Innehållsförteckning för February 2021 från Space

The full moon has risen above the surface of the Hangang River. It is Halo Nodeul (refer to pp. 68 – 71) of NAMELESS Architecture (co-principals, Na Unchung, Yoo Sorae), which won the international competition held over two months from June 2020. In order to revitalise the space at the bottom of Nodeul Island, where flooding is frequent due to the fast flow rate of the river and the fluctuating water levels, the Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) promoted a public competition project to create a cultural space in this previously neglected wharf. It is part of the Seoul Urban Art Project ‘Seoul is a Museum’ which rediscovers abandoned spaces and turns them into art spaces. In this competition, four domestic and foreign finalists, including Superflex, Lead Pencil Studio, Random International,…

Architect NAMELESS Architecture (Na Unchung, Yoo Sorae) Design team Lee Jungho, Lee Changsoo Location 61, Heyrimaeul-gil, Tanhyeon-myeon, Paju-si, Gyeonggi-do, Korea Programme neighbourhood living facilities, single house Site area 231.5m2 Building area 115.14m2 Gross floor area 276.8m2 Building scope 3F Building to land ratio 49.76% Floor area ratio 119.56% Structure RC Exterior finishing bamboo exposed concrete, exposed concrete, triple glazed glass Interior finishing exposed concrete, polished concrete, wood Structural engineer TEOKUJO Design period June – Dec. 2018 Construction period Apr. 2019 – May 2020 The site is located in the centre of Heyri Art Valley. Located at the corner of the village’s three-way intersection, the site faces into a stream of many visitors and a quiet and peaceful back hill on the north side. The structure that is to be built…

Architect NAMELESS Architecture (Na Unchung, Yoo Sorae) Design team Kang Taekgyu, Lee Taehyung, Lee Keonho, Oh Hanuel, Kim Alina Location 445, Yangnyeong-ro, Yongsan-gu, Seoul, Korea Programme public art Site area 240m2 (dock) Size 5×12.6×12m Structure steel Finishing aluminium, wood Structural engineer Dongyang structural engineers Lighting design Bitzro & partners Design period July – Oct. 2020 Construction period Nov. 2020 – Jan. 2021 Client Seoul Metropolitan Government The site is located on a riverside of Nodeul Island, geographically located in the centre of Seoul. It offers a vision of a place that contains time and space within the bland cityscape of fast-passing riverside road and the Han River Bridge. We intended to create a public place that would provoke curiosity and liven up the city through the familiar but unfamiliar image…

SPACE published the feature ʻThe Path Ahead for the Korean Museum of Urbanism and Architectureʼ in issue No. 638, and asked readers for their comments. In response to our request, Ryul Song and Christian Schweitzer here raise a number of fundamental questions about the Korean Museum of Urbanism and Architecture to be built in Sejong. An architecture museum is full of contradictions. Unlike that of art or design museums, in which original works or objects of value as such are collected and displayed, an architecture museum only deals with secondary representation of the subject at hand: documents that lead to architecture, such as plans and models, or documentation of architecture, like photography. Kim Swoo Geun’s glasses become more valuable than a photograph of the Kyungdong Presbyterian Church. There is no…

Walking around this neighbourhood, one easily finds examples of villas with a sash. The architect Kwon Taehoon drew the façades of the villas that have long evaded our attention because they are such a common sight in these surroundings, and compiled these careful drawings into a book. SPACE asks the reasons and processes behind recording these ordinary, familiar dwellings. Kim Yeram (Kim): You’ve worked at JINA Architects, Beacon Architects, and Design Camp Moonpark DMP Partners, and have worked in ‘drawing research’ since 2014. How did you begin your work in publishing? Kwon Taehoon (Kwon): While working at the design office, I often had to research examples suitable for projects, but it seemed to me that those cases held me back by repeating case studies. There was a strong feeling of…

Seongsu-dong will not be left out if you pick the ‘hippest’ place in Seoul these days. In this area, from Seoul Forest to Seongsu Station, cafés, restaurants, studios, galleries, and editorial shops line every alley, and at the same time, old metal factories, auto repair shops, and printing shops are scattered throughout the region. The exhibition ‘Locality: Seongsu 2-ga 3-dong’, which takes Seongsu-dong as its theme, was held at Domansa from Dec. 19, 2020 to Jan. 30, 2021. The exhibition looked into how production facilities in the city can coexist with new cultural projects and industries. In particular, by focusing on Seongsu 2-ga 3-dong, the stories of the objects produced here, the space where produces, trades, and consumes objects, and the people who daily travel through the area are recorded.…

In Dec., 2020, the Korea Association for Architectural History (KAAH) announced the Gapado Project (covered in SPACE No. 608) by Choi Wook (ONE O ONE architects) as the winner of the 2nd KAAH awards. The KAAH Awards are presented to architects who reveal the power of history through excellent interpretations of the historical context of cities and architecture. The other two finalists were Villa Jeju (covered in SPACE No. 625) by Suh Jaewon and Lee Euihaing (aoa architects) and Seosomun Shrine History Museum (covered in SPACE No. 623) by Yoon Seunghyun (Interkerd Architects), Lee Kusang (VOID Architects), Junseung Woo (Less Architects), the jury committee all agreed that all the nominated works were equally excellent, and yet it has demonstrated some differences between each project in terms of project type and…

EXHIBITION SPACE 2 Yoon Wonhwa, a visual culture researcher, wrote a series of articles. Focus on the place where the exhibition is placed and talk about the exhibition. Exhibitions move places in the form of images and data and change their appearance in various ways. These articles look back on the places where exhibitions appear. Yoon Wonhwa is an independent researcher, art writer, and translator based in Seoul. She is the author of Picture, Window, Mirror: Photographs Seen in the Exhibition Space and On the Thousand and Second Night: Visual Arts in Seoul in the 2010s. She co-curated ‘Human Scale’ at the Ilmin Museum of Art and co-produced Soft Places for the Seoul Mediacity Biennale 2018. One of the first things to consider when remodeling a non-exhibition space into an…

THING Everyone has something that they care about. This article is about the things that protect and brighten the everyday lives of architects. Yoon Hanjin is co-principal of the FHHH FRIENDS. His representative works include Ground Walls, AROUND HQ, and Daechung Park, but he has been spending his day nervously because there is no recent completion. It was at a social dinner that Ms. Dongsuk first discussed her past: ‘I was a nun before I came here’. Ms. Jeong who managed the counter, perhaps under influence of alcohol, snorted in ridicule — ‘huh, you, a sister!’— adding snide remarks while aunt Sukhee who worked in the kitchen smoked away in silence. This franchise establishment with a storefront sign and appearance of a traditional teahouse was actually closer to that of…

Architect NAMELESS Architecture (Na Unchung, Yoo Sorae) Design team Lee Changsoo, Lee Jungho Location 739, Anyangcheon-ro, Yangcheon-gu, Seoul, Korea Programme library Building area 432.25m2 Gross floor area 1,157.65m2 Building scope 3F Structure RC Exterior finishing exposed concrete, pair glazed glass Interior finishing exposed concrete, polished concrete, wood Design period Sep. 2016 – May 2017 Construction period July 2017 – Sep. 2018 S Library is a new library building developed within an old school. The site facing the school’s playground sits atop the existing, rigid order of the school’s architecture. While school architecture of the past adopted a strict hierarchy, with a playground built as an authoritative structure placed on top of a high platform, S Library loosens the boundary between the ground and architecture, letting the building naturally slip down…

NAMELESS Architecture has carried out more than 100 projects over the past 12 years. Ranging from architecture, furniture, exhibitions, artworks, to publications, these projects are diverse in terms of their scale, character, and focus. What is the connection between S Library, Dialogue, Growing Forest, and Halo Nodeul — works that are covered here — and their earlier projects? What direction is NAMELESS Architecture presently pursuing? Here is the roundtable about their past, present, and future with Kim Soo-young, Yim Dongwoo, and Chung Soyoung. Is this One by NAMELESS Architecture? Yim Dongwoo (Yim) These projects look different. If I simply passed it on the street, without forewarning, I wouldn’t have realised that it had been designed by NAMELESS Architecture. It was very different from their previous works due to their new…

Followed by the preceding page ʻAn Architecture Museum is not an Architecture Museumʼ, SPACE introduces one more opinion about Korean Museum of Architecture and Urbanism. Klaas Kresse and Marta Ramalho Kresse Bastos raise questions about the role of museum from an urban planning and cultural policy perspective. A Museum Beyond Heritage Preservation and Tourism We applaud the objective of the museum ‒ introduced in the competition brief ‒ to become ‘a “dynamic museum” that can sustain evolution and growth by accumulating and producing a wide range of content through linking its archive, exhibitions, education and research activities’, as it embraces the ambiguous, double-sided character of the architectural profession as an agent of cultural production on the one hand and as a creative profession on the other. We appreciate the ambition…

The Korean event in the international architectural lecture series Architects, not Architecture (ANA) was broadcast live on YouTube on Jan. 6, 2021. ANA is an architectural lecture programme that was launched in 2015 in Hamburg, Germany. Each year, it invites internationally active architects to discuss their lives and architectural work. Famous architects, such as Thomas Heatherwick (principal, Heatherwick Studio), Ma Yansong (principal, MAD Architects), and Thom Mayne (CEO, Morphosis Architects) participated in this year’s event. Representing Korean architects, Byoungsoo Cho (co-principal, BCHO Partners) and Kim Incheurl (principal, Archium) served as lecturers. Cho Byoungsoo talked about ‘Things that I Like’. Cho delivered a talk on the natural world he experienced in his childhood, the typical western architecture he observed in Montana, USA, and the yard he explored when returning home. In…

Design Competition for Suncheon New City Hall On Dec. 15, 2020, Suncheon City announced that ‘Suncheon Eui-ro’ by PRAUD (co-principals, Yim Dongwoo, Rafael Luna), Ether Ship (principal, Yang Sunggoo), Nam Jungmin (professor, Korea University) won the Suncheon New City Hall design competition. Suncheon City released their plans to rebuild the Jangmyeong-ro 30, which is currently being used as a city hall, as a government building with a total floor area of 47,000m2 . The competition aimed at implementing eco-friendly elements to public facilities and to provide sufficient convenience facilities for citizens. The winning proposal clearly expresses the symbolism of Suncheon, which has long been recognised as the representative administrative district of Jeollanam-do through the reinterpretation of the Joseon Dynasty Uijeongbu building. The judges commended the way ‘the building was properly…

NAMELESS Architecture is an idea-based design practice. Na Unchung and Yoo Sorae each graduated from Hongik University and Korea University. They both received M.Arch. from the University of California, Berkeley in the United States. After establishing NAMELESS Architecture in New York, they expanded their office into Seoul. They run a practice committed to simplicity in an unpredictable world, where they explore the realms of architecture, city, and global cultural phenomena. Architecture is completed in a procedural way. It first engages with the world through concepts created from streams of thought, is brought into the world via a process of contemplation regarding usage and appearance, and preserves a spatial narrative through users after construction. As a work of architecture comes to be completed through a process of thought, to reality, to…

Architect NAMELESS Architecture (Na Unchung, Yoo Sorae), Chung Soyoung Design team Lee Changsoo, Lee Jungho, Lee Mingyu, Kang Daehan Location 401-14, Gwangjang-dong, Gwangjin-gu, Seoul, Korea Programme observatory, public art Building area 96.36m2 Height 23.3m Structure RC, steel Finishing painting on steel pipe, exposed concrete Structural engineer TEOKUJO Construction DAEBO engineering & construction Landscape architect design studio loci Design period Dec. 2017 – Aug. 2018 Construction period Aug. 2018 – Jan. 2020 Client Seoul Metropolitan Government Growing Forest is located at the foot of the Achasan Mountain in Seoul. The Growing Forest developed in a point at the foot of the mountain, which was interrupted by the Cheonho-daero then reconnected, where an observatory and a public artwork are located, forging a relationship between the natural and artificial. The observatory begins by…

COSMO 40 located in Gajwa-dong, Incheon is a cultural complex formed from the renovation of a deserted chemical factory. The client intended to develop a facility that would suit the community’s needs by filling up the space gradually, which led him to ask Lim Seungmo (principal, SML) for interior design directing. SPACE interviewed Lim Seungmo who placed multiple follies inside the building to maximize the use of space. Kim Yeram (Kim): What lead you to design the interior of COSMO 40? Lim Seungmo (Lim): I hosted exhibitions to elaborate the work of many architects, as part of an operating committee for the Young Architects Forum Korea in 2018. I introduced some of my interior design works to the audience, one of whom was the owner of COSMO 40. The first…

The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Gwacheon (MMCA Gwacheon) opened the exhibition ‘Olympic Effect: Korean Architecture and Design from 1980s to 1990s’ on the 17th of December, 2020. The exhibition observes the transformations undergone and the legacies left by Korean cities, and their architecture and design, as called forth by the national mega-event, the Seoul 1988 Summer Olympics (hereinafter the Seoul Olympics). The exhibition, composed of four sections with an additional epilogue and prologue, draws on archival evidence to amplify the breadth of an event that had been dismissed as a one off event in a multi-dimensional way, and attempts to fill gaps in knowledge with new interpretations by young artists. We toured the exhibition, which illuminates the internal and external developments across the fields of architecture and…