UCLA lecturer creates Coachella landmark with art installation
Jimenez Lai, a UCLA architecture and urban design lecturer, created his large-scale art installation “The Tower of Twelve Stories” for this year’s Coachella Valley Music and Art Festival in Indio, California. The installation was composed of repeating forms of cartoon bubbles that viewers can interpret, Lai said. Coachella attendees used the sculpture as a place to sit and as a landmark to meet with other people.
Jimenez Lai had to crane his neck the first time he saw his 52-foot-tall art installation. He felt a sudden rush of emotion – he hadn’t seen how his work would look in real life until it was installed in a grassy field at this year’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.
“I think I wanted to lie down, roll around and cry a little,” said Lai, a UCLA architecture and urban design lecturer.
Lai’s installation, “The Tower of Twelve Stories,” was on display during Coachella. The model’s white cartoon bubbles, piled haphazardly on top of each other, towered over festivalgoers, stages and performers and joined the La Grande Wheel as a part of the Indio, California, skyline.
Lai and his architecture and design firm, Bureau Spectacular, were approached by Goldenvoice, the company that produces Coachella, to create the installation. The team then began to brainstorm and write a proposal on the first large-scale design Lai had ever done, based on his long-held interest in skyscrapers. — Shreya Aiyar, Apr. 26, 2016
Read the full article at the Daily Bruin website.