Tabla de contenidos para April 2021 en Space

In order to diagnose recently emerging problems regarding residential stability in Korea and to discover possible solutions, the Architectural Institute of Korea (AIK) Housing Architecture Committee organised an online conference titled ‘Current Situation in Regional Residential Architecture and Proposition for Development’. The event which is to be conducted in the order of the five representative zones of Korea, consisting of Seoul, Gyeonggi, Busan, Gwangju, Jeju, and Daejeon-Chungcheong, began with its first session titled ‘A Development Proposal for Residential Architecture in Seoul and Gyeonggi-do’ on Feb. 26. Lee Jaehoon (chairman, Residential Architecture Committee) moderated the conference; Song Hayub (professor, Chung-Ang University), Kim Hana (co-principal, Seoul Social Standards), and Lee Eunkyung (principal, EMA Architects & Associates) gave presentations respectively, and Woo Euijung (principal, METAA Inc. architects & associates) and Joh Sungwook (principal,…

In March, the 16th SPACE student reporters published a book, Revising SPACE, containing interviews with eight teams of architects and planners. This book is the fruit of an interview project, named ‘Revising SPACE’ which was done by the 16th SPACE student reporters. Some of the buildings in SPACE were selected and interviewed with the architect. In years after the completion, this project aims to think about the architect’s intentions, the process of its creation, and the values of the time and now. The interviewees are Suh Jaewon & Lee Euihaing (principal and partner, aoa architects), Lee Jinoh & Park Inyoung (co-principals, architects office SAAI), Han Seungjae (co-principal, FHHH FRIENDS), Lee Yongju (principal, Yong Ju Lee Architecture), Yoon Seunghyun (professor, Chung-Ang University), Chung Dahyoung (curator, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary…

In the Drifting House (2020), designed by Matsumoto Kosaku, the bookshelves are in the air. To be more precise, they seem to levitate. Even if they are hung on pillars, fixed to walls, or supported by the floor, they never reveal this stability. In general, bookshelves are rooted to the ground as a result of their immense weight, but this is not the case in this house. Therefore, although bookshelves occupy every wall in the house, the overall impression is not one of heaviness; it feels light and rhythmical. In this interview, SPACE asks him why he challenged to lift these heavy pieces of furniture off the ground, and what strategies he used to realise this ambition. Choi Eunhwa (Choi): Drifting House (2020) is a renovation project. I’d like to…

When the agreement between Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) and Korea Institute of Registered Architects (KIRA) was announced on the 24th of September, 2020, it sent shockwaves across the architectural scene. Several pending issues were immediately taken up as targets of criticism: mandatory membership of the association, the return of licensing system, and the reduced frequency of the architects qualifying examination. What is the role and reasons behind an association that presides over the Korean architectural ecosystem? SPACE interviewed Park Insoo, a member of the Preparatory Committee for the Establishment of the (provisionally named) Korean Architects Association, discussing the issues and topics that have arisen following the recent announcement. Bang Yukyung (Bang): The (provisionally named) Korean Architects Association (KAA) began recruiting members from the 10th of January, 2021.…

What shape did artistic exchange or integration projects, now known as ‘cross-overs’ or ‘collaboration’ take during the 1920s and 1930s in Gyeongseong (colonial era Seoul)? The exhibition, ‘Encounters Between Korean Art and Literature in the Modern Age’, now on show at National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) Deoksugung welcomes its visitors to explore collaborative relationships through the works of authors and artists representative of the Japanese colonial period. During this time, the Korean literary circle (Jeong Jiyong, Yi Sang, Kim Girim, Kim Gwanggyun, Lee Taejun, Park Taewon, Baek Seok, and so on) and the artistic circle (Gu Bonung, Kim Yongjun, Choi Jaideok, Lee Jungseop, Kim Whanki, Chang Ucchin, Han Mook, Chun Kyungja, and so on) grew together in their mutual exchanges. The exhibition reveals a map of relationships…

‘I don’t think art should be for the minorities; it should be for the public’, said Andy Warhol, who tried to locate art in everyday life. He used Campbell’s soup cans, Coca-Cola bottles, and Brillo boxes displayed in supermarkets as materials in his work, and he used silk-screen prints, which can be mass-produced, as his medium instead of painting individual works with a brush. The retrospective exhibition, ‘Andy Warhol: Beginning Seoul’ about the world-renowned pop artist opens at ALT.1 in The Hyundai Seoul in Yeouido. This exhibition consists of a total of 153 works, including silkscreened works and drawings as well as those taken from his own collection. His masterpieces are displayed in the entrance to the exhibition; a series of colourful portraits of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Liz…

As one enters a small alley in Dongdaemun, Seoul, a blue flag fluttering in the wind catches the eye, a flash of colour in an area littered with hardware stores, printing shops, and plastic vinyl stores. Upon entering the second floor of an old-looking building, following the flag, one discovers the gallery-cum-café, ‘meeseek’. Sculptures of various shapes and colours hang from the ceiling, chairs with armrests that look like hula hoops, stools and tables that resemble expensive Korean furniture designs with metal added to each of their connecting parts, and futuristic stools and tables are dotted around the place. These are the artwork of Kong and Ha, Seol Subin, Oneseo, Texmosa. Through the works of these four artists, the exhibition, ‘Aesthetic References’, reflects upon the relationship between the works’ original…

An online seminar titled ‘Urban Residence and the Historic City’ focused on the study of machiya, traditional commercial residences in Japan, was held on Feb. 17. Jeon Bonghee (professor, Kyoto Prefectural University) moderated the seminar, and Oba Osamu (professor, Kyoto Prefectural University) and Matsuda Noriko (professor, Kyoto Prefectural University) delivered presentations. Oba Osamu focused on the formative changes experienced by the machiya in Kyoto, now numbering over 47,000. He explained the original form of machiya in Kyoto by showing a genre painting that depicted a folk dwelling in the late Heian period. Machiya in Kyoto were built to be consistent with nagaya — which are wooden townhouses built along narrow and long blocks — and they characteristically house zashiki, which resemble the guest-hosting space found in luxurious mansions. These commercial…

Design Competition for Jinhae Culture Platform 1926 On Feb. 25, Changwon City Government revealed that it has picked CoRe architects (co-principals, Kim Vin, U Zongxoo) and OLOT (principal, Cho Aran) as the winner of its design competition for the Jinhae Culture Platform 1926. This design competition was held with the aim of revitalising areas in the vicinity of Jinhae station, much of which has fallen into decline since the government building moved, and to turn this area into a place for culture and tourism. The project site is located at Chungjang-ro 71 of Jinhae-gu at Changwon city, and the new building will have a total floor area size of 3,660m2 with a limit of four aboveground floors. Matching the scale of the old city centre, the winning design divided the…

THING Everyone has something that they care about. This article is about the things that protect and brighten the everyday lives of architects. I received a letter from a friend in Berlin. There was a stamp glued to the envelope that featured German flowers and old cars. It prompted within me a note of nostalgia, transporting me to a time at which I was excited by stamps. I used to collect stamps in my younger days. It was around third grade in elementary school when I first paid attention to stamps, as a consequence of an old stamp book my mother gave to me which already had a series of stamps inside. This was the moment stamps came to mean more than just their physical reality as pieces of paper…

Nam Sungyong Running Center is a regional regeneration project in Jungnim-dong, located at the back gate of the Son Keechung Park. It is also designed as a facility that supports the park. The area near the front gate of the park has been redeveloped into an apartment building and the neighbouring roads were expanded, improving the access to information centres, parking lots, and exhibition halls. However, the area at the back gate is a dense residential area with low-rise housing on sloping ground, designated as an urban regeneration area. Along with the refurbished, marathon-themed track at ground level, the running center is a public space that stretches from Seoullo 7017 with a permanent exhibition that honours unrecognised athletes loke Nam Sungyong. Due to the retaining wall, the precipitous road towards…

Oryu-dong Beodeulmaeul is a dense residential area of low-rise housing developments in which maintenance plans that include resident participation are in progress. As a part of a regional regeneration plan to encourage urban revitalisation, the project was to provide community facilities so that residents can build and run the facilities that they need. Throughout the design process, the presiding council that will operate the facilities becomes the main body that discuss and decide the overall architectural design and aspects such as layout, usages per floor, plans, and exteriors. The site was purchased by the public for the construction of a new facility, and it is an elongated shape of two parcels placed back and forth, facing the streets of the marketplace spontaneously formed in this low-rise residential area. The building…

Espace Louis Vuitton Seoul opened the exhibition ‘4900 COLOURS’, on Mar. 12, which exhibits works by the German artist Gerhard Richter. The Fondation Louis Vuitton has been presiding over ‘Horsles-murs (Beyond the Walls)’, a programme that displays works in series drawn from its significant collections in Venice, Tokyo, and Munich, and ‘4900 COLOURS’ is part of this travelling exhibition. Gerhard Richter is well-known for his distortion of forms. He claims that ‘art represents the partial, imperfect, and the less objective visible world’, and this notion is reflected in his work. His ideas concerning visuality are made evident in his work, such as Woman Descending the Staircase (1965), which blurs objects in photographs, and Strips (2013), where only some colours of objects have been extracted and arranged in length. The exhibition…

‘Absent Dataset’ was on show at Post Territory Ujeongguk, a cultural art space, between Mar. 3 – 7. Until now, Post Territory Ujeongguk has explored the topic of open-source at home and abroad every year through their exhibition format ’Forking Room’. This year’s Forking Room questioned how people and data processing devices are to accept information generated within the digital society of the future. The nine works exhibited attended to errors that might occur in the data selection process. Data researcher Mimi Onuoha pointed out the worrying reality of tagging workers in developing countries and their low wages to run computer machine learning programmes. The Future is Here! (2019) noted the downsides to data classification by showing a slide show of the poor working environments in outsourced labour. KairUs (Linda…

The ‘Return of the Lost Space’, an exhibition about the use of vacant spaces in the city opened on Feb. 16 at the Seoul Hall of Urbanism & Architecture. The Seoul Metropolitan City Space Improvement Bureau, the exhibition organiser, has long sought ways of using city overpasses, particularly following the completion of ‘Seoullo 7017’, an overpass-turned pedestrian park. The exhibition presents the projects by six architectural firms displayed in booths, all of which are the results of discussions with the City Space Improvement Bureau. The projects consist of the improvement of pedestrian environments in urban area and the expansion of insufficient regional indoor amenities. Cheon Janghwan (professor, Kyung Hee University) created an artificial natural realm under the Hannam 1 overpass with nine petal-shaped structures made of perforated metal plate, while…

The National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage (hereinafter NRICH) and Korea Forest Service (hereinafter KFS) signed a business agreement from 2019 and conducted joint investigations to discover restore, preserve, and revitalize Korean traditional gardens, utilizing the expertise of both institutions. Until now, studies on cultural heritage private houses have been mainly focused on buildings, so studies on gardens attached to private houses have not been largely conducted, and folk house garden, which has not been registered as a cultural property, has not been subject to research or management. As the need for the records of folk house garden continues to be raised, the two organizations have joined forces to investigate and research the existing private home gardens. For the past two years, NRICH and KFS have conducted three-dimensional investigations and…

Jangwi-dong Youth Cultural Center was designed as a regional regeneration project in Jangwi’s urban revitalisation area. Throughout the process of designing a public space that will support youth and cultural activities in a dense residential area of low-rise housing, local youth design workshops were held, and the programmes and layouts per floor were planned based on the diverse feedback. A space for the band and dance club was created in the basement, a book café with barista activities on the first floor, a study space on the second floor, and a shared kitchen with chef activities on the third floor. The site is located within the residential area, and it is a place in which a community welfare worker means that the house can be used as a study space…

Seonjamdan is a place in Seongbuk-dong located outside of the city, where the Queen of the Joseon dynasty was known to have prayed for good thread from silkworms. The Seonjamdan Cultural Spatialisation Project, dedicated to creating a historical and cultural hub in Seongbuk-dong, was carried out for the restoration of Seonjamdan and Seongbuk Seonjam Museum. The Seonjamdan areas, which were not privatised or occupied by roads were able to be restored. Seongbuk Seonjam Museum was built by remodeling the existing building, whereby its front façade faces Seongbuk-ro and the rear integrates with the retaining walls. The existing neightbourhood living facility suffered disadvantages in all respects, due to its small area, low floor height, and narrow width, as the museum requires specific facility conditions. Therefore, the design intends to draw out…

The flagship store ‘HAUS DOSAN’ where one can experience GENTLE MONSTER, tamburins, and NUDAKE, opened its doors on the 24th of February. I.I COMBINED, which manages all three brands and even designs its own spaces, here devises its vision for ‘Future Retail’, an aim that binds the perspectives of various brands via concepts, artworks, and products. SPACE interviewed Choi Woosuk (spatial design department head, GENTLE MONSTER), Lee Jeongyeon (branding department head, tamburins), and Ha Yezin (director, NUDAKE) to hear more about their plans and thinking behind this new type of commercial facility. Kim Yeram (Kim): With the flagship store of 2013 at Nonhyeon-dong as a starting point, GENTLE MONSTER has long explored distinctive experiential concepts in its stores. What is the reason that you continue to design spaces through storytelling…