“Raon” means “happy” in Korean. The site is located in a small village Chungwon. The town is between ridges of a mountain and a main attraction is the distinctive change of seasons with the leaves changing colors each season. In order to contain all the scenery surrounding the site, this house (Raonjae) is projected in four directions. Even though this house faces in four directions, it doesn’t have an excessive number of windows. This reflects the owner’s idea of privacy that there should be a hidden place to stay alone. At the porch along a white outer wall, there are white walls and stairs crossing the walls. There is a quiet room for the mother’s frequent guests after passing the porch. Facing the stairs, there is a deep kitchen on the left side, a bright living room on the right side, and a long deck is planned, which is a special feature of the house. Going up the stairs from the living room, there are two rooms for two sons and a small rooftop, and going up further, there is a bedroom and a bathroom for the married couple, and another rooftop. In order to satisfy the needs of the three generations in a single house, the space for one generation was clearly on the half-floor and the spaces do not interruptive each other, but are connected and have ambiguous relationships.
Stratum House seeks a new way of concrete casting method simulating a geologic formation. Concrete works in a combination of cement, water and aggregate. Cement is mixed with water to form a paste, and its properties are strengthened together with aggregates. These pastes wrap and fill aggregates of various sizes and become hardened. The project started with a curiosity of concrete composition, its casting process, and reaction on the results from testing the changes of its constituents.
The weather is strong, it dominates jeju life, it is very windy quite often, and weather changes instantaneously. The basalt rocks are everywhere, demarcating fields, and individual houses. The orum, which is like a little hill, is everywhere, more than 350 of them in jeju island. It creates a scene. The island is sort of an exotica among Koreans, weather and vegetation reminds them of tropics. In the past, it was home for many exiles from the mainland. Time flows rather differently here. Weather is the ruler.
“House Embracing Sky” is the second residential project by Archiworkshop in MangWoo district in Seoul.
It was built on a site, which has land area of 108.9. The border of the site was invading to and by its neighbors’ building, and the road for construction was not completely secured. Allowing building coverage ratio of the site 50%, there was only 56m2 to build. We had a thorough consideration on various issues, such as maximizing building coverage ratio, minimizing any problem with neighbors and their lands, rational application of architectural slant line restriction for daylight, etc. Due to building code, inclined facade was formed. The inclined facade has issues of getting polluted due to dust storm and air pollution. At the beginning, we tried to hide this slope but then we switch our thought and developed to an idea ‘what if this can be well appeared in different way?’. The inclined facade turned into a mirror Facade, which embraces sky and capture a change of the scenery while the mirror mass is unrecognizable and disappears. The rough surface of black brick facade and smooth mirror facade gives a great contrast. The shaded portion of the black mirror captures the sky and such reflection can been seen by publics on the ground floor. The mass with one side slash might have been the biggest concern at the beginning, but it became the signature of the building.
The site is located in an alley, a few blocks away from Dosandae-ro – a busy boulevard in Seoul’s Gangnam district. The area used to be a low-rise residential district in the past, but now rapidly transforming into a commercial district full of shops and restaurants. The existing building had a simple rectangular structure with a courtyard in the middle, using concrete blocks and blackened steel as a major finish material. The main interest in designing the building was to keep the existing materiality, yet to make enough alteration to accommodate the new program. The concrete block wall on the north was maintained in order to preserve the original materiality of the building, and the blackened steel was mainly used for the newly built walls.
Unicity – Carver Korea Lab.: to obtain “Idetity” in urbanscape.
Unicity is the headquarters and research center of Carver Korea, a cosmetic business in South Korea. Carver Korea wants to make a splendid building design to show recent growth of the company.
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 Unyang-dong, Gimpo. Words like corner, edge and vertex connote the existence of more than one live or surface. The church has a facade 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 is a transparent glass that open views to the vast park and also to the church’s worship services. The chapel structured like the bleachers is designed to increase the capacity of the space built on a compact site. Small rooms are positioned behind of the inclined surface of the bleachers and on the top section of it so that the church can make the best use of its space. Especially the outside stairs connecting the ground and the rooftop works as an important element defining the exterior of church, and the vivid movement of its users makes the church’s architectural statement more dynamic. The rooftop space which can host outdoor worship services is open for church communities as well as for locals. The closest church is a place of worship, a cultural venue and public architecture for the local apartment community which was being choked by commercialism. A rooftop cross can’t be found here, but here the cross is leaning on the wall and speaking with a humble voice. Big resonance stirs among listeners rather than among speakers who deliver a moving story, and the sublimity dwell in intimacy not in hierarchy. The cross descended onto the earth will cast a shadow like a shaded tree and will share a story of life with people on the street.
Located in Hongdae, DAS107 is an iconic store that—in collaboration with street culture specialist Kasina—represents adidas’ top-of-the-line products such as adidas Consortium limited items and other selected pieces. With its roots in Busan, Kasina began as selector and importer of street culture brands. For this collaboration project with adidas, the two brands’ objective is to select Korea’s most premium products and create a community space for sneaker nerds to experience the deep histories and designs.
Jeju island is a popular vacation island situated in the south of korean penninsular.
It can get very windy, and generally the weather is very whimsical.
The island is full of volcanic rocks in various sizes, comprising landscapes wonders to common walls demarcating ownerships. Many artists and commoners have been inspired by the beauty and versatility of the island. Recently flocks of koreans and foreign tourists are visiting the island by the thousands. The winter days are often cloudy with strong winds. And the landscape turns to gold and black by dying foliages and volcanic rocks.
The Kolon Group, based in Seoul, is a diverse corporation whose activities range from textiles, chemicals, and sustainable technologies, to original clothing lines in the athletic and ready-to-wear fashion markets. Between the group’s 38 divisions, Kolon covers research, primary material manufacture, and product construction – a unique configuration that enables the company to capitalize on its own resources and advances, and to forge innovative collaborations between divisions. Supporting this collaborative model was a primary goal behind the design of Kolon’s new Corporate Headquarters and Research Facilities. Bringing researchers, leadership, and designers together in one location, the building combines flexible laboratory facilities with executive offices and active social spaces that encourage greater interaction and exchange across the company.
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