Table of contents for N. 566 in Space

Is movable architecture a relevant concept for our time? Architecture is impossible to move, because it is deeply rooted to the ground. However, the Metabolism Group in Japan considered architecture to be a living organism and imagined the future, and Archigram designed the Walking City and the Plug-in City, imagining an architecture that walks around the real city. In Europe, a movable hotel Living Architecture (SPACE, Feb. 2012 issue) opened. The artist Do Ho Suh and his brother, architect Eulho Suh presented the In Between Hotel (SPACE, Oct. 2012 issue) at the Gwangju Design Biennale, a project that combines both a hotel and an automobile. This kind of imaginative project reveals a longing for the impossible, as well as another hope. The ‘Mobile Home Project’, where one can begin to…

Recently, there have been many assessments about the ‘survival’ of young architects. It is entering the market through various platforms, such as the Korea Young Architect Award, Young Architect program, or via a lecture series hosted by young architects. Meanwhile, there are criticisms, such as from Lee Jongkeun (professor, Kyonggi University)’s article on Wide AR with the title ‘Survivalist Architecture’. In the article he argues, ‘There are only young architects talking about survival, but no architecture whatsoever’. The young generation within each field is the generation that should lead their own field. As in architecture, young artists also have been struggling to enter market successfully. Are they also do an art for survival? The exhibition ‘The Young and the Restless’ is a good opportunity to look into the field of…

From the Private Sector to Public Space_ The site of the Jung Clinic is located on the junction between the main roads in Jeju-si. The design was focused on how to transform the intersection of cars into a space for pedestrians, while performing its function as a building specialized as a clinic. Though the space of the Jung Clinic is on private land, it has been presented to the city as a garden open to the public. Marking cardinal points by responding to the characteristics of a junction, its mass is designed for building situated at a corner. A protruding mass of six metres gives an impression of a main gate and helps to display the view to Hallasan (mountain) and the sea in the waiting room on the third…

On 12th December 2013, We had an exclusive interview with Seoul City Mayor Park Wonsoon at the office in City Hall. We asked him about the value and justification of preserving the controversial industrial heritage facilities such as the Seoul Station Overpass Park, and assessed the City’s architecture policy and way ahead. It was an opportunity to learn about Mayor Park’s understanding of architecture and future direction. Park Wonsoon was born at Changnyeong-gun, South Korea in 1956. He was secretary general of People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy and executive director of Beautiful Foundation, Hope Institute, etc. Now he is a mayor of Seoul Metropolitan Government from 2011. He has written many books, among which Korea’s Civil Movements: The Bed of Procrustes, 1,000 Jobs that will Change the World, The Dictionary…

Reviewer A This project used the method of dividing the mass to divide the programme entire, a common solution to creating a complex building with both residential and working areas. The basic idea is good. However the finishing touches are not fresh, so it is difficult to find a new issue. The overall quality is good but looking at it from a architectural experiment point of view, it is a bit disappointing. Reviewer B This building is not trying to communicate with its surrounding area, and the daraewon for some reason is located in and paired up with the residence, and has no story to be improved as a project, so it doesn’t have enough urban and architectural strength in its structure. The details such as the stairs to the…

Michel Foucault’s theory of space emphasises the utopias dreamed of by architects come into being only when they coincide with the wills of those who are to live in the buildings themselves. The French philosopher intends this to be a warning, that if urban planning and architecture fail to reach a social consensus with the inhabitants of buildings and structures, these spaces may be used as tools of a controlling structure. This interpretation confirms that the functional relationship between space and social power is much more intimate than is generally understood. Foucault created a discourse on the meaning of urban and social space in history, how these spaces and knowledge have served power, how knowledge has made use of space, and what kind of conspiratorial relationship existed between the two.…

Rem Koolhaas participated in Herald Design Forum 2014, which took place on Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) on Nov. 26 last year. He gave a lecture about a ‘Creative Design for Architecture’, and had an hour-long discussion with the press. Koolhaas is an architectural theorist and a philosopher. He has been expressing his own thoughts and theories through writing, and published books like Delirious New York (1978), S,M,L,XL (1995), and Junkspace (2001), pointing out the fundamental changes to architecture. He has been a professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University since 1995, contending with a wide variety of issues. Therefore, it is natural for us to ask him to diagnose the state of the current architecture field, of the changes and…

Walter Gropius, who was a founder of the Bauhaus School, built a stage at some point in 1921 and handled the stage as a main component of visual art. All of the various aspects of visual art such as architecture, fashion, graphics, industrial design, worked together to experiment with the stage as a synthetic art. The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) Seoul released the ‘Human-Space-Machine: Stage Experiments at the Bauhaus’, with the hope of expanding upon the Darwinist experiment in art. The exhibition displays the drawings, models, clothing, photographs, videos, and so on created by the students and professors of the Bauhaus from 1919 to 1933. All the visual data and clothing, along with the stage feel united, as if a single person has created every object.…

British sculptor David Nash’s second Korean exhibition is held in the Kukje gallery. This exhibition is included his sculptures and drawings. It will also include exclusive pieces that Nash has saved for the Korean exhibition. ‘Trees have a life cycle resembling our own. They grow and breathe, all through the day and night, and are awake and asleep in turn throughout the seasons. Trees show their time-story through their form’. He has a philosophy that the life of a tree is same as the life of a human, and uses trees fallen victim to environmental problems or disease. The lyrical sculpture, which uses the raw rough surface shows harmony with the material. The exhibition mainly shows pieces inspired by natural forms, following the nature of the material. The artist chose…

Kim Seunghoy has made enquiries into the spatial structure and archetypes behind the programme and social nature of architecture through a series of public health centres and residences. This time, it is necessary to pay attention to the form-generating logic working at the core of his architecture and social methodology to solve the contradiction of complex called architecture. Carrying out about 120 projects for two decades, he has kept reconstructing new spaces by articulating their mass. Exceeding the levels of simple construction methods and massing, this was his unique answer to solve the paradox of condition and situation by using new material, structure, skin, and colour. This new grammar has been used in his recent works. In Jung Clinic in Jeju-si, he not only solved structural issues but created a…

Architecture as a System_ The micro-cosmos Soyul, KYWC Architects’ first building since its establishment two decades ago is situated at the foot of Namsan (mountain). The hope of having our office in the old village, near city centre, had been reflected through micro-cosmos Soyul which lies inside of the alley in Huam-dong. Planning three floors under the height limit of 8.7m, we designed special structural system to secure the maximum ceiling height. The whole second floor is composed of a truss so that the structure members in other floors were minimized. The structural system corresponds to the building programme and the proposed urban relationship. The first floor is a social space open to the city and composed of minimum structural system, with three columns and the brace. The office on…

Park Jongmin received his bachelor of science in Architecture from Sungkyunkwan University and studied architecture again at SA school after he worked at LOTTE E&C. At Yang Jinsuk architecture office, he was staff in various projects as senior designer. He currently opened his own practice studio MORPH, has been doing architecture design and photography. His major architectural works included Mana restaurant, Sector building and st1566-3 building in Seoul. Reviewer A Through the multiple entrances and by transforming the ordinary wooden porch (Toit Maru), it seems like this house is attempting to capture a different pattern of life from the city and incorporate the context of the local context. Deep considerations can be noted at points such as the roof slopes, which have the same angle as the roof of the…

On Dec. 18, the 2014 Hermès Foundation Missulsang exhibition was opened by the three final candidates. Sulki&Min, Yeo Daham, and Jang Minseung developed new works for the purpose and the final winner will be decided on Feb. 13. Kim Yoonkyung (curator, Atelier Hermès) stated that ‘The three finalists all question the age that we live in today’. Sulki&Min remarked that ‘People today are experiencing a pathological impulse to share their most intimate feelings with others through the internet, smart phones and social networking services. We are graphic designers who strive to help improve the communication between people but we think more deeply about the problems of the method that people use to communicate with each other today’. Their work Technical Drawings displays a list of black and white images to…

10 am on Saturday morning, 29 November, it was a sunny day. On my way to micro-cosmos Soyul, office of KYWC Architects in Huam-dong, ginkgo trees which already shed half of their leaves formed an archway over the road beside the Yongsan Middle and High School. The sidewalk was covered in a thick layer of yellow fallen leaves. The relaxang atmosphere on this late autumn weekend morning was radiating through the bright sunshine. Glimpsing what appeared to be a ‘Japanese style residence’ inside an alleyway, I decided to enter the alley. Though it was very old and looked dreary, due to patched marks like rags, its original size had been kept as it was. Like the ‘Madeleine and tea’ moment of Marcel Proust, a long-lost memory made the whole cells…

In September 2013, Seoul Metropolitan Government announced 25 key policies to be put into effect by 2018 (at the end of Mayor Park Wonsoon’s tenure) through a ‘Four-Year City Plan’. The City subsequently announced the 2015 budget plan in October. The budget allocated for the City’s regeneration across a number of diverse reconstruction and renovation projects is 147.2 billion KRW, including projects such as the Sewoon Arcade Regeneration project (4.1 billion KRW), Seochon Regeneration project (2.7 billion KRW), and the Sejongdaero History & Culture Specialized Zone project (2.5 billion KRW). What is noteworthy is the plan’s framework by which they may create a ‘Walk-friendly city’, regenerating large public edifices instead of tearing them down. In accordance with this plan, Seoul initiated the ‘Future Heritage Project’ which aims to preserve and…

Reviewer A The architectural quality is high. The organization of space and the design is well done, as well as the construction finishing. However, the design of life style is lacking and I doubt that it suggest any new daily life. There is only beautiful space. Reviewer B The mass is well divided within the small piece of land. Thinking about the work from the point of view of the residents, there could be some uncomfortable factors regarding function. Especially the way that you can see the interior of the living room from the entrance seems to be a problem regarding privacy. Architect: Jeong Jaeheon (Kyung Hee University) Design team: Lee Yunho, Lee Moonhui Location: Unjung-dong, Bundang-gu, Seongnam-si, Gyeonggi-do, Korea Programme: residence Site area: 250.5m2 Building area: 124.2m2 Gross floor area: 319.3m2 Building…

Artist: Kimsooja Curator: Stephanie Owens (director, CCA; professor of multi disciplinary studies, art & architecture) Collaborator: Jaeho Chong (architect), Ulrich Wiesner (professor, Materials Science & Engineering), and Hiroaki Sai (Wiesner Group researcher, Materials Science & Engineering), Ferdinand Kohle (graduate student, Chemistry and Chemical Biology), Erik P. Eshelman (Architectural Engineering) Location: Cornell University, Arts Quad, Ithaca, NY Diameter: 1.3m Height: 14m Structure: steel frame Structural engineer: Erik P. Eshelman, Jaeho Chong Material:steel, custom acrylic panel, laminated polymer film, mirror Material Studies: Ulrich Wiesner, Hiroaki Sai, Ferdinand Kohle Construction: Mulan Manufacturing, Cornell University Facilities Engineering Design period: Apr. – June. 2014 Construction period: Jul. – Aug. 2014 Completion: Sep. 12, 2014 Commission: Cornell Council for the Arts materials provided by Kimsooja Studio›photographed by Jaeho Chong (unless otherwise indicated), courtesy of Cornell Council…