White Elephant / Jimenez Lai

Architects: Jimenez Lai
Project Manager: Thomas Kelley
Fabrication: PR&vD, Andrew Akins
Team: Jimenez Lai, Thomas Kelley, Cyrus Penarroyo, Andrew Akins
Construction Assisted by: Mike Mead, John Stoughton, Anton Bakerjian
Photographs: Magnus Lindqvist, Kyle D, Eberle and Kamil Kroll.

The White Elephant is roughly 10’x10’x10’. It has three basic premises:
1. A building inside a building, somewhere between a super-furniture and a small house.
2. An object that tumbles to attain multiple orientations to blur the qualification plans and sections.
3. An object that is hard on the outside, soft on the inside.

Its exterior is clad with translucent polycarbonate, and the interior is stuffed cowhide. It tumbles and changes orientation and can flip to eight different stances.

What is a building that can tumble freely without gravity or fixed orientations, hard on the outside but soft on the inside, and obstructs the continuity of interior spaces like an elephant in a room? This installation is a freestanding micro building / macro furniture that questions projection, inside/outside, rigidity/fluidity and size/scale.