Tabla de contenidos para December 2019 en Space

The annual ‘Sulwhasoo Culture Exhibition’ is now on show at the Atrium in the Amorepacific Headquarters, selecting different themes and socially expanding upon the traditional value and understanding of beauty. This year, the exhibition ‘Micro-Sense: A House of Pattern’, a modern interpretation of traditional Korean patterns, opened to provide an opportunity to explore the relationship between conventional living culture and craft. Following the red pattern acrosss the flying white cloth at the entrance of the pavilion, a very strange living room welcomes visitors. A high-rise space that cannot be recognised from outside the gallery unfolds, and the furniture and dresses with colourful patterns catch visitors’ eyes. The red pattern that fills the entire living room is a reinterpretation of the flowers, butterflies and birds in the Ten-panel Folding Screen (hojeobdo).…

An archival exhibition, ‘Opening The Artist’s Home’, was held in the old house of the artist Choi Manlin, which has now been transformed into a public art museum for residents. The red brick house, which blends into the rustic garden, will open in Apr. 2020 as ‘Choi Man Lin Museum’. This exhibition, which will be held before the official opening, is the sixth project of Seongbuk Documenta and intends to examine the houses of artists in Seongbuk-dong that have been designated public cultural assets. Seongbuk Documenta, which selects social, cultural, and artistic issues in the region that can be debated each year and facilitates discussion through publications, videos, and exhibitions, recorded various spaces related to Sungbuk artists along with multiple artists. Architecture Interpretation of Kim Chung-up Architecture & Culture House…

National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage (NRICH) and the Korea Association for Architectural History organised a joint academic seminar under the theme of ‘Directives for Archaeological Research and its Maintenance and Utilisation for Conservation of Ancient Architectural Sites’ at Seoul Museum of History on Oct. 25. Using the Gyeongju Hwangnyongsa Temple and Iksan Mireuksa Temple as research examples, the seminar aimed at sharing research results and information on the current situation regarding the restoration and maintenance of ancient architectural sites. Four topic presentations opened the proceedings, regarding restoration and the maintenance of ancient architectural sites. Kim Wangjik (professor, Myongji University) introduced increased perception towards formless values in recent cultural trends and compared it with the current academic climate, which is still too focused on the evaluation of physical forms. He…

‘Transformations: Experiments in Hangeul Design’ is an exhibition currently on show at the National Hangeul Museum that tests the creative potential of the Korean alphabet. The Hangeul Design Project, of which this exhibition is a part, was launched in 2016 to showcase movements as well as visions for the future of Hangeul design. The show marks the third year in the life of the project, composed as a tripartite investigation into Hanguel design: a visual inquiry expressed as a graphic representation of the Korean alphabet’s syllabic grouping mechanism, an exploration into Hangeul’s compositional and modular characteristics, and experimentation with how letters might be brought into three-dimensional space. The artists feature in the show, revealing attempts to reinterpret the organising principles and geometric shapes of Hangeul. Worth noting is the part…

aoa architects was established in 2013 by Suh Jaewon and Lee Euihaing. Rather than interrogating metadiscourse in architecture, they focus their attention on the meaning and construction of architecture itself and seek new ways of communicating with architecture and society. In 2017, they won the Korean Young Architect Award, announced as the winner of the ‘Remarkable Korean Young Architect’ category. Suh Jaewon is a registered architect in Korea. He serves as a Public Architect of Seoul and an adjunct professor at Hanyang University. Lee Euihaing is a member of the Swiss Society of Engineers and Architects (MSc ETH Arch / SIA) and an adjunct professor at Dankook University.…

Architect architects office moldproject (Chung Youngseop, Hong Youngae) Design team Ryu Kwangjae, Lee Minsung Location 46–1·46, Pirundae–ro, Jongno–gu, Seoul, Korea Programme retail store, café, gallery, studio Site area 46: 175.5m² / 46–1: 59.5m² Building area 46: 104.91m² / 46–1: 33.57m² Gross floor area 46: 403.7m² / 46–1: 95.74m² Building scope 46: B2, 4F / 46–1: 3F Height 46: 13.3m / 46–1: 8.52m Parking 46: 3 / 46–1: 0 Building to land ratio 46: 59.78% / 46–1: 56.42% Floor area ratio 46: 171.42% / 46–1: 160.91% Structure RC Exterior finishing exposed aggregate concrete Interior finishing exposed concrete, paint Structural engineer EUN STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING Construction LEEGAK CONSTRUCTION CO.LTD Mechanical and electrical engineer YEON ENGINEERING Design period July 2016 – Feb. 2017 Construction period Apr. 2017 – July 2018 Client Kwon Taekjun Chung…

Le Corbusier’s ‘Modulor’ scale has had a lasting impact on architecture. As an anthropometric proportional system rooted in Alberti’s ‘Vitruvian Man,’ it projects a ‘harmonious’ range of postures around which space may be organised. However, in positing a singular version of universality it undermines the potential for egalitarian design. Originally based on the average height of the 1.75m tall French male, this was later raised arbitrarily to 1.83m according to a more ‘good-looking’ English male body. In 1995, as the Modulor was honoured on the 10 Franc Swiss note, it was also critiqued by the historian Robin Evans who pointedly noted, ‘The female body was only belatedly considered and rejected as a source of proportional harmony’. Architecture’s exclusion of different and even variable scales is still rife in recently constructed…

Overseen by National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) and funded by Hyundai Motor Company, the MMCA Hyundai Motor Series is a project that selects an artist each year to support and promote his or her work both locally and internationally. Park Chan-kyong was selected this year with his private exhibition ‘Gathering’ at MMCA. Observing the themes of division, the cold war, folk tradition, religion, and East Asian modernity, Park has exhibited his works of varied media, ranging from video, installation, photography, and text. He questions what a gathering, solidarity, or community mean in this era, in which disasters like the Sewol Ferry disaster and the Fukushima Nuclear disaster have become commonplace and Netflix has become common. In addition, he questions what is means be an art object, an…

An otherwise tranquil Jeongdong-gil was illuminated by countless bright lights and filled with a star-studded flurry of activity for one night only. On Nov. 4, the Hermès F/W 2019 Menswear Collection took centre-stage at the Seoul Museum of Art. The museum is a renovation project of 2002, occupying the Old Supreme Court Building, and housing within it an impressive void spanning three stories. The corridors and staircases surrounding this space were turned into a runway for Hermès, translating its show ‘Walk the Line’ through this dynamic spatial configuration. This was the first menswear event hosted by Hermès in Seoul, and was overseen by Véronique Nichanian (artistic director, Hermès’ Men’s Universe). Hermès has routinely chosen eccentric locations to reveal its men’s line: an abandoned post office in London; the former Kak…

An alternative exhibition space situated in a residential corner of Seochon, titled the Audio Visual Pavilion (AVP), closed its doors for the last time on Oct. 30, after a six-year run that began in 2013 with the exhibition, ‘No Mountain High Enough’. AVP, which was co-managed by the editor An Inyong and curator Hyun Seewon, was an exhibition space built on the original bones of a digeut -shaped hanok, and served as a breeding ground for various artistic initiatives including experimental exhibitions of rising artists. Among a tidal wave of alternative spaces that rose and fell from the early 2000s, it stood apart for its longevity and shone as a beacon for creative potential in the Korean art world. Prior to its closing, the AVP’s final show was a retrospective…

The third lecture in the SNU-MOKCHON Lectures, which aimed at promoting exchange between regional and international architecture, was held on the 18th of October at Seoul National University Museum of Art. After papers from Rafael Moneo (Spain) and Liu Jiakun (China), this year’s main presenter was Tropical Space from Vietnam. Following their graduation from University of Architecture Ho Chi Minh City, Nguyễn Hải Long and Trần Thị Ngụ Ngôn established Tropical Space in 2011 and have since engaged in architectural activities based on their knowledge of Vietnamese culture and its climate. Tropical Space materialises a sedimented Vietnamese residential language in a more flexible, contemporary vernacular by using bricks. Stepping beyond the living space, what do they envisage for their future projects? Passing through a tumultuous transitionary period during its modern…

It is no exaggeration to say that most multi-family houses in our neighbourhood reflect the auto-generated hodgepodge that results from attempts to accommodate diverse site conditions – such as solar setback regulations – and to maximize marketability. This style is difficult to understand; the structure is off-balance and the overwhelmed space can be stifling. The consequences are left to the tenants—nobody is held accountable for this outcome except for the occupants, and many people are now living in unsuitable spaces that cannot even accommodate typical layouts or items of furniture, such as a table in the heart of the kitchen. The Cascade House is an architectural proposal for five households that offers a new type of space along a familiar symmetrical design. Houses on the second and third floors have…

Suh Jaewon and Lee Euihaing don’t make it easy for us. Every step along the way towards rationalising what they are doing, they set traps and diversions in our path. The biggest trap, right up front, is the obvious question their work conjures: ‘Why do they in 2019 still design such postmodern looking buildings?’ And we have to realise that we can only ask such a question if we ourselves are deeply immersed in the postmodernist paradigm; only a postmodernist is concerned about representation and appearance. ‘Are their buildings “ducks” or “decorated sheds”? Do they explicitly reenact a generic Korean multi-family house or do they decorate a multi-family house with an iconography that denotes its purpose within the Korean context?’; ‘Are they being ironic or even sarcastic, or do they…

What I found most interesting in mu.mokjeok (Purposelessness) was that the appearance of the building implied a very particular concept. In an interview conducted in front of the building, Chung Youngseop (co-principal, architects office moldproject) discussed the client of this building, and detailed episodes experienced during its construction. I would have missed hearing the architectural concepts as well as consideration of the rough façade, which can be regarded as the signature notes of the building, if I had not asked. A decade ago, most architecture students used to put a thick book, The Metapolis Dictionary of Advanced Architecture, on their desks. The book, introducing itself as the total set of languages that make up the contemporary city, presented an endless list of themes that drew upon spatial associations such as…

‘Machine Visions’ Nam June Paik Art Center Oct. 16, 2019 – Feb. 2, 2020 A video of processing images is screened over black curtains. High-resolution photos of flowers, animal statues, human faces, motions, all flow seamlessly, and then images at a lower resolution, of more simplified forms and contours, finally of only black and white pixels sequentially projected onto the screen. At the end, it doesn’t identify whether the imagery of mouth-blowing is human or goldfish or just white noise. The process finishes and restarts with a mechanical sound, without explanation—Behold These Glorious Times! (2017) explores ‘the way machines produce images to train machines’. Equally Glorious Moments Trevor Paglen has long investigated state-of-the-art surveillance systems created to observe humans, even from space beyond the atmosphere. To address these themes, he…

This winter the Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) will become a vast projection screen blending sound and imagery. The Seoul Metropolitan Government and Seoul Design Foundation has announced plans for ‘DDP LIGHT’, a new annual festival of lights that will take place at year’s end and us this landmark facility as a media façade. The goal is to put the event on the map as a nocturnal destination for tourists from around the world, and as a platform for media artists, both domestic and international. This year, the theme for the new event is “SEOUL HAEMONG (dream interpretation),” which will showcase the evolution of Dongdaemun over time and visually interrogate relevant details of the greater city of Seoul. The images to be projected on the façade of the building will be…

The Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) is working hard to put the rapidly increasing numbers of vacant homes to good use, coordinating its efforts through policy and institutional foundations. At the beginning of this year, it founded the Department of Vacant Homes under the Seoul Housing & Communities Corporation, which oversees the project, and more recently it set out an overarching database of these homes, as a ‘Bank for empty houses’. On Oct. 28, a symposium on urban renewal and the use of unoccupied homes became a part of these efforts to publicise the programme’s achievements thus far and to benchmark case studies from abroad. The symposium’s first speaker was Nam Junghyun (director-general, SMG) who pointed to new towns and the designation and subsequent cancellation of areas for redevelopment as the…

This April, the Seoul Metropolitan Government announced a policy paradigm in relation to its transition towards a ‘disability rights city’. Going one step further from its original position towards reducing discrimination against the disabled, a policy that aims at equal treatment for both disabled and not disabled has been formed. By emphasising the right to cultural enjoyment for the disabled within this policy, cultural facilities that reflect the cultural experiences of the disabled are becoming more common in Seoul. With plans to open in 2020, the Seoul Craft Museum intends to be a ‘museum for everyone’. In order to provide an exhibition environment that will create a rich experience for all members of society, including the disabled, and to address these issues, the Seoul Craft Museum held a roundtable talk…

It is undeniable that our urban environment is full of apartments. ‘APT: Scenery Landscape of Seoul’, an exhibition exploring the unique beauty of the apartment—a form so often perceived as too ordinary or misunderstood, was on show until Nov. 24. at the gallery on the first basement floor of Yeonnamjang. In this exhibition, outstanding young artists from various fields such as media art, photography, and illustration participated, in an attempt to transform existing works with new techniques and materials. Hong Sungwoo, who expresses the singular aesthetics of an apartment through three-dimensional computer modelling, presented The Moment (2019). He captured how the skylights entered residential spaces depending on the time of day and the quality of light across different fabrics and images. Pluto Shin made a photo-realistic digital work that puts…

Architect SF LAB (Choi Moo Gyu) Design team Shin Haechul Location 83, Dongbok-ro, Gujwa-eup, Jeju-si, Jeju-do, Korea Programme gallery Site area 2,029m² Building area 1,059.17m² Gross floor area 1,059.17m² Building scope 1F Height 6.9m Parking 4 Building to land ratio 52.5% Floor area ratio 52.5% Structure RC Exterior finishing S.ST.316/304, epoxy terrazzo, reflective film on tempered glass Interior finishing S.ST.316/304, epoxy terrazzo, reflective film on tempered glass, laminated glass (ultra clear), aluminum grating Landscape architect Masilnuri (An Sangsoo) Structural engineer Sarim structure consultant Construction Sungjin construction (Kim Doobum) Interior construction EWAI (Park Gwangock, You Jedong) Media art teamVOID (Song Junbong, Bae Jaehyuck, Seok Booyoung) Audio system ODE Design period May – July 2018 Construction period Aug. 2018 – Jan. 2019…

Peter Eisenman has raised sharp criticism of the Venice Biennale 2014, the year the festival was directed by Rem Koolhaas. The gist of the criticism is as follows: ‘“Elements of Architecture” was like a language without grammar. Any language is grammar itself. If architecture is a language, elements are not as important. Through the Biennale, Koolhaas deliberately displayed architecture without grammar’. If we take away this rather emotional reading of the situation, we note a large rift between Koolhaas’ statements and Eisenman’s orthodoxy. In architecture, grammar is established through the succession of or a resistance to history, and the work of an individual architect is based on one’s independent attitude on that historicity. In contrast, Koolhaas’s statement is a framework for a public who is indifferent to the historicity of…

Oneseo has discovered special features of various industrial materials. When he makes furniture with aluminum profiles used in industrial sites he highlights a beauty of form, previously overlooked in favour of function, by intentionally exposing this section. He lends the impression of lightness to concrete, typically regarded as one of the heaviest materials, and transforms packing boxes into stools using only a pair of scissors. He pays attention to disposable plastic bags, creating products of completely new forms as in molecular cooking. After winning the ‘Creators’ Ground’ competition this year, he has participated in a number of group exhibitions, such as ‘Juxtaposition’ and ‘Euljiro Lightway’, and will present new work at the Seoul Design Festival and the home · table deco fair in December. Choi Eunhwa (Choi): You are currently…