Índice para October 2021 em Space

The exhibition ‘Futures We Have Drawn: 100 Years of Korean Modern Architecture’ is on show at Seoul National University Museum from Sep. 1 to Feb. 26, 2022. Upon entering the Special Exhibition Hall on the second floor, a blue wall resembling a blueprint extends through the space like a wave. On this wall, the 56 buildings representing each era from 1920 to 2000 are displayed in chronological order, impressions given of each example through approximately 200 documents featuring floor plans, photos, and sketches. Under the title ‘Learning and Replicating’ to refer to the period of the 1920 ‒ 1950s, one witnesses a time in which Korean architecture was preoccupied with the imitation of western architecture due to a lack of confidence in its own native architectural vocabulary. The drawings and…

Kim Kyoungtae is an artist who has spent a long time exploring ways of seeing objects through photography. By using a focus stacking technique that collates hundreds of photos of an object taken at different viewpoints, he has observed various things ranging from a medieval cathedral, pebble, nut, book, cube, and so on. His hyperrealistic photos capture microscopic scenes that are invisible to the naked eye from an objective viewpoint, coincidentally revealing a certain unreality embodied within the objects themselves. The corner of a building, the surface of an octangular nut, the rock structure of a pebblewhen these more mundane things are zoomed into and reproduced at a massive scale, we gain a new vision of looking at things. This is probably the reason why Kim’s photos are so popular…

The 13th Seoul Architecture Festival was held from Sep. 8 to 20. Presenting various programmes that have been made more easily accessible by the general public since 2009, the event introduces outstanding architecture in Seoul. This year’s theme was ‘On & Off’; the Seoul Metropolitan Government increased online content to help more people enjoy the event despite the restrictions of the present pandemic situation. Nodeul Island, the venue of the programme, presented several exhibitions. Various architectural ideas were shared with citizens through Seoul Architecture Awards that introduces architectural works with social messages, a competition for Young Architects seeking countermeasures to climate change, and a photography contest for the citizen photographers of beautiful scenery of Seoul. A dozen pavilions designed by teams of UAUS assuming several disaster situations also caught the…

On Sep. 10, the third joint academic online (Zoom) seminar organised by the Society of Korean Modern Architecture & Urbanism and the Architecture & Urban Research Institute (AURI) on ‘The Present and Future of the Preservation and Use of Modern Cultural Heritage’ was held. This event was organised to retrace the achievements and problems of the modern cultural heritage institution and reconsider the implications for proper institutional management. The first session’s thematic conference was moderated by Lee Kyungah (professor, Korea National University of Cultural Heritage). Song Seogki (professor, Kunsan National University) covered the key controversies related to the modern cultural heritage institution and which have arisen since the enactment of the Registered Cultural Heritage Institution in 2001. Following this, Lee Kyuchul (researcher, AURI) compared the three institutions that manage modern…

The exhibition hall features a beach with people lying on beach towels. Like an eternal vacation, ‘Sun & Sea (Marina)’ presents a musical play that repeats without beginning or end, or as a kind of living picture that the audience can view from above on the balcony. The vacationers seem ordinary and satisfied, but they can't get into the sea. ‘The whirlpools of the sea, drop-offs, rip-tides, undertows. You’re not allowed to wade in deeper than your knees!’, they sing together, ‘Walk the beach collecting stones, shells, amber, and baby teeth!’ The absence of a promise of when they will be able to enter the sea, they take turns singing short songs and immersing themselves in their own sleepy stretch of time. The sea is out of sight, but they…

Last May, a new space opened in Deokjin Park, becoming the most popular resting place for all Jeonju citizens from children to the elderly. It is the ‘Playforest & Playhouse_as you like!’, created through the UNICEF Child-Friendly Space Project. SPACE conducted an interview with Kim Ahyeon (professor, University of Seoul), the general designer of the project, and Kim Hun (co-principal, Ilsang Architects), the architect participated in the project, to hear more about the background to this project and their working process. Bang Yukyung: Since the early stages of the UNICEF Child-Friendly Space Project, you participated as a general designer in charge of research and the basic plan. Please briefly introduce the purpose and process behind the project. Kim Ahyeon: UNICEF is running ‘UNICEF Child Friendly City Initiatives’ in cities throughout…

Kevin Mark Low received his BArch in University of Oregon in 1988 and M. S. Arch in MIT in 1991. He established small projects in 2002 based in Malaysia and has worked various projects in Malaysia, Thailand, and other countries. He has been professionally involved in writing, environmental sculpture, illustrating, teaching and copyrighting. Dialogue with Architects from Southeast Asia 10 Through 12 settings, architect Park Changhyun discusses with architects of various generations from Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, and Taiwan on the topic of residence. This series article intends to share the reflections and thoughts of these contemporary architects from Southeast Asia and share their present positions with its readers. Park Changhyun did his M.Arch and at the Graduate School of Architecture, Kyonggi University. He is currently the principal at a…

The exhibition of duo Cho Byoungsoo (co-principal, BCHO Partners) and Choi Wook (principal, ONE O ONE architects) is on show at DDP D-SOOP since Sep. 2. Organised under the theme ‘Homely Talk’, this exhibition presents all our living spaces as homes and opens up about the lifestyles and episodes embedded in each one of them. The rationale behind drawing these two architects together, the curator of this exhibition Lim Jinyoung (principal, OPENHOUSE Seoul) explained that she wanted ‘to speak about architecture using homes as medium – which are not only the smallest units of architectural work but also individual worlds – and to share that narrative with architects who are pursuing the essence of Korean architecture’. Four thematic videos and two interview videos are presented in the exhibition hall. The…

The 11th Seoul MediaCity Biennale, delayed for a year due to the global pandemic, opened on Sep. 8. This biennale, which was held at Seoul Museum of Art was directed by Yung Ma, the first foreign artistic director in the history of the Biennale. As he prepared the exhibition during the ongoing pandemic situation, Ma decided on the theme ‘escapism’. Inspired by the US sitcom ‘One Day at a Time’ in which contemporary issues such as racism, class, gender, migration, identity, and gentrification are addressed directly and discussed under the guise of comedy, Ma picked ‘One Escape at a Time’ as the title. By using a detour known as art, the 41 participating teams in this exhibition explore how an individual can voice one’s opinions regarding a range of social…

As an associated event in the 13th Seoul Architecture Festival, the architectural forum for Seoul ‘Architecture Intersecting with AI’ was held online (Zoom) on Sep. 10. Many domestic and international experts participated in this event moderated by Nam Sungtaeg (professor, Hanyang University) and Ahn Keehyun (professor, Hanyang University). Session 1, conducted under the theme ‘From Digital to AI’, presented insights into the social environment through the distributed networks of AI. The first speaker Antoine Picon (professor, Harvard University) highlighted the importance of ‘inhabiting’ a digital culture that pervades our everyday life, and asserted the notion that we should consider AI as an internal condition rather than an external condition in architecture. Kim Sung-Ah (professor, Sungkyunkwan University) predicted that the scope of the architect’s design practice, will be physically and psychologically…

International Design Competition for the Famed Onggi Village On Aug. 6, Ulju-gun announced that Kim Chanjoong (principal, THE_SYSTEM LAB) had been selected as the winner of the International Design Competition for the Famed Onggi Village. This competition was conducted to enhance the cultural aims and tourist resources in Onggi Village and to revive the city as a regional centre. The winning proposal, while viewing the city as a living organism, was designed around the theme of a village inviting firms that can bring various activities into town to prompt the evolution of the city and to grow in tandem with such new life. A master plan was proposed to connect the abandoned railway site with a pedestrian-centred promenade so that the village could be explored, alongside a long unused site…

I like books. To be more precise, I like reading, browsing, and understanding books. After attending general courses and observing the work of seniors during my freshman year, I was able to follow one of my senior peers to an architecture bookstore when I became a sophomore. It was a bookstore run by one of those bookstore owners who knows everything about school matters. The senior and the bookstore owner recommended various books to me, explaining why I should read them as though I would not be able to practice design without knowing them. It was the first and probably the last time that I bought so many books at one go. It is quite amusing as I now think back on that day, when I purchased all those (insightful)…

‘What does this figure signify?’ – We ask the question by habit. Like this, our attitude toward a figure is tied to semantics. However, this attitude resulted from reductive application of standards of linguistics and semiotics to architectural forms. The question should be changed. It is required to be redirected from ‘what does it signify’ to ‘what does it do?’. When we get out of the stone well of semantics and move to practical and ethical realm, a more accurate understanding of the figure can be achieved. In this sense, Mario Botta’s the Church of Our Lady of the Rosary of Namyang seems fresh. The cathedral managed to construct a figure with a power which is vivid, moving, effective, attractive, and magical rather than with an activity on the horizon…

Candleum Where Various Landscapes Overlap The candleum which is a place to offer candles was the first project when embarking upon the Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary of Namyang in 2012. The shrine can be recognised as a large cathedral by itself which contains its outdoor space with several prayer walkers. But it is largely divided into social area and religious area. Located at the border of the two areas, the candleum confronts the road leading to the cathedral and attempts to communicate visually with passersby. Visitors find the candles placed on the shelf through the deep eaves and glass windows of the candleum, and look at the statue of Our Lady through another glass window installed behind it. Sometimes the scenery of the opposite is reflected upon…

Various agents, such as the Ministry of National Defense, Incheon Metropolitan City (IMC), Cultural Heritage Administration (CHA), and other civic bodies, are in conflict over whether to demolish the hospital building of the Incheon Arsenal located in the Bupyeong Camp Market (hereinafter BCM), one of the returned US military bases. In a meeting with Lee Yeonkyung (research professor, Incheon National University) who has spent many years researching the returned US military base, SPACE discussed the controversies concerning demolition and what needs to be changed more broadly across the architectural field to resolve such issues. Bang Yukyung (Bang): Several points of controversy have arisen over whether to demolish the hospital building of Incheon Arsenal in the BCM. Before we begin, what is Incheon Arsenal, and how was it formed? Lee Yeonkyung…

On show at Incheon Songdo until Sep. 17, ‘Accumulation, Sgraffito, Expansion’ was an exhibition exploring the contact points between architectural space and art, powered by the aim to discover how the former – when it deviates from the standard – can inspire the latter. The exhibition began with an ‘exhibition hall’; Yoo Kerl’s Tri-bowl was designed as an atypical pavilion to symbolise the new city, Songdo. While defining this space as a ‘monument to purposelessness’, the exhibition curator Jung Sookyeong proposed the governing concepts ‘Accumulation, Sgraffito, Expansion’ by focusing on the connection between the trio’s architectural activity of creating the Tri-bowl and connected artistic activity. By stressing the fact that a concrete building built with cutting-edge technology, such as the invertebrate shell structure, is still ultimately something built out of…

The 13th Seoul International Architecture Film Festival (SIAFF) hosted by the Seoul Metropolitan Government and the Korean Institute of Architects was held from Sep. 8 to 18. At this festival, 22 films from 14 countries were screened through cinecube Gwanghwamun and NAVER TV (online). The theme behind this year’s programme is ‘Designed for All’, and it consists of five sections that open up multiple perspectives on the contemporary architectural sites around the world. The opening film Kids of the Bims is a documentary about the Bijlmemeer, a.k.a ‘Bims’, the location of Amsterdam’s most diverse ethnic group. It tells the story of the fight against racism and inequality in Amsterdam, known as one of the most progressive cities and yet blighted by social problems. Seven films were screened as part of…

The 2021 Gyeonggi Cultural Heritage Academic Symposium co-organised by Korea Association for Architectural History and Gyeonggi Cultural Foundation was held online via YouTube on Sep. 10. The first presentation was given by Han Dongsoo (professor, Hanyang University). Gyehwa refers to line measurement drawings used to either depict or construct buildings such as palace chambers and towers or objects such as waterwheels and ships. Han emphasised its significance as an architectural drawing for three reasons: ‘for being able to communicate the actual appearance of the object by making use of a parallel line system based on isometrical projection’; ‘for using realistic images to depict the elements of architecture which might face limitations in being described or understood with mere words’, and ‘for allowing us to observe the modifications in the architecture…

In 1928, Le Corbusier proposed the Mundaneum project, the core of the city-building complex ‘Cité Mondiale (World City)’, which would be the headquarters of the League of Nations and the centre of an information universe to be located in Geneva. Le Corbusier’s plan sparked a debate between two groups, the Czech and Russian avant-garde, receiving extensive criticism from Karel Teige and El Lissitzky. This debate can be viewed as a clash between humanistic modernism and radical functionalism, liberalism, and Marxism. That said, it was also a conflict between complex modern ideas surrounding art, politics, technology, and ideology. History has named it the Mundaneum Affair. The Mundaneum project was initiated by the Belgian idealist bibliographer and internationalist Paul Otlet. In order to understand this event and its lasting implications, we first…

A sky-rising cathedral has made its appearance to the public at the Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary of Namyang in Hwaseong-si, Gyeonggi-do. This shrine where the cathedral is located is the first consecrated site for the blessed virgin of the mother Mary by the Korean Catholic. This place is dedicated to the catholic martyr during Byeongin Persecution, and religious facilities to commemorate the peace of the land are now being built constantly at the site. Priest Lee Sanggak who has exerted efforts to establish the holy site for more than 30 years is creating spaces gradually with the assistance of experts including Mario Botta who designed the Church of Our Lady of the Rosary of Namyang. The cathedral, which is placed at the end of the places along…

Kim Jeoungeun (Kim): The Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary of Namyang was the first shrine to the Virgin Mary in Korea in 1991 due to its historical nature of being a martyrdom for unknown martyrs, who were massacred during Byeongin Persecution (1866). Priest Lee Sanggak has been working hard to make this place a holy place for 30 years. Tell us about its background. Lee Sanggak (Lee): At the end of 1983, through a paper of local historians, it was revealed that the Namyang Shrine was a martyrdom site of the Byeongin Persecution. I was assigned to this place in August 1989, and I wanted to make it a place to honour the martyrs and commemorate their spirits. But the international situation at that time was very dramatic…