Citizens of No Place is a collection of short stories on architecture and urbanism, graphically represented using manga-style storyboards. Fiction is deployed as a generative strategy to unpack thoughts on architecture, and the graphic delivery compacts criticism with layers of conversations within the discipline into singular yet legible pages. Modeled as a proto-manifesto, it is a candid chronicle of a highly critical thought process in the pursuit of paper architecture. The short stories discover many architectural problems, and some are tested out as physical installations.

Jimenez Lai is currently an assistant professor at University of Illinois at Chicago and the leader of Bureau Spectacular. He graduated with a master's of architecture from University of Toronto. Previously, Lai has lived and worked in a desert shelter at Taliesin, Arizona, and resided in a shipping container at Atelier Van Lieshout on the piers of Rotterdam. Lai’s work has been exhibited in New York, Boston, Athens, Los Angeles, Columbus, Lexington, Louisville, Chicago and Toronto. His short stories and drawings have been published in 306090, Conditions, Fresh Meat, Beyond, Pidgin, Candide, PLOT, and Log. Lai is a winner of the 2012 Architectural League Prize for Young Architects.