Dream Isle London - The City : Architecture Information

Dream Isle CJ Lim/Studio 8 Architects 10 Dec 2008 Images : CJ Lim/Studio 8 Architects London is a city and cities are alive. They breathe, they grow, they spawn, they die and they dream. This is London’s dream. Feeding on the memories of its visitors and cosmopolitan populace, London’s dreams traverse icons such as St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Houses of Parliament, Primrose Hill, Trafalgar Square and the green courts of Wimbledon, but not as we know them. In these dreams, the city itself is the protagonist. Causality and reason drift through the gargantuan proscenium windows of Buckingham Palace and across the roving kaleidoscope of the realm’s ancient mounds of tea and baked sponge. The denizens of the Dream Isle comprise puffed-up swans borne on sedans and an anarchic monarchy circled by Members of Parliament (appropriately dressed in shark costumes), while a skein of magpies unfurls the British Museum, daily revealing their horde of sequestered treasure. Dreams, like cities, shape us and are shaped by us. Architects would have us believe that the edifices that make up the city are immutable and solid, monuments to their designers’ immortality. They are not. In both London’s imaginings and reality, landmarks and events assume shifting magnitude and significance, constructing distorted maps of desire and experience. Narrative obeys no logic as London searches for an ever-changing identity imprinted by its waking life. Time, scale and relationships become fluid, and the city is forever on the brink of the strangely familiar and the familiarly strange. London Architecture Studios Architecture Exhibitions - 2008: CJ Lim/Studio 8 Architects are currently showing in Tokyo at: Dec 2008 / EXHIBITION The practice is showing simultaneously in three exhibitions in Tokyo in December. NEW TRENDS OF ARCHITECTURE IN EUROPE AND ASIA-PACIFIC 2008-10 Art Front Gallery Tokyo, 5 - 21 Dec 2008, curators: Toyo Ito and Sir Peter Cook www.artfront.co.jp/en/index.html Group exhibition featuring 15 architects from 15 countries. CJ Lim is representing the UK. The exhibition is supported by the Daiwa Foundation, Japan Foundation, European Commission and Embassies of the European Union support the exhibition. HIGH-TECH AND TRADITION Tokyo Design Centre, 8 - 20 Dec 2008, Curators: Professor Tetsuo Furuichi www.design-center.co.jp/english/events/index.html Group exhibition featuring 20 architects from 12 countries contributing to environmental and ecological sustainability. The exhibition is supported by the Japan Institute of Architects, and the Japanese Ministry of Environment. DREAM ISLE Nanyodo Gallery, 8 - 27 Dec 2008, Curators: CJ Lim and Souhei Imamura www.nanyodo.co.jp/nplus2/dream_isle.htm Solo exhibition of a specially commissioned project about London. Studio 8 Architects' website: www.cjlim-studio8.com