Space的May 2021目录

An exhibition of the work of industrial design studio SWNA (principal, Lee Sukwoo), ‘Objects in Context’, opened at cociety in Seongdong-gu, Seoul, and was held between Apr. 9 to 18. In this exhibition, SWNA presented its products from the past ten years, their design process from ideas to completion, and the thoughts and attitudes pursued through their designs. Lee Sukwoo founded SWBK with designer Song Bonggyu in 2009, and then separated to form SWNA in 2016. At that time, domestic industrial design did not command a large slice of the market, and most of the work was taken by large companies. In this situation, Lee made the unusual move of setting up a private studio under his name, and he has worked on projects than span fields and scales such…

Domansa, an urban cultural space located in Seongsu-dong, Seoul, has transformed itself into a store that sells nature. The pots in front of the store, dozens of brown glass bottles and paper bags arranged inside, and large and small plants scattered all over the place seem like a flower shop. However, if one looks at each item on sale, the price ranges from one million to tens of millions of KRW. The shop doesn’t sell items one by one, but you have to buy a lot because there is a minimum purchase unit and so the price soars astronomically. Is this an actual store? Or is it a kind of experiment? It is an exhibition ‘Soopciety’, which opened on Apr. 2. Domansa hosts the exhibition, and design studio loci (principal,…

On Apr. 6, a seminar entitled ‘In the Age of Connection, Strategies for Industrialisation of Smart Architecture’ was held online (via zoom). It was hosted by the Architecture & Urban Research Institute to enrich understanding of the rapidly changing spheres of industrial and smart architecture. Kim Sungah (professor, Sungkyunkwan University), Kim Sungjin (principal, WITHWORKS), and Yi Yangjae (principal, Studio Elephants) were invited to this event to discuss the concept and outline case studies of smart architecture. The seminar began with Kim Sungah’s presentation on the theme of ‘Architecture in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: Production, Circulation, Consumption’. He intimated that, in a situation in which the industrial ecosystem ‒ which is based on manufacturing industries such as automobiles and fashion ‒ is shifting from mass production to small-scale production of…

Kimm Jong-Soung (honorary CEO, SAC International, Ltd.), one of the first generation of Korean contemporary architects, has published his second photo essay Romanesque Architecture. This is a book that explores a decade of explorations of Romanesque architecture after traveling to Europe following his departure from his business. It examines Romanesque architecture in Spain and Portugal following ‘Belgium and Germany’. The author describes Romanesque architecture as ‘an architecture composed of wooden ceilings or bolts, which are the archetypes of architecture’, and notes that it has rich diversity in accordance with the times of its development and the capabilities of its builders. In this book, he reveals his intention to illuminate how its architectural elements are fused, to describe the design strategies of medieval architects and the spatial phenomena experienced by visitors…

A Zigzag Promenade The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the visible decline of the performing arts. Online venues and platforms have provided something of an exit from this dead end. Fashion shows have also developed into events transmitted by video as opposed to held face-to-face. Means will alter outcomes. While traditional fashion shows consist of walks up and down a straight runway, the Hermès Women’s S/S 2021 Runway Show proposes a new approach. The runway of this show was in the form of a zigzag, a descending indoor ramp with a gentle artificial slope. It is reminiscent of a staggering mountain trail, such as the ascent through the Alps in the cover picture of Rodolphe Töpffer’s Les voyages en zigzag (1825). The sloping floor is connected at all points to…

The Gap Between Outsiders and Insiders If we attempt to translate the feelings of the outsider into a space, what form might it take? Louis Vuitton’s Men’s F/W 2021 Show begins with a reference to James Baldwin’s widely acclaimed essay Stranger in the Village (1953). As in the essay, in which Baldwin describes the frustration and loneliness of being the only black in a village in Switzerland, the space of the show itself appears cold and fragmented. Models walk their own separate paths in an indifferent manner as if unable to see each other, but then at points they exchange bags and engage with each other. An African wearing a kente robe of a Scottish tartan pattern, an Asian clothed in a kilt, and an European in a suit embroidered…

The exhibition ‘Lee Bul ‒ Beginning’ held at Seoul Museum of Art features a collection of records related to Lee Bul’s soft sculptures and performance works on which she focused in the first ten years of her career (1987 ‒ 1996). This exhibition distinguishes itself by highlighting the relationship between the more controversial works that brought her to global attention. After displaying her representative soft sculpture works and twelve performance videos consecutively in Gallery 1 and 2, the final part of the exhibition in Gallery 3 is an attempt to emphasise the relationship between the two forms through the various perspectives presented in her drawings, photos, objects, and other numerous by-products created in the process. The ‘Documentation’ exhibited in Gallery 3 acts as a clue through which to trace her…

What ‘question’ should be posed by those in architecture and city planning to find a way out of the many crisises that face us all under this pandemic? Under the theme ‘What is To be Asked’, the Seoul Hall of Urbanism & Architecture organised an international design competition (hereafter WTA) to take place over six months from August 2020. This event, which picked five teams through its ‘Key Concepts Submission’ and supported the ensuing ‘Key Concepts Proposal’, was conducted in an online format according to its intentions to provide an open public discussion platform for citizens and professionals alike to come together to search for a solution. The exhibition ‘What is To be Asked: One Year of the Pandemic and The Future of Cities Thinking Together with its Citizens’ was…

The Hyatt Foundation announced on Mar. 16 that it had selected the French architects Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal as the winners of the 2021 Pritzker Architecture Prize. Guided by the principle of ‘never breaking existing buildings’, the two architects, who have long focused on expanding and restoring the functions of residential spaces at low cost, such as old public buildings and houses, were highly praised for the improvements made to the environment by forging connections with nature in dense urban environments. Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal met in the late 1970s during their formal architecture training at École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture and de Paysage de Bordeaux. In 1987, they established Lacaton & Basal Architectural Office in Paris, France, and carry out projects throughout Europe and West Africa that embody…

Design Competition for the New Construction Project in the Yeongdong Line Jeongdongjin Station On Mar. 26, the Korea Railroad Corporation (KORAIL) announced that it had selected KODE Architects (principal, Kim Minho) as the winner of the design competition for their new construction project at Yeongdong Line Jeongdongjin Station. This competition invited designs for a 2,500m2 station in the parking lot of the existing station in line with the increasing demand of passenger numbers as Jeongdongjin Station was confirmed as a KTX station. The winning proposal received good reviews for its approach to the area using horizontal elevations and vertical walls, and taking advantage of characteristics adjacent to the east coast, suggesting that the volume use U-glass to serve as a lighthouse. KORAIL decided to preserve the existing station building in…

THING Everyone has something that they care about. This article is about the things that protect and brighten the everyday lives of architects. As there are various types of architecture so are there diverse works of furniture such as tables, beds, closets, chairs, and so on. The harmony between structure and detail is crucial, and as it is closely informed by the human body, the chair is of particular significance. There was an annual Chair Show in the graduate school of Arts where I studied in the United States. Students from different majors participated in designing and producing chairs for the exhibition, and it was a beloved event for students from the architecture school and on the product design major. Bill E. Massie, the professor in the architectural school at…

The Torn Veil The digital natives of generation Z overturn our established sense of space from the perspective of both consumers and suppliers. They regard analogue technologies as replicable images and embody the imagined in a powerful invented space with greater ease than the material world itself. Here, the essence is that it is not a more realistic but also more emphatically realistic. However, analogue things do exist in the world experienced by generation Z, throughout the diverse built environments that physically surround us all. Fashion is the first step in its physical construction. Fashion is the first functional form of ornamentation and the construction of space around our body. In other words, clothes are the first space and the first architecture, the plane at which our bodies meet the…

Between the Physical and Digital The new topic to be addressed in this era is the ‘Physital’. This word is a combination of ‘physical’ and ‘digital’, meaning a method that combines offline and online spaces. The most complete realisation of this was in evidence in Louis Vuitton’s Women’s S/S 2021 Collection. Louis Vuitton took the top floor of La Samaritaine in Paris as the backdrop for the show and filled the entire wall of the department store with a chroma key screen. Customers participated in the show via a live streaming event online. They watched the show and its background of intersecting scenes from Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin) (1993), directed by Wim Wenders. Of course, the audience in the store could experience the show through special effects…

Kim Hyesook, who majored in Korean Painting, is an artist that has adhered to a unique working method which explores urban space by making drawings using mechanical pencils on korean paper screens and overlayering them with colour. In this private exhibition following ‘Vacancy’ (2017), ‘Peripheral Vision’ (2017), and ‘Knock Knock’ (2018), she has picked the materials, structures, and details of modern architecture as the main object of focus in her drawings. As the city and its architecture are captured through her eyes, they are dismantled into planes and lines before being reassembled in her imagination. The spatial narrative and its temporal frame is wholly replaced by geometry and physicality. The wood grain is meticulously expressed with mechanical pencil, the layout of columns and stairs that repeat a certain structure, and…

The exhibition ‘Whether Weather’, where you can enjoy the quality of light while walking inside a vinyl tunnel set within lush green trees is now on show at Kolon Sport Hannam. The mastermind behind such a wonder is Plastique Fantastique, who installed this remarkable vinyl structure in a commercial place. The artists group was formed in Berlin in 1999, performing experimental projects throughout their career such as inflation units for various forms to create alternative spaces like cafeterias, treatment centres and performance stages. In this project, Plastique Fantastique produced a donut-shaped pavilion in which you can take a walk around the natural realm. Yena Young, co-director of the group explained, ‘We have prepared an indoor installation for people who are patiently dealing with social distancing due to Coronavirus Disease-19’, giving…

The exhibition ‘Border-less.site’ which features a community centred along the Amnokgang River as its cultural and economical boundary, is now on show at Culture Station Seoul 284, having opened on Mar. 17. The Junglim Foundation, which organised and planned the exhibition, has been exploring Sinuiju-Dandong with researchers from various fields such as sociology, cultural anthropology, and architectural history, and has shared its findings as part of a research forum series known as the Borders Project. Shinuiju and Dandong were cities planned under Japanese Colonial rule in order to occupy the continent, and they work as a single district, forming close relationships amidst the tug of war between neighbouring countries. The exhibition features major events that took place in this border area, and the event is unraveled through the eyes of…

The Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) published Everyone’s Idea: Architecture Competition to disclose the process behind the public architecture design competition and to help its public understand the nature of public architecture policy and architectural trends at a glance. This white paper is a compilation of 191 winning proposals which participated in 39 major public architecture design competitions held since 2016. Since 2016, SMG has led a tidal shift in the public architecture paradigm by implementing innovative systems such as building a website for design competitions, public screenings for citizens, and digital screenings under the integrated management of the Seoul Urban Space Improvement Bureau. This book, designed with the intention of introducing this process and containing all of the ideas of the architects who participated in the design competitions, consists of…

An Irresistible Synthesis Rem Koolhaas has explored the heterogeneity and distinctive nature of cities. As he stated in his book Delirious New York (1978), he was fascinated by the Downtown Athletic Club, a discrete skyscraper with diverse, overlapping programmes, and he converted vertical layers into the juxtaposition of horizontal stripes in his proposal for the Parc de la Villette (1982). The concept behind this Prada fashion show is also in line with these ideas. It addresses the mercurial multiplicity of moments we experience every day, under the title of ‘passage of time’ and ‘never ending route’. Traditional fashion shows often use one unifying background whereas this show presents a collage of different rooms. Models showcase costumes while walking between distinct and diverse spaces. It reveals how different a look can…

The 2020 Venice Biennale, postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, will be open to the public from the 22th of May. The question ‘How Will We Live Together?’, raised by chief curator Hashim Sarkis, required an urgent response in the pandemic era. Coincidently, ‘Future School’, the theme for the Korean Pavilion, also set the stage for discussions concerning future sustainability and its challenges. Prior to opening, SPACE interviewed Hae-Won Shin, the curator of the Korean Pavilion to hear more about the Future School. Park Semi (Park): ‘How Will We Live Together?’ is the theme behind the 2021 Venice Biennale proposed by the chief curator Hashim Sarkis, and the Korean Pavilion will discuss ‘diaspora', ›climate crisis’, and ‘innovation’ under the theme of ‘Future School’. Coincidentally, COVID-19 seems to have deepened awareness…

Dialogue with Architects from Southeast Asia 5 Through 12 settings, architect Park Changhyun discusses with architects of various generations from Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia 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. Boonserm Premthada was born and raised in Bangkok, Thailand. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts (interior design) with first class honors in 1988 and Masters of Architecture from Chulalongkorn University in 2002 and established his office named Bangkok Project Studio in 2003. He believes that architecture is the physical creation of an atmosphere that serves to heighten man’s awareness of his natural surroundings. His work is not about designing a building, but rather about…