Entering my office one morning, a young, lively client in hip-hop fashion proceeded to talk about the Roll House of MOONBALSSO in Miryang. His point was that the building seemed very unique as well as practical. Nevertheless, explaining that he has a favourite form, he showed me a residence with a pool designed by a German architect. I was concerned that he was strongly prejudiced in favor of a specific style that had captivated his heart. After viewing several design presentations, we finally found that the client had very limited tastes biased towards his favourite design. As everything has its end, we finally achieved internal integrity and balance in the design, after spending a lot of time and effort with the client, and eventually coming to an agreement.
This project located next to Hong-ik University, in Seogyo-dong Seoul, has the art department of reputation. So young artists have settled their small studios in old houses along with the university streets, and influenced arts, design, architecture, literature, and more. Then this town became a huge space for cultural exchange of young people and this activity changed old buildings into a brand new or unique remodeled buildings to fit artists’ lifestyle.
It reflects the client’s personality in a frank manner. Considering that the client, who had dreamt all kinds of mysterious dreams only to overcome them while living in a house built on a rock of mystical forces at a high area of Gangbuk, Seoul, purchased the plot of a fortuneteller and a shaman beside a tall wall in Gangnam, this is a world that must be full of many unexplainable things. In contemporary terms, this building would be considered a mixed-use narrow house, combining a basement studio for the client’s son, a photographer, a reception area, as well as a residence for mother and son that has been equipped with a compact elevator to account for the weakened joints of the elderly.
I was surprised twice when I first visited the Daekyoung Factory. The first surprise was the beautiful scenery of the mouth or the river of the Nakdong River, and the second surprise was that the beautiful scenery could not be seen at all from the factory complex. There were three buildings in the complex, with two buildings lined up on parallel lines, making a rectangular plaza. The plaza was busy, with many workers passing by. The third building was placed perpendicularly with the plaza, blocking the scenery towards the sea. I felt sorry for the factory workers, who are so close to the beautiful scenery, but could not even see it.
Easter Island has almost been erased from history as it has no clear documentation of its past. Mysterious Moai statues are the only evidence of civilization. I gained a similar impression of Samjeon-dong, Seoul. Modern Moai at Samjeon-dong began with the consideration of a symbiotic structure for a city, including housing created by stacking commercial facilities and residential units on the everyday cultural ground.
Paju Book City District 2 is a great place where architects can experiment varied designs.
The District 1 in which numerous buildings come together and define spaces is created as a culture & arts complex for publishing/music industry whereas the District 2 is planned by solving various problems found in the District 1 and arranged to accommodate even more companies. And there, inspired by the atmosphere of this culture & amp; arts complex, many companies have built their own buildings displaying all sorts of unique characters.
Our aim was to create an open and liberated space for learning and communications by integrating the building and the hills around it.
The entire space spreads by forming terraces, which are connected with diagonal rooms for communication named “community voids”, which facilitate lively discussions among people who could take seats in the grand stairs and enjoy panoramic view of the nature.
‘The Tiny House of Slow Town’, one of the ‘Slow Town’ projects, is the building of small houses that uses the least modules out of woods to expand the inadequate accomodations in Gangwon city, the host city for the Pyeongchang 2018 Olympic Winter Games, and also to provide an easy access to the geographical beauty of the city.
The timber structure in Korean traditional architecture presents fundamental nature of sustainability, maintaining the concept of physical space (whole) even after continuous renovation, change and transformation of materials (parts). Using the mode of ‘Prefabrication’, we attempt to reconstruct the space of living, based on ‘Madang’, an empty space with multiple functions and diverse social implications. Two base modules are used to create the diverse configurations, the solid and the void. The module in the Korean traditional housing is called ‘Kan’, the bay between columns. It needs bigger timber necessary to build larger ‘Kan’, which makes it very expensive to construct. Also, more ‘Kan’ implies bigger scale of construction, implying socio political values in the modularity of architecture. Sometimes, the housing is moved to other locations after the disassembling and reassembling, since permanent joint connection is rarely used in the traditional timber technique. The material is continuously replaced and reconfigured to strengthen the sense of space, emphasizing the relationship between the solid and void, the nature and architecture. The ‘Madang’ in Korean housing is naturally a void, a left over space. It is open framework between public street and private housing so that it can serve for either the public event, or extended private function. In the modern multifamily housing equipped with market driven globalization, the void has been disappeared. Without the void, apartment housing is the repetition of same plans. The functional space standardized the way of living. The façade becomes thin membrane dividing the public and private. Therefore, Prefabricating the void suggests to reconstruct diverse function of voids by prefabrication in architecture, giving depth to the façade, providing open framework for the residents to use with various purposes.
The first issue was achieved by introducing a structural spiral organic element. The vertical solid elevator core of the building is wrapped by a steel spring like spiral element. The spiral element functions as a structural element and as a vertical circulation option. The flexible nature of the spiral enabled us to expand and shrink the thickness of the tower in relationship to structural and functional needs along its vertical section. The constant slope of the spiral enabled the creation of a subtle and almost “natural” organic grace to its monumental presence.
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