CJ Lim creates vision of Venice

CJ Lim, creative director at Studio 8 Architects and director of the Bartlett Architecture Research Lab at University College London, has created a surreal vision of Venice that will be shown at the city’s IX Architectural Biennale, which opens this weekend. Lim has drawn inspiration from historical accounts of the meeting between Venetian explorer Marco Polo and Mongol emperor Kublai Khan during the 13th Century. Lim conjures Khan’s vision of the city through paper models. ‘The current trend in architecture is that everything uses computer graphics. We went back to traditional materials and cut all the models using only paper,’ he explains.