a story about missing the things we long for.

Jimenez Lai was born in Taiwan, grew up in Canada, and lives in Los Angeles. Before establishing Bureau Spectacular, Lai lived in a desert shelter at Taliesin and resided in a shipping container on the piers of Rotterdam. Lai's first book, Citizens of No Place: An Architectural Graphic Novel, was published by Princeton Architectural Press with a grant from the Graham Foundation. Lai has won various awards, including the Architectural League Prize for Young Architects, the Debut Award at the Lisbon Triennale, and the Designer of the Future at Art Basel. Lai represented Taiwan at the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale. Lai's work is in the permanent collection of MoMA, SFMOMA, Art Institute of Chicago, and LACMA.