Spaceの December 2021 の目次

The exhibition ‘Formes Du Transfert’ will be held from Dec. 10 to Jan. 30, 2022 at Atelier Hermès in Sinsadong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul. All seven participating artists – Io Burgard, Sébastien Gouju, Bérengère Hénin, Vassilis Salpistis, Yuhsin U Chang, Lucie Picandet, and Anastasia Douka – are contemporary artists who also participated in Hermès Artists’ Residencies run by Fondation d’entreprise Hermès. This exhibition commemorates the 10th anniversary of the Hermès Artists’ Residencies programme. Through the Residencies programme, Fondation d’entreprise Hermès wants to create a culture of exchange between artisans and artists, passing on skills and expertise and supporting creative activities, and ultimately contributing to art, environmental conservation, and greater social solidarity. Four artists are selected every year for the Artists’ Residencies programme, which began in 2010. The participating artists are given opportunities…

The exhibition Posteriority has been on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art Busan (MoCA Busan) from Oct. 29. This exhibition was planned in order to trace environmental pollution from inland areas to the sea and to encourage greater empathy for and reflection on the climate crisis. The exhibition depicts our situation in the face of the climate crisis and poses many questions to those who have not yet found a solution to environmental recovery. Here, Rimini Protokoll presents Win> <Win (2017), an installation work depicting the battle for survival between humans and jellyfish. John Akomfrah unveiled Purple (2017), a video work that combines ecological disaster sites filmed in ten countries, and tells the story of plastics emitted from everyday life and how they eventually lead to a rise in…

The 2021 Public Architecture Conference was held on Nov. 3 at Bucheon Art Bunker B39. This conference, which was organised by the Presidential Commission on Architecture Policy to share works of public architecture and to establish a sense of connection with its citizens, was held as an online and offline hybrid seminar under the subtheme ‘Architecture, City, Industry’ along with an online exhibition of the winner of this year’s Public Building Awards of Korea. The seminar was held under the two topics: ‘By Whom and for Whom Is the City Built?’ and ‘The New Era of Architecture: The Value and Tasks Faced by Architectural Industry’. In the first session, Kyosuk Lee (project leader, MVRDV) introduced PLABERUM, which is spatial measure for plan and policy making process used in the Netherlands.…

International Idea Competition for the Former K-2 Site On Oct. 31, Daegu Metropolitan City announced the results of the International Idea Competition for the former K-2 Site. This competition aimed to collect ideas for the creation of a future city that could incorporate the surrounding natural conditions and meet the needs of our new era of digital industry. ‘K-2 City: Smart Green Life Style City’ by Baek Hanyeol (professor, Hannam University) + Lee Heejae (partner, BAEK Architekten) + Seo Sunyoung (CEO, sosodosi) was awarded the grand prize. They proposed a self-sustaining recycling city that is supplied with eco-friendly energy by its green infrastructure. The major ideas include considerations of ecological water, the active use of renewable energy, the establishment of a local carbon emission management system, and proposals for a…

Cho: The ongoing projects in the public sector, including Sowol Forest, are related to the two major areas of the urban ecology: nature and culture, or the combination of the two. In a contemporary city built on capital, these two are always in a precarious state, in which the architect’s efforts are desperately needed. To make the city a less bleak environment for people to live in, architects have no choice but to take on the responsibility of nurturing the cultural ecology. To do so, we need to change our approach to seeing cities as means of capital growth. Not only that but caring for the natural ecology is an important duty for the architect. In the face of a severe global environmental crisis, we are in dire need of…

In collaboration with the Government of Iraq and the Ministry of Culture and Youth of the United Arab Emirates, UNESCO presents ‘The Horizon: Revive the Spirit of Mosul’ as a auxiliary event at the 2021 Venice Biennale. A city sitting at the junction of the Tigris river, Mosul, as its Arabic name suggests, is the ‘linking point’ between diverse ethnicities and religious beliefs. The three-year-long occupation by IS (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) from 2014 to 2017 has left the city in ruins and its people displaced. In the aftermath, in February 2018, UNESCO launched its reconstruction project ‘Revive the Spirit of Mosul’. Casting the Al-Nouri Mosque and the Al-Hadba Minaret as the protagonists of the reconstruction project, the exhibition presents a journey in pursuit of the lost…

I AM AN ARCHITECT ʻI am an Architectʼ was planned to meet young architects who seek their own architecture in a variety of materials and methods. What do they like, explore, and worry about? SPACE is going to discover individual characteristics of them rather than group them into a single category. The relay interview continues when the architect who participated in the conversation calls another architect in the next turn. Nature is Always Nearby Kim Yeram (Kim): Thank you for inviting me to your house. Lee Haeinn (Lee): The construction site is a bit messy, so I invited you to my place instead. Is that okay? Kim: Of course. Your place is nice! Lee: The scenery outside the window is a great plus. (laugh) I looked at 30 different places…

The photography exhibition ‘Breathing Walls’ was on display from Oct. 27 to Nov. 11 at the Embassy of Switzerland in the Republic of Korea (covered in SPACE No. 620) in Seoul. Cheon Gyeongu (professor, Chung-Ang University), the exhibition’s director, focused on ‘the architecture of the Embassy building designed by reinterpreting the hanok’ and ‘the sense of an enclosure and the placeness of the Embassy building’. Eight young photographers paid several visits to the Embassy over about six months to observe and experience the building. Kim Doyoung paid attention to the opposing functions and properties of the ground and underground levels of the Embassy building. First, he printed the dark and rough images taken in the underground space, put them over the smooth and neat space at ground level, then re-recorded…

MMCA Cheongju Project 2021 ‘Chen Dai Goang: Dreams of the Perfect City’ is now on show at The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) Cheongju from Sep. 17. MMCA Cheongju is exhibiting an outdoor installation project every year to provide opportunities for new and burgeoning Korean artists to become more popularly known. The highlight of this exhibition is Chen Dai Goang’s work, an installation artist. By creating works that one can enter, he induces viewers to remain in the exhibition space for a long time and to perceive the relationship between the work and its surrounding environment. In this exhibition, Chen Dai Goang combined the Chinese characters ‘u(宇)’ and ‘ju(宙)’, which mean house, to communicate that the houses in which we live form a city and a universe.…

On Oct. 22, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST) announced the winner of The Good Place Award 2021. Hosted by the MCST and co-organised by the MCST and the Korean Institute of Architects, the award was financed in 2006 to raise public interest in living spaces and to improve the quality of contemporary cultural life. The grand prize in this year’s 16th The Good Place Award 2021 went to Between Azaleas and Silvergrass (covered in SPACE No. 640) by Lim Yeonghwan (professor, Hongik University) + D.LIM architects (principal, Kim Sunhyun). It is a tourist rest area in Hwangmaesan County Park in Hapcheon-gun in Gyeongsangnam-do, where Hapcheon-gun and residents collaborated on its development as a rest area and park that would harmonise with the surrounding natural scenery. Located 850m…

THING Everyone has something that they care about. This article is about the things that protect and brighten the everyday lives of architects. The living room of the MalF’s studio features strange lighting. It might be an ordinary-looking lampshade, but its surface is covered with a dense and awkwardly assembled relief of various forms. Quite large and hanging at eye level, it easily attracts attention even on sunny days. After sunset it turns on, which further emphasises the distinctive qualities of its surface. Its unique presence often makes people stop and stare in silence, contemplating it without turning off the lights when rushing home after working overtime. No clients who visit the studio have failed to ask questions about this lighting fixture as they are about to do their final…

Cho: The following three projects are located in Seoul’s New Magok District, Sejong City, and Wanju Innovation City. These cities are young, less than 10 years in existence, and show various velocities, processes of change, and degrees of activation. Since all three share a common urban/cultural situation, they show common attitudes and strategies. Cho: The New Magok District, reclaimed land for agricultural use near Gimpo Airport just 10 years ago, is now actively functioning as a sub-center of Seoul as a new industrial and business district. Space K Seoul ▼27 is situated in a small rectangular park where the north-south green axis intersects with the east-west green axis, marking an important juncture of pedestrian activities. In the initial urban planning, it was intended to function only as a park, but…

The exhibition ‘Let’s have some cha cha cha’ was held at Artspace Boan 1942 (hereinafter BOAN 1942) in Tonguidong from the 1st to 11th of October. Choi Sungwoo (principal, BOAN 1942) unveiled ‘Mongjae’, a newly built tea room on the fourth floor of the new building, in time for the exhibition. The tea room, which means a ‘dreaming house’ or ‘a place in which to purify the weary mind,’ was created by Kim Woosang and Lee Daekyu (co-principals, KIND ARCHITECTURE). We met them, drank tea, and talked about a space that senses the seasons. Kim Yeram: BOAN 1942 is a multi-purpose cultural facility located in Tongui-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul. I am curious as to the background of the establishment of this tea room in a building that was once used as…

On the 31st of October, the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism 2021 (SBAU 2021), celebrating its third anniversary, concluded its 46-day-long journey. Following ‘Imminent Commons’ (2017) and ‘Collective City’ (2019), the theme of 2021 is ‘CROSSROADS Building the Resilient City’. By crossing five pairs of contrasting concepts – Above and Below, Heritage and Modern, Craft and Digital, Natural and Artificial, and Safe and Risk – it sought explications of the complex relationships that form our modern cities and answers to the contemporary questions faced by mankind. SPACE met with the general director Dominique Perrault, who visited Korea for the closing ceremony of the Biennale, and talked about SBAU 2021 and Seoul. Choi Eunhwa (Choi): Even in 2019, when you were selected as the general director of SBAU 2021, a…

Ilju Art House, the predecessor of the Sehwa Museum of Art located in Gwanghwamun, Seoul, presented an exhibition, ‘Shark Bites Plane’, in 2001 to commemorate the first anniversary of its opening. It brought artists together who interpreted the multi-layered meaning of daily life through media art, which originates in digressions and deviations. Today, 20 years later, the meaning of ‘daily life’ has been newly defined during the pandemic. How have artists who participated in the previous exhibition observed this profound shift in our reality? The exhibition ‘Shark, Bite The New World’ reinvites five of these original artists and throws out a question. Kang Airan, who explores the symbolism of books – a treasure trove of knowledge – through the Digital Book Project, still pinpoints the daily life, which admits gaps…

Under the motto of ‘easing access to the urban and encountering architecture’, the urban architecture festival OPENHOUSE Seoul was held from Oct. 30 to Nov. 13. The eighth annual iteration of this event was held online and offline hybrid under the theme of the ‘revamped house’. This event, which used to take place across 100 or more sites in 2019 prior to the pandemic, underwent a significant change by reducing site visits to 3 locations and transitioning most of its programmes to an online format with the collaboration from the film studio Giraffe Pictures last year. With the pandemic situation somewhat easing this year, the site visit programme was expanded to a total of 17 locations while other key works of architecture were introduced via video. Video of Sujoldang, which…

The 2021 KIA Convention & Exhibition was held from Nov. 11 to 17 at Culture Station Seoul 284. The theme of this year’s event, hosted since 2006 by Korean Institute of Architects (KIA), was ‘K-Apartment, Into the City’. KIA explained why it chose the theme, noting, ‘architects need to actively intervene our city and residential culture created by apartments with a sense of responsibility, and develop to make it settle down as Korean architectural culture’. The event consisted of exhibitions and seminars. The exhibition was comprised of three categories: a special theme exhibition, special exhibition, and a general exhibition. The special theme exhibition consisted of installation works looking back over the city and how our daily lives have been changed by apartments. For example, Luxury Baroque World by Mu;p +…

Cho Minsuk founded the Seoul-based firm MASS STUDIES in 2003. It has been committed to the discourse of architecture through socio-cultural and urban research and mostly built works that have been recognized globally. Representative works include the Pixel House, Missing Matrix, Bundle Matrix, Shanghai Expo 2010: Korea Pavilion, Daum Space.1, Tea Stone/ Innisfree, Southcape, Dome-ino, the Daejeon University Student Dormitory. Current in-progress projects, all selected through competitions, include the new Seoul Cinematheque (Montage 4:5), the Danginri Cultural Space (Danginri Podium and Promenade), the Yang-dong District Main Street (Sowol Forest), and the Yeonhui Public Housing. Recently completed projects include the Space K Seoul (2020) and Pace Gallery (2021). Active beyond his practice, he co-curated the 2011 Gwangju Design Biennale and was the commissioner and co-curator of the Korean Pavilion for the…

Cho: The last pair of projects are residential projects in Daejeon and completed around the same time. One is the home to a family of five, and the other is a 600-person dormitory. Although contrasting in scale, they have exciting commonalities as a system of relationships created by public and private spaces. Both systems have been distilled from reactions from various challenging given conditions, yet they seem to have acquired a kind of autonomy as if they emerged from pure action. Cho: The House of 20,000 Books ▼30 is located in a single-family zoning area in Daejeon, close to the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), where the husband, a professor, teaches. The wife, a high school teacher, and their three daughters lived in Seoul, and the client’s family,…

It takes an immeasurably long time to develop a design style of one’s own. While many architects go through this period of maturation within architecture firms, the following three designers from dajuro interviewed here by SPACE decided to risk it all by opening their own office at an early stage of their career and to arrive quicker at their desired destination. Dajuro is expanding its work size and spectrum to pavilion and commercial spaces, starting with its own furniture production. Since the opening of their office almost a year ago in last October, what has been their progress so far and what thoughts have they contained? Kim Yeram (Kim): Not long after opening, the studio often encounters the moment when it has to explain its design in one sentence. Dajuro…

On the 22nd of October, the second evaluation and award ceremony of the 34th Space Prize for International Students of Architecture Design was held at the SPACE GROUP headquarters. The theme of this competition was ‘Architecture in Precarious World’, and 121 teams participated. ‘Toward an Alternative Nature’ by Lee Gunhui + Kim Jingu + Yoon Wonsik (Chung-Ang University · Chung-Ang University Graduate School) won the grand prize. The Space Prize for International Students of Architecture Design goes back to 1975. It started as Space Art Prize established by SPACE GROUP. Three years later, in 1978, the title was changed to Space Prize and it widened its range from fine arts such as ceramics, sculpture, and print to architecture, and in 1983, Space Prize for Students of Architecture Design was added…