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PRACTICE PROFILE

CJ Lim/Studio 8 ArchitectsThrough the Looking GlassCJ Lim/Studio 8 ArchitectsThrough the Looking Glass

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Nam June Paik Museum, Korea, 2003Studio 8’s butterfly-attracting entry for the international competition.

CJ Lim has a great affection for Lewis Carroll’s tales of Alice. When hepeers through the looking glass he too sees a world that is related butexceedingly different to the one we currently inhabit. However, ratherthan the random, topsy-turvy illogic of Wonderland, he conjures a worldthat has at its heart rational aesthetic solutions which belie an initiallyeccentric perception. This marriage between the ability to see analternative narrative and a socially conscious, systematic, problem-solving intelligence is being revealed through a series of short-listedcompetition entries that are edging him towards having his visionsmade flesh, or at least steel and concrete. Lim, who has as yet hadlittle built, is on the cusp of seeing his academic concepts burst out ofthe sketchbook and, when they do, it seems likely that they will expresshis unique architectural voice on a very grand scale.

A Chinese Malaysian, CJ Lim was born in Ipoh. He graduated fromthe Architectural Association (AA) in London in 1987 and has hadteaching roles ever since at the AA, the University of North London, theUniversity of East London and, most notably, the Bartlett, where he isProfessor of Architecture + Cultural Design and Director ofInternational Development. He studied at the AA at an interestingtime, immediately following on from Nigel Coates’ revolt against aprescriptive academic approach to architecture and the consequentcreation of NATO (Narrative Architecture Today). He says that thegreatest influence on him at the AA was Peter Salter: ‘He turnedeverything around for me, teaching only one building, the Maison deVerre in Paris, allowing us to understand materiality, to understand thenarrative through the detail.’ Lim was not involved in NATO, saying:‘We were just these fresh-faced kids, and they were so confident andcool.’ But he has certainly followed a sympathetic line in his ownapproach to both academia and architecture. He has no desire topreach his own way of seeing to his students, regarding himself asmerely a guide who helps their individual creativity to blossom.

Lim was particularly interested in model-making at the AA and hecontinues to work in three dimensions rather than through computerprograms. He has taken model-making to its own art form, incising,lifting and gluing paper to turn the one-dimensional into layered,highly illustrative building-machines that are reminiscent of WilliamHeath Robinson, one of his heroes. His drawings/models have won aseries of awards at the Royal Academy Summer Show. His narrativedesigns are clearly informed by his own journey from ChineseMalaysian village life to London academia, and he finds inspirationwithin the East–West collision of these cultures. Talking about hisVirtually Venice project of 2004, Lim says: ‘My understanding isdifferent because of my background. Growing up in a village myunderstanding of habitation and so on is different from the Westerncity. Then I went to the AA. My whole understanding of design is inthese two different worlds. Gossips, fables and tales are important inthe East. Narratives, things I read in childhood, came back in thisproject. Architecture should be personal. The human touch is

Studio 8 Architects, with CJ Lim (centre).

CJ Lim is one of architecture’s greatestillustrators, visualising through hisbeautiful and delicate drawings andmodels an enchanted world inspired byLewis Carroll, William Heath Robinson andChinese fables. HHoowwaarrdd WWaattssoonn describeshow Lim is now breaking through thevisionary’s glass ceiling with hisrealisation of a tunnel installation for theVictoria & Albert Museum in London anda project at an altogether different scalefor an eco-city in China.

Guangming Smart-City, China, 2007According to Lim: ‘The question is how we can use social issues to make our society richer.’ For the competition to design an 8-square-kilometre (3-square-mile) eco-city in Shenzhen, China, Lim addressed the problems of the local farming community to devise an ecologically sound city that wouldalso be socially and economically sustainable, drawing on local people’s skills rather than removing their livelihood. He delved into the 18th-centurytypologies of local communities and buildings that still exist in rural China and updated them into an integrated farming and housing environment.The concentric forms of towers and craters are inspired by traditional round community buildings and Chinese courtyard life, applying the social focusback to the centre. Lim says: ‘We pursue the human story and its grittiness. Otherwise a city will be one-dimensional, like Singapore.’ The concept,which includes reed-bed water filtration, lychee-tree air filtration and bio-gas public transport, was developed with Fulcrum (UK) sustainabilityengineers. It won third prize but the commission is potentially being divided into different sectors, with Studio 8 designing a large area.

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the building followed the undulation of the earth and was crowned bycantilevered glass pavilions. The glass was to be protected by louvresmade from the trees that would be felled to make way for thebuilding, while parts of the building’s exterior skin would feature tinypipettes secreting a sugar solution. The surrounding park area hashordes of butterflies which would be attracted to the sugar and forma fluttering wave on the building, reminiscent of Paik’s TV Garden of120 television monitors flickering among a garden of plants. Theproject showed that Studio 8 was leaning towards a passion forcultural and environmental sustainability that would be borne out intheir more recent, large-scale works.

Alongside the competition entries, CJ Lim has blurred theboundaries between architecture and art in a series of personalprojects. Sins, of 2000, was a seven-part project partly inspired bySe7en, the David Fincher film, and showed the diversity of thearchitect’s interests and inspirations. One of the projects, ‘The JerrySpringer Museum: Kiss and Tell’, explored the modern concept of thecelebration of confession, allowing people to tell their stories in publicconfessional booths. The whispered revelations would then be relayedto a listening space where people could eavesdrop, forming anundulating, endlessly changing environment.

The genre of competition entries for public architecture and his artisticleanings came together within Lim’s design for the Mersey Observatory,Liverpool, in 2008. His unusual, highly sculptural, V-shaped ribbon was

essential.’ He humbly says that ‘As much as I want tocontribute to the built environment, I hope I havealready contributed a bit to architecture,’ but thechallenge for Lim is to lift his ideas off the paper tomake them take a solid form. He can draw optimismfrom the success of Zaha Hadid, a fellow alumna fromthe AA, who has been able to take her pictorialimagination into a successful but still visionary practice.Lim does talk of his need ‘to build to test the narrative’,and that is where Studio 8 Architects comes in.

He formed Studio 8 Architects in London in 1994and was immediately successful, winning theUniversity College London Cultural Centre competitionthe following year. If that building had come tofruition, Lim’s career would have taken a differentturn, but economic restraints left the project inabeyance. Undeterred, Studio 8 continued to pursueinternational competitions for cultural buildings,including for the Jyväskylä Centre in Finland and theTomohiro Museum of Shi-Ga in Japan. The 2003 entryfor the Nam June Paik Museum in Korea reveals Lim’sdesire to create narratives that relate to him butsimultaneously respond to a building’s purpose and itstopography. Inspired by Nam June Paik’s own artworks,

MAC Central Open Space, Korea, 2007Overview of a 7-square-kilometre (2.7-square-mile) green park for theheart of the Multi-functional Administrative City in Korea.

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Mersey Observatory, Liverpool, 2008Finalist for the competition for a viewing platform in Liverpool.

Lim’s narrative-inspired architecturalartworks have culminated in SeasonsThrough the Looking Glass, an installationpiece that was commissioned for theunderground tunnel entrance to the Victoria& Albert Museum in London. This is a largeartwork that draws on Alice’s Adventures inWonderland to explore the possibilities ofmythical underground spaces andsubterranean gardens.

Seasons Through the Looking Glass, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, 2008Inspired by the tunnel setting for an installation commissioned by theVictoria & Albert Museum, Lim drew on the story of Alice’s Adventures inWonderland, written by Lewis Carroll in 1865, in which Alice fallsthrough a tunnel into another world. The rose garden of the story, inwhich gardeners paint the petals of the roses, is reborn as a cartouche-shaped structure made of honeycomb cardboard. The roses are rolled-upwhite T-shirts pinioned within the branches. The installation willchange with the seasons, becoming splashed with coloured vinyl paint.Situated at the underground entrance to the museum, the work evokesthe mysteries of the subterranean while reflecting the role of themuseum in housing crafted objects and highlighting the wonder ofcrossing into a new world. The passing public is drawn into the V&Atunnel by an Alice-inspired mirror (or ‘looking glass’) of the installationin the main tunnel which links several major museums. Lim often drawsupon books, fairy tales and films for inspiration, saying: ‘I have beenlucky to go through many metamorphoses of what I like and respond to.This has stimulated me and given me new challenges.’

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Virtually Venice, Venice Biennale, 2004 For the Venice Biennale of 2004, the British Council commissioned Limto create an extensive new work. He was inspired by the story of the13th-century friendship formed between Marco Polo and the Mongolemperor Kublai Khan. Polo used to tell the emperor stories of his travels,including tales from his homeland of Venice. Lim’s narrative, informedby his own journey from East to West, portrays Venice as it may havebeen imagined by Kublai Khan, translating Polo’s descriptions throughan occidental lens. He created a range of paper models reimagining theeight water towers of the Fortuna Pozzo-Pozza, San Michele, as a placeof rest, and the Giardini as an area textured by foreign languages andinformation exchange. Lim used paper for the construction as it was thecutting-edge technology of the era.

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competition but the jury has now asked him to design a large section ofurban park for the city. The design, which forced Studio 8’s fluid teamto expand from three to 15, centres on the creation of clusters ofintegrated housing/farming towers and craters, along with 80 verticalkitchen farms. The circular forms are drawn from the traditionalChinese model of round community buildings and courtyard living.Each element of the design carries through a deep, thoroughexploration of future-city sustainability. The brief is for a green city soStudio 8 has pursued innovative ideas to recycle materials and createrenewable energy sources, cut pollution, increase green space andpedestrianisation, and rely on local produce.

However, the Guangming design steps way beyond a purely eco-rationale of sustainability. Lim has been able to move up from smallerprojects, in which the narrative can be more linearly relayed, into hugeprojects because he persists with the human scale: ‘Narratives, cultureand history are the strategic starting points for any project – thinkingsmall. The way we live is interesting. I think about occupancy andintimacy.’ As a result, Guangming is historically and sociallysustainable as well as eco-friendly. The Guangming area suppliesvegetables and dairy produce to Shenzhen and Hong Kong, so the newcity will draw on the existing reality of the life of farmers, giving them amodel that they can understand while also pushing them forward into anew arena of possibilities: effectively, the urban environment becomesa great food-producing garden. As Lim says about the local populace:‘We can get them to live in a modern house, but the thing that theyreally know is farming. There is no point in being unemployed in amodern apartment, without any skills that can be used in the city.’ Thename ‘Smart-City’ shows his intent to make sure that the failures ofModernist urban environments are not unwittingly integrated into thebravura of new eco-city design.

Guangming Smart-City has been quickly followed by other Easternurban park designs. Studio 8’s design for the Tangshen EarthquakeMemorial Park in China won second prize with a calm, nature-inspired memorial to absence, while MAC Central Open Space, inKorea, pushes forward a desire to create a new urban typology, thearable kitchen garden-park, in which open-air leisure activities,orchards, watercourses and technology are integrated in aredefinition of urban parkland.

Currently, Studio 8 is a small but fluid practice with powerful ideas.Increasingly, juries are beginning to see that its outlandish, ebullientconcepts are feasible, aesthetically inspiring creations that take intoaccount logistics, the environment and social sustainability. It seemsthat the world is finally starting to catch up with Lim’s ideas. It ishighly likely that soon one of his visions is going to be given the greenlight and Studio 8 is going to have to rapidly expand into apermanently large practice. One can only hope that this will not dilutethe pioneering thought that is the practice’s foundation. 4+

Howard Watson is an author, journalist and editor based in London. He is co-author, withEleanor Curtis, of the new 2nd edition of Fashion Retail (Wiley-Academy, 2007), £34.99. Seewww.wiley.com. Previous books include The Design Mix: Bars, Cocktails and Style (2006), andHotel Revolution: 21st-Century Hotel Design (2005), both also published by Wiley-Academy.

Text © 2008 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images © Courtesy of CJ Lim/Studio 8 Architects

to cantilever over the broad River Mersey, forming anobservation deck 33 metres (108.3 feet) above thewater. The sculpture would include LED lighting toilluminate the V-shape at night. The short-listed designmanaged to incorporate the desire for something thatlooked upon Liverpool within a building that would belooked upon in its own right, while also carrying itsvisitors to a closer relationship with the city’s historicallyimportant river. CJ Lim’s ability to match his radicalvision with the requirements of a competition hasrecently resulted in Studio 8 being short-listed for sevenof ten competition entries.

Lim’s narrative-inspired architectural artworks haveculminated in Seasons Through the Looking Glass, aninstallation piece that was commissioned for theunderground tunnel entrance to the Victoria & AlbertMuseum in London. This is a large artwork that draws onAlice’s Adventures in Wonderland to explore thepossibilities of mythical underground spaces andsubterranean gardens. In Lewis Carroll’s novel, Alicefalls through a tunnel into another world, in which shesees gardeners painting the flowers of a rose garden.Lim’s cardboard structure, with delineated branchesholding rolled-up white T-shirts/roses, manages toemphasise the tunnel environment, artistic craft (theraison d’être of the V&A) and the wonder of crossing thethreshold into a museum experience. The V&A hasbecome a collector of Lim’s works and has included hisGuangming Smart-City design, a project on an altogetherdifferent scale, in its 2008 ‘China Design Now’ exhibition.

The Guangming design was predated by another vasturban design that Lim created when he was selected tobe part of the Peter Cook-curated show in the BritishPavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale of 2004.Virtually Venice manages to be both a personal andlarge-scale evocation of the essence of Lim’s approach.His own East-West journey influences the project, whichis inspired by the friendship of Kublai Khan and MarcoPolo. During his 20-year stay in China, the Italian Polowould tell the Mongol emperor stories of his homeland:Virtually Venice is Khan’s imaginary Venice as evokedthrough Polo’s tales. The result is a startling collision ofEast–West narratives, filled with humour and relying onLim’s extraordinary illustrative model-making to tell thestory. Since Virtually Venice, Studio 8 has movedtowards designing large sections of sustainable urbanenvironments. These have a precedent in his How Greenis Your Garden? experimental research project of2000–03, which formulated the question of whetherbuildings can learn from organic systems.

Lim’s designs for a new Chinese eco-city inGuangming won him third prize in the international