Innehållsförteckning för N. 580 från Space

The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) presents the ‘Tai Soo Kim Retrospective: Working in Two Worlds’ from Feb. 19 to June 6 as a part of a series of shows focusing on Korean Contemporary Artists in celebration of the 30th anniversary of MMCA. The exhibition is the first of these special exhibitions for the anniversary which will continue throughout the year. It is the second exhibition of Architecture by Korean Contemporary Artists, following the show, ‘Harmony between technology and Art: Architect Jong Soung Kimm’ in 2014. When the architect, who lives and works in the United States, presented his architectural world in Korea it was around nine years after he designed LG Research & Development Group in 2007. The MMCA Gwacheon, the spatial background of the…

Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) announced the final schematic design of Seoul Station 7017 project on Feb. 1. The project is going to transform Seoul Station overpass which used to be the product of industrialization into pedestrian space for the citizens of Seoul. This project was announced in January last year and the international design competition was won by The Seoul Arboretum by Dutch architect Winy Maas last May. Since then, schematic design was confirmed through 34 meetings of expert consultations and citizen’s committee briefings. Main programmes of the design include repair and reinforcement of overpass, making pedestrian route, facilities and planting planning on the overpass, and amenities under the overpass (Malli-dong Park). The authority is going to start repair and reinforcement in March. Bridge deck plate of 516m is removed…

Observing the construction of Kwak Heesoo’s first church, I found myself reminded of his other works. ‘The closest church’ seems to reiterate an idiom he has often pursued: an exaggerated concrete container showing off a horizontal greed in cantilever form and a concrete chunk twisted and inscrutably folded like a construction toy that clings to the church. It’s not strange for an architect to use the same mode of expression again and again, however those architectural words are forming the each of the space separately. CONCRETE AND GOTHIC How one can express the sacred in religion architecture is a perennial question for lots of architects. Most of the modern architects are indebted to Gothic architecture, which appeared in 12th century Europe. Elements such as identifying light with the sacred, vertical…

Residential projects are difficult to carry out. This is so as any projects must be sensitive, realising architectural interpretations based upon an understanding of a client’s private life. Clients usually inform architects of their current lifestyle and predict any possible changes in the near future on the basis of the time they commissioned their projects. But data based on the present is the basis of residential projects as we can’t predict how our life will be like in the future. As such, so-called successful residential projects are assessed by functionality and aesthetic satisfaction of spatial program about the present requirements. Surely a client’s satisfaction is crucial in private residential projects, but their satisfaction is assessed at the time of completion and it is difficult to draw architectural interpretation of satisfaction…

What lessons can we draw from the concepts of collective intelligence as found in open source collaboration? As the emergence of 3D Printing and Robotics have brought about profound changes to the world of architecture, as new creative tools, the culture of sharing detected in recent global trends makes us wonder what direction will take and what kind of transformations will follow. The spread of culture sharing holds great significance. The source code of certain software and the planar figures of electronic devices, which have until now been the covert and closed intellectual property of businesses, have now been disclosed for public use, and people are actively participating in change and building on such data sets, almost like a grassroots movement. This has in turn led to the emergence of…

The Hoseo province (Chungcheong-do) is geographically the centre of South Korea, it features convenient transportation and has vibrant human and material exchanges. In particular, the area has been attributed a distinct characteristic from other provinces in terms of school architecture and architectural network based on its abundant human and material exchange. The special investment towards the uniqueness of school architecture can be seen not only in elementary, middle and high schools, but also in university campuses. reported by Shim Youngkyu School Architecture: Residential College and Flexible Design In the Hoseo province the most number of universities per capita in Korea has awarded construction of even elementary, middle and high school campuses via design competitions for about 20 years. The Chungcheongbuk-do Office of Education boasts the highest level of design and…

Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA) Jan. 19 – Apr. 5, 2016 Conditions for the Creation of a Future Perfect Space Though I do not exactly remember the first time I heard the term new space, it would have been around two years ago as it was only made in 2014. It was a pleasant experience to observe the creation of these new spaces, which are generally spontaneous artistic platforms that are run by young artists or curators born in the 1980–1990s and to collaborate with like-minded souls. This was because they physically expanded the art map of Seoul, setting geographic coordinates apart from existing museums or galleries at Cheongnyangni, Sangbong-dong and Eulji-ro, and when this overlapped with the formation of virtual communities via SNS, it seemed as if they were…

The solo exhibition of the artist Jean-Michel Othoniel, who since late 1990s has attracted critical acclaim for his large glass bead works, is now on show at the Kukje Gallery K3. The artist has created ten new works inspired by the lotus flower, as the result of several visits made to Korea to prepare his exhibition in Korea for five years. In addition to this representative installation of glass sculptures, he introduces his lithographic paintings on the canvas for the first time, which shows his wider spectrum of interpretation about ‘flower’. He created a crystal of spirituality out of the lotus flower, which symbolizes purification, enlightenment, and spotlessness. ‘Flowers play a very important role in my work’, he explained, ‘My obsession with the hidden meaning of flowers and their symbolism…

Gwangju Biennale Foundation selected the prizewinners of the Gwangju Folly III Citizen Ideas Contest on Jan. 15: the first prize went to ‘Folly as Urban Library’ (Cha Hyunho and Seo Jungmok), the second prize to ‘BridgeHouse’ (Kim Donghyun, Seo Susung and Kim Jinhwa), and ‘Sharing Urban Daily Life – Sky Networking’ (Mun Jeongyun and Kim Sangwon). These three ideas will be used as concepts in the Folly III Designated Public Contest. ‘Folly as Urban Library’ is an idea that installs doors in the gaps between buildings that are inherently generated due to the building law. Cha and Seo had the idea after inventing a cinematic imagining that a door can be an entrance to another world. A space inside a door can be used as an archival place through the…

‘74cm’ exhibition began on Feb. 18 at Nook Gallery which has shed new light on elder artists who deal with sculpture and painting since its opening in 2013. This exhibition displays respective attitudes toward arbitrary rules of two artists; Kim Dokyun who has taken pictures of the hidden side of public space and Eunu Lee who has paid attention to the custom about how objects and symbols are used in the real world. The rule is simple. With the standard of 74cm which is the height of common ready-made desks, Kim Dokyun’s photos are displayed over the height and Eunu Lee’s furniture is placed below that. This created invisible line in the exhibition. Kim revealed the boundary by arranging his photos in a queue without gaps. His interest about geometry…

There is an architect who has made the interior space of a restaurant (F.S.ONE) into stairs, which then unfolded like a thread into the circulations of a house (Guesthouse Rivendell), connecting each room of a pension (The Pension Moken) with a long and inclined bridge. He deliberately twists an archetypal spatial arrangement and conventional form of architecture. His name is Kwak Heesoo. Instead of accepting typical types of architecture as they are, he has long advocated architectural alternatives and new solutions in his own defiant way, while pursuing a bold and unusual concrete form that is projected or standing atop something. Through these inventive means, he has been building a unique artistic identity and introducing distinctive urban landscapes. The very same person has now designed a church. Has he been…

INTERNAL LANDSCAPE The word ›››› (An-Bin-Nak-do; being content amid poverty and taking pleasure in acting in an honest way) makes us to think of a comfortable life escaped from busy city life and returned to nature. And the word ›› (Jeon-Won; a peaceful countryside) reminds us of images of nature, idle life, self-sufficient life, crop filed and farmland. However, in Korea, Jeon-Won is being used in a wrong way to measure property values and propagate new development sites. Having not even a piece of land for a vegetable garden, a country house is nothing but a name. Gangnam was called as Jeon-Won, but in just a few decades, has developed into one of the most bustling urban districts of Seoul. If we come to think of it, we will be…

Open source architectural design is based upon a fundamental change of approach to architectural design. If architecture in the past emphasized regional values, based on the area, or modernist values, based upon a simplification of form to function, contemporary design is based on a broader, pluralistic value. It can be interpreted as the pursuit of a more liberal expression and a globalized, universal value. Therefore, design has become a constituent of itself, applied and reproduced in various projects and becoming a type of shared information. The harnessing of open source sharing in design will result in a flow of architectural design that can be driven by a design method that is a type of shared information. This not only ensures efficiency and precision in architectural design and in the construction…

Jegong Architects wants to embody the process of finding an answer to the question ‘What does doing architecture here and now means?’ Jegong Architects takes any project whether it is accessory design, interior design, public design, landscape design, architecture, or urban planning without distinction. Boundary Architecture Lee Youngjo (design principal, bp architects) There is an absolute premise for every architect who designs a building in Jeju Island. Architects are constantly questioned about their attitudes towards designing buildings that suit Jeju. The fragmented answers of the architects for this subject often raise reverberations. With autonomous regulations and standards lacking, architects often face abstract or emotional approaches, which require them to perform a more violent architectural style time to time. The architect said, ‘The unique figure of Jeju is its precious identity,…

I met Hyunjin Bek at the PKM Gallery, where the artist’s solo exhibition ‘Field, Bird, Dog and Talent’ is currently on show. Preparing this interview, I read a number of his past interviews in depth in order to compose a present portrait from words he had uttered in the past and from responses to questions thrown at him. This was with the aim of asking new questions to the artist who was good at exposing himself regardless of any kind of questions. One of the words he said before was that ‘different people live different lives and do different works.’ It is quite a simple suggestion and what might reasonably be expected, but he added that it also takes a long time. Now, I would like to survey the landscape…

On Jan. 28, Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) announced that it would embark on the ‘Dasi (Again)-Seun Project’ in order to regenerate Seunsangga as the main axis of pedestrian traffic in the city center and to re-establish the building as a landmark of creative and manufacturing industrial innovation. This marks the specific formation of the blueprints for regenerating and reactivating the reputed Seunsangga. SMG is funding 38.6 billion KRW to complete the first phase of the project until May next year. Park Won-soon (mayor, SMG) has revealed that ‘if Seunsangga was once the cradle that led Korea and Seoul into the third stage of the industrial revolution in the 1970s, it will now be reborn as an innovative place for creative and manufacturing industries that will now lead Seoul into the…

MoMA PS1, in concurrence with their fortieth anniversary selected the winners of the 17th Young Architect’s Programme on Feb. 1. The winners of the competition were Escobedo Solíz Studio, which is based in Mexico and was jointly founded by Lazbent Pavel Escobedo and Andres Solíz in 2011. The architects realise site-specificity anew at given sites by analysing the materials used in the design phase, as well as by considering the construction technologies, possible integration with the community and relevant statistics. Moreover, rather than simply regarding ‘architecture as the result of production’ they view it as ‘a catalyst to enhance the given environment/conditions’. As such, ‘regulations become opportunity, while the environment of the existing site and the regionality is activated as a practical and new resolution.’ The nominated work, Weaving the…

Buildings of the Gimpo new town, where everything looks as new, clean and as fresh as fishes caught in a milk bottle. Well-structured roads and districts look like a checkerboard that has never been used. Through local communities, this place is where ordinary lives and sentiments have just started to settle down and will attempt to engage with different urban cultures and establish its own identity. The closest church is sitting on a corner site of Unyangdong, Gimpo. Words like corner, edge and vertex connote the existence of more than one line or surface. The church has a façade divided by two conflicting with each other at the vertex of the site. One is a solid and fragmented concrete, proposed by considering the relationship with apartment residents, and the other…

As a stricter standard than the regional building code legally approving three-storied buildings is imposed, in Bundangdong, all detached houses are found as a two-storied building. Although the area itself is calm and peaceful, the detached houses don’t display strong distinguishing characters but exhibit a uniformed pattern that can be found in a typical housing complex, and the houses’ gable roofs did nothing but reduce the sense of diversity in architectures and skylines of the area. This kind of urban situation is not an issue just for Bundang-dong. Nevertheless, to architects, finding a creative and evolutionary solution to overcome this sturdy context is regarded as an important task. ROOFRUN HOUSE is an architecture using pitched roof structure. Let’s imagine this. Families take a walk around their pitched roof, peep into…

Architect: Design Group OZ (Choi Jaewon, Lim Sangjin, Shin Seungsoo) Design team: Kwon Milee, Ha Sukyung Location: 29-23, Yeonseo-ro 13-gil, Eunpyeong-gu, Seoul, Korea Programme: library Site area: 1,572.9m2 Building area: 860.64m2 Gross floor area: 2,550.25m2 Building scope: 5F Parking: 13 Height: 14.7m Building to land ratio: 54.72% Floor area ratio: 154.92% Structure: reinforced concrete Exterior finishing: brick, zinc panel Interior finishing: wood flooring, epoxy finishing Structural engineer: thekujo Mechanical and electrical engineer: Hanil Mech. Elec. Consultants Construction: Kumgang construction company Design period: July 2013 – Mar. 2014 Construction period: Apr. 2014 – June 2015 Client: Eunpyeong-gu office…

29 January 2016 will mark the 10th anniversary of Nam June Paik’s death. For the anniversary, many events, which review Paik’s life and works from various angles, will be presented on the Korean art scene. Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA) announced that a memorial hall to Nam June Paik will be opened on 20 July, the artist’s birthday, at a house in which he had spent his childhood. This was made known at an official announcement of the annual exhibition on 18 January. This memorial hall will become a cyber museum that includes a diorama to show the artist’s life by repairing the Hanok which had been run as a restaurant until very recently. Prior to this, the Nam June Paik Art Center, Gallery Hyundai and Nam June Paik Cultural…