Seunghan Paek
Associate Professor at the Department of Architecture, Pusan National University, BUSAN, KOREA
Art History Ph.D.
My primary research investigates the intersections of contemporary art, architecture, and the city with a geographical focus of East Asia and their relationships with global modernisms throughout the twentieth century.
Deeply inspired by my transpacific experiences between East Asia and North America in the neoliberal urban settings, I focus on exploring issues of the everyday and skepticism, spectacle, monument, community, infrastructure, sovereignty, new media, mood, affectivity, aesthetic disinterest, place, and publicness. Cases are drawn from assemblages of the singularities of disparate milieus, and their broader discursive dimensions that bring forth new strata of meaning.
Supervisors: Aron Vinegar, Ph.D. Professor at the Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas, University of Oslo, and Norway
Address: Geonseolgwan #907, Busandaehak-ro 63beon-gil 2, Geumjeong-gu, BUSAN, South Korea (ZIP: 46241)
https://archi.pusan.ac.kr
Art History Ph.D.
My primary research investigates the intersections of contemporary art, architecture, and the city with a geographical focus of East Asia and their relationships with global modernisms throughout the twentieth century.
Deeply inspired by my transpacific experiences between East Asia and North America in the neoliberal urban settings, I focus on exploring issues of the everyday and skepticism, spectacle, monument, community, infrastructure, sovereignty, new media, mood, affectivity, aesthetic disinterest, place, and publicness. Cases are drawn from assemblages of the singularities of disparate milieus, and their broader discursive dimensions that bring forth new strata of meaning.
Supervisors: Aron Vinegar, Ph.D. Professor at the Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas, University of Oslo, and Norway
Address: Geonseolgwan #907, Busandaehak-ro 63beon-gil 2, Geumjeong-gu, BUSAN, South Korea (ZIP: 46241)
https://archi.pusan.ac.kr
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Papers by Seunghan Paek
ways that are not fully able to release their intricate capacities of mediating the neoliberal world.
In this article, we explore the concept of facade object. We will apply this concept to analyze some characteristics of an artificial intelligence. First, we will look at the concept of facade in architecture theory, and will identify three aspects of facade. Then, we will look at the recent trend of object-oriented architecture and the debate with actor-network theory. After the background research is completed, we will explore the interaction between objects through facade objects. Finally, we analyze the artificial intelligence as a case study of facade objects. Since artificial intelligence is a blackboxed assemblage, we have to pay special attention to the technology in order to form a preferable cosmopolitics in our technoculture.
In this article, I claim that the issue of the ordinary/everyday cannot simply come to a conclusion, because one’s way of encountering the surrounding world always produces differences, which is most often entangled with his/her ever-shifting perceptual and affective resonances that exist beyond imposed representations and are left autonomous. The term ‘ordinary/everyday’ has been one of the contending issues in architectural studies, in which it is often used in reference to the Marxist critiques that emphasize the spectacular and alienating conditions of the city in the postwar capitalist society. However, the everyday is a more complex phenomenon in which one is at once skeptical and receptive, resonating with the myriad affective and perceptive instances in aleatory but consistent ways. In this respect, this article investigates how the seemingly chaotic cityscapes might actually be the terrain where meaning unfolds. In doing so, I take Aron Vinegar’s book entitled I am a Monument: On Learning from Las Vegas (2008) as a threshold to explore the multiplicity of the everyday in contemporary South Korean cities. Vinegar’s book is not a simple review of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown’ book on Las Vegas originally published in 1972. Instead, it offers an opportunity to rethink the implications of the ordinary in commercial environments with new lights. What follows is a case study of a roadside commercial building located in the Sinchon commercial district of Seoul, which this article refers to as ‘Seodaemun-gu Changcheon-dong 33-9 Building’ according to its administrative address. By analyzing the building that represents a typical keunseng typology in urban Korea, the article explores how one resonates oneself with the commercially saturated field of everyday life that is at once spectacular and ordinary, rule-following and deviant, and alienating but still sense-provoking.
This article explores the changing values of heritage in an era saturated by an excess of media coverage in various settings and also threatened by either natural or manmade disasters that constantly take place around the world. In doing so, we focus on discussing one specific case: the debate surrounding the identification of Sungnyemun as the number one national treasure in South Korea. Sungnyemun, which was first constructed in 1396 as the south gate of the walled city Seoul, is the country’s most acknowledged cultural heritage that is supposed to represent the national identity in the most authentic way, but its value was suddenly questioned through a nationwide debate after an unexpected fire. While the debate has been silenced after its ostensibly successful restoration conducted by the Cultural Heritage Administration in 2013, this article argues that the incident is a prime example illustrating how the once venerated heritage is reassembled through an entanglement of various agents and their affective engagements. Methodologically speaking, this article aims to read Sungnyemun in reference to the growing scholarship of actor-network theory (ANT) and the studies of heritage in the post-disaster era through which to explore what heritage means to us at the present time. Our synchronic approach to Sungnyemun encourages us to investigate how the once-stable monument becomes a field where material interventions and affective engagements of various agents release its public meanings in new ways.
ways that are not fully able to release their intricate capacities of mediating the neoliberal world.
In this article, we explore the concept of facade object. We will apply this concept to analyze some characteristics of an artificial intelligence. First, we will look at the concept of facade in architecture theory, and will identify three aspects of facade. Then, we will look at the recent trend of object-oriented architecture and the debate with actor-network theory. After the background research is completed, we will explore the interaction between objects through facade objects. Finally, we analyze the artificial intelligence as a case study of facade objects. Since artificial intelligence is a blackboxed assemblage, we have to pay special attention to the technology in order to form a preferable cosmopolitics in our technoculture.
In this article, I claim that the issue of the ordinary/everyday cannot simply come to a conclusion, because one’s way of encountering the surrounding world always produces differences, which is most often entangled with his/her ever-shifting perceptual and affective resonances that exist beyond imposed representations and are left autonomous. The term ‘ordinary/everyday’ has been one of the contending issues in architectural studies, in which it is often used in reference to the Marxist critiques that emphasize the spectacular and alienating conditions of the city in the postwar capitalist society. However, the everyday is a more complex phenomenon in which one is at once skeptical and receptive, resonating with the myriad affective and perceptive instances in aleatory but consistent ways. In this respect, this article investigates how the seemingly chaotic cityscapes might actually be the terrain where meaning unfolds. In doing so, I take Aron Vinegar’s book entitled I am a Monument: On Learning from Las Vegas (2008) as a threshold to explore the multiplicity of the everyday in contemporary South Korean cities. Vinegar’s book is not a simple review of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown’ book on Las Vegas originally published in 1972. Instead, it offers an opportunity to rethink the implications of the ordinary in commercial environments with new lights. What follows is a case study of a roadside commercial building located in the Sinchon commercial district of Seoul, which this article refers to as ‘Seodaemun-gu Changcheon-dong 33-9 Building’ according to its administrative address. By analyzing the building that represents a typical keunseng typology in urban Korea, the article explores how one resonates oneself with the commercially saturated field of everyday life that is at once spectacular and ordinary, rule-following and deviant, and alienating but still sense-provoking.
This article explores the changing values of heritage in an era saturated by an excess of media coverage in various settings and also threatened by either natural or manmade disasters that constantly take place around the world. In doing so, we focus on discussing one specific case: the debate surrounding the identification of Sungnyemun as the number one national treasure in South Korea. Sungnyemun, which was first constructed in 1396 as the south gate of the walled city Seoul, is the country’s most acknowledged cultural heritage that is supposed to represent the national identity in the most authentic way, but its value was suddenly questioned through a nationwide debate after an unexpected fire. While the debate has been silenced after its ostensibly successful restoration conducted by the Cultural Heritage Administration in 2013, this article argues that the incident is a prime example illustrating how the once venerated heritage is reassembled through an entanglement of various agents and their affective engagements. Methodologically speaking, this article aims to read Sungnyemun in reference to the growing scholarship of actor-network theory (ANT) and the studies of heritage in the post-disaster era through which to explore what heritage means to us at the present time. Our synchronic approach to Sungnyemun encourages us to investigate how the once-stable monument becomes a field where material interventions and affective engagements of various agents release its public meanings in new ways.
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In this essay, I explore the multiplicity of Seoul by reading one of the prominent but undermined strata of the city’s visual culture known as ganpan, a term that can roughly be translated as “signage” and represents a myriad of street advertisements such as billboards, neon signs, banners, posters, digital screens, and other kinds. In Korea, ganpan has been the target of intense criticism throughout the twentieth century due to its visually chaotic and unruly nature. At the same time, it is con- sidered an enchanted phenomenon by those who are attentive to its densities and intensities generating urban singularities. What is implicit in such contrasting viewpoints of ganpan is the tension between the aspiration of establishing an ideal image of the city through its removal made in a top-down manner, and a multiplicity that unfolds from the commercial everyday that is improvisational and aleatory. By taking into account of these two very different attitudes towards signage in Seoul, the essay explores how the city’s visual culture in the twenty-first century can be read as the site in which various forms of life unfold in close relationship with forces of consumer culture despite its spectacular and alienating aspects.
일어나 올라가 임동식 RISE UP RIM DONG SIK, 서울시립미술관 Seoul Museum of Art, 19 August to 31 December 2020
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In my essay, I propose a way to explore the experiential dimensions of contemporary Korean cities, with a particular interest in looking at how one is to encounter the daily scenes of city space in wonder and indifference. In doing so, I will mainly deal with three different blocks of research all of which are intricately related to one another: first, a critical overview of Pai Hyung-min and Woo Don-son’s research on Ahn Young-bae’s theory of architectural experience; second, analyzing Rem Koolhaas’ essay titled “The Generic City” with an emphasis on the issue of experience; and third, extending the implications of architectural/urban experience as addressed in above two works into a case of photographer Park Hong-cheon’s photo-collage of 21st-century Seoul. Through these three cases, I argue that everyday experience in contemporary Korea is always entangled with a pair of ambivalent states of being such as curiosity and boredom, interest and disinterest, anxiety and serenity, and wonder and indifference.
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A book commemorating the 40th-year anniversary of Seoinn Design Group, an architectural firm of Korea that has specialised on designing church in Korean urban contexts. My contribution for the project was to write an annal of the company's history based on serial interviews with the group's members, primarily with the head of the office Choi Dong-gyu. Starting from 1978 to the present, the company has constructed almost 100 churches and other facilities, and is characterised by non-conventional church design, which comprises a strata of Korean modern and contemporary architecture.
우리의 삶과 다층적으로 얽혀 있는 기후변화라는 현상을 건축가들 및 건축 연구자들은 어떻게 이해하고 접근하고 있을까요? 이 특강 시리즈는 당면한 환경 문제들에 대해, 문제-해결이라는 단선적 도식에 한정하지 않는 건축의 열린 차원을 탐구합니다.
건축과 기술, 그리고 기술과 건축 CATHOLIC KWANDONG UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE LECTURE SERIES 2021년 가톨릭관동대학교 건축학부 특강 시리즈
특강자: 임성훈
Invited Lecturer: Sunghun Lim
일시: 2021년 4월 14일
Date: 14 April, 2021
In 3 April 2021, I will curate a conference preliminarily titled “Enchanting in the Plastic World” as the Spring Meeting of the Korean Association for Aesthetics and Science of Art. It is scheduled 3 April 2021, and will take place somewhere in Seoul (to be informed later). Details of the conference will also be posted when it is completed.
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본 기획은 일상생활에서 광범위하게 사용되고 있는 플라스틱의 존재론적 차원을 탐구하는 것을 목표로 한다. 플라스틱은 1907년 처음 발명되었으며, 그로부터 2년 후인 1909년에 특허가 부여되었다. 무한한 변형과 표현을 촉발하는 플라스틱은 20세기를 거쳐 진화해오고 있는 가능성의 물질이다. 다른 한편 플라스틱은 환경오염의 주범이다. 약 10만년 동안 썩지 않고 주변에 머물러 있는 플라스틱은 그 폐기 이후에도 다양한 경로를 통해 우리에게 다시 돌아오며, 이는 개인의 건강뿐만 아니라 지구의 생태적 지속가능성을 위협한다. 플라스틱을 둘러싼 논의와 실천은 종종 업사이클링과 재사용 등 당위성에 기반한 제도적 정책 집행과 실천으로 이어진다. 하지만 사람의 수명을 한참 초월하는 플라스틱을 삶의 반경에서 완전히 제거하기란 쉽지 않다. 히서 데이비스(Heather Davis)가 주장하는 것처럼, 플라스틱에 대한 생태주의적 접근만큼 중요한 것은 그 한계를 인정하고 플라스틱과 함께 살아가기 위한 관점을 수립하고 방법을 모색하는 것이다. 데이비스의 관점을 확장하는 본 기획은 다섯 개의 사례 연구로 구성되며, 이는 생태주의와 무비판적 수용이라는 이분법에 한정하지 않는 플라스틱의 다양한 차원을 숙고할 수 있는 기회가 될 것이다.
List of presenters:
백승한 (가톨릭관동대학교)
플라스틱 어버니즘: 신자유주의 도시에서 플라스틱과 함께 살아가기
박경은 (서울대학교)
플라스틱 탈/식민성 (de/coloniality): 생동하는 (이)물질의 발견과 발명, 은폐에 대해
이준석 (대구경북과학기술원)
플래스틱 세계의 코로나19: 행위자-네트워크 이론과 객체지향존재론으로 본 코로나19의 가소성(plasticity)
우정아 (포항공과대학교)
포스트모던 플라스틱: 1990년대 한국 미술의 상징적 질료
손정아 (국민대학교)
플라스틱 없는 섬: 예술, 과학, 액티비즘
유엔스튜디오: 지구적이고 지역적인 실천 짓기
UNStudio: Building a Global Local Practice
가톨릭관동대학교 건축학부 특강 시리즈
Special Lecture Series organized by School of Architecture, Catholic Kwandong University
2021년 2월 8일, 월요일 오후 5 - 8시 (한국 표준시)
8 February 2021, Monday 9am – 12pm (CET: Central European Standard Time)
YouTube: https://youtu.be/-I90OkaJA2w
Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83322094176?pwd=aE5QaHN3NitESENMa1RXN00ydjhiZz09
(Meeting ID: 833 2209 4176 / Password: 001234)
요약 Abstract
지난 30년간 국제적으로 활동해온 유엔스튜디오는 암스테르담 이외에도 세계 곳곳에 새로운 지사를 새롭게 열었으며, 이에 따라 다양한 지역에서 프로젝트 디자인, 시공, 감리 작업을 수행해오고 있다. 유엔스튜디오 상하이, 홍콩 그리고 프랑크푸르트 지사는 각각 2008년, 2014년, 2018년에 개소하였다. 2021년의 두바이 그리고 멜번 오피스 개소를 앞두고, 이번 발표에서는 여러 국가들의 유엔스튜디오 프로젝트를 선별하여 살펴볼 것이며, 국제적인 활동의 기회와 도전, 지역성의 의미 또는 지구적 건축 실천에 있어서 지역적 현전(local presence)의 중요성에 대해 살펴볼 것이다.
Throughout the past 30 years of working internationally, UNStudio has grown not only in terms of our Amsterdam base, but opening up new local and regional chapters worldwide: all evolving from large-scale projects that UNStudio is designing, building and supervising in different regions. UNStudio Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Frankfurt offices opened up in 2008, 2014 and 2018 respectively. With the Dubai and Melbourne offices opening up in 2021, we will look at a selection of UNStudio projects across the different continents, examining the opportunities and challenges of working internationally, the meaning of regionality and the significance of local presence to a global architectural practice.
밀레나 스토픽 Milena Stopic
밀레나 스토픽은 유엔스튜디오의 시니어 아키텍트 및 Associate이다. 2010년 프린스턴 대학을 졸업한 후 유엔스튜디오에 합류하여 유럽, 아시아, 호주 및 중동지역에 위치한 문화, 소매, 복합용도, 인프라스트럭처 및 교육 관련 프로젝트에 대한 광범위한 경험을 쌓았다. 가장 최근에는 콕스 아키텍처(COX Architecture)와의 협업을 통해 멜번에 위치한 뷸라 사우스뱅크(Southbank by Beulah) 공모전을 당선시킨 디자인 팀을 이끌었으며, 현재 유엔스튜디오를 대표하여 프로젝트 디자인을 진행하고 있다.
Milena Stopic is a Senior Architect / Associate at UNStudio. Upon graduation from Princeton University in 2010, she joined UNStudio and developed extensive experience in cultural, retail, mixed-use, infrastructural and educational projects across Europe, Asia, Australia and the Middle East. Most recently, she led the design team toward winning the competition for the Southbank by Beulah project in Melbourne (in collaboration with COX Architecture) and she is currently leading the design efforts on the project on behalf of UNStudio.
현명석 Myung Seok Hyun
현명석은 건국대와 한양대의 겸임교수로 활동 중이다. 서울시립대 학부와 대학원에서 건축을 공부했으며, 미국 조지아 공대에서 20세기 중반 미국 건축 사진을 이론화한 작업으로 박사학위를 받았다. 서울에 살며 대학에서 건축 역사와 이론, 디자인을 가르친다. 『건축 표기 체계』 (아키텍스트, 2020)의 대표 편저자이자 『건축 사진의 비밀』 (디북, 2019)의 공저자다. 『The Journal of Architecture』, 『Space』, 『건축평단』, 『와이드AR』 등에 글을 실었다. 건축 매체와 재현, 시각성, 한국의 젊은 건축가들의 작업 등 다양한 주제에 관한 연구와 저술에 몰두하고 있다.
Myung is an adjunct professor at Konkuk University and Hanyang University. He received his PhD in architecture at Georgia Institute of Technology, and his Master’s degree at the University of Seoul. He teaches courses on architectural history and theory and design studios. He is the co-author of Architectural Notation (2020) and The Secret of Architectural Photography (2019), and has published in numerous journals. His research interests include architectural medium and representation, the visualities of architecture, and the current works of young Korean architects.
이동하 Brett Dong Ha Lee
Brett Lee는 뉴욕과 서울에서 활동중인 건축가 겸 갤러리스트이다. UNStudio, ARO, IK Studio, 정림건축을 포함한 다양한 스케일의 사무실에서 디자인 경험을 쌓았다. 현재 그는 Perkins Eastman Architects의 선임 디자이너 및 Associate으로 있으며 복합상업시설, 호텔, 체육시설 등의 디자인을 이끌고 있고, 서울에 소재한 갤러리JJ에서 큐레이팅, 번역 및 홍보를 담당하며 현대미술계에도 관여한다. 펜실베니아 대학교에서 건축학석사를 수석으로 졸업하였으며 2016 년부터 2019 년까지 PennDesign에서 겸임교수로 활동하였고, 베니스 비엔날레 (2016, 2018)와 서울건축도시건축비엔날레 (2017, 2019)에 그가 가르친 학생들의 작품들을 출품하였다.
Brett Lee is a licensed architect and educator based in New York and Seoul. He has design experience from small to large offices including UNStudio, ARO, IK Studio, and Junglim. Currently, he is a Senior Designer / Associate at Perkins Eastman Architects where he leads design efforts in hospitality, retail, sports, and mixed-use projects. He also actively participates in the contemporary art scene as a manager at GalleryJJ in Seoul. Lee received M.Arch from the University of Pennsylvania with AIA Henry Adams Medal, Gold Medal Arthur Spayd Brooke Memorial, and John Stewardson Memorial Prize. He has been a lecturer at PennDesign from 2016 to 2019 and has exhibited the works at Venice Biennale 2016 and 2018, and Seoul Architecture Biennale 2017 and 2019.
Inquiries directed to: seunghan.paek@gmail.com
Co-chairing with Jieheerah Yun, a colleague of mine who works at the Seoul campus of Hongik University, I will run a panel entitled "Urban Affects: A New Materialist Approach to the Global City" for the 2020 Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH).
Abstract
Global city is perceived and practiced in relationship with an emerging body of scholarship that considers the architectural and urban world to be a realm in which multiple forces and intensities, affects and moods, and gestures and their material inscriptions coexist in consistent but aleatory manners. New Materialisms (NM) is one that pays close attention to how our material world is not so much a fixed entity but rather put into a perpetual becoming process. From the perspective of NM, elements shaping the global city such as star architects’ iconic buildings, infrastructures, and the “generic” and spectacular cityscapes are not in opposition to more genuine, locally bound, and nostalgic forms of life. Despite its alienating and reifying nature, the spectacle is a fundamental form of life, mediums becoming messages, and “groundless grounds.”
In a similar vein, the affect theory, although contested, presents a critique of the dominant narrative of primacy of reason and rationality. In the architectural field, this new move to consider affect and mood has generated controversies, some of which include critiques addressing its imprecise and at times subjective engagements with urban discourses that do not bring up immediate solutions in designing the city. Do spectacles and urban affects result in “pre-critical” turn to justify the architecture of neoliberalism? Can urban affects be opted by the civil society to critically engage with issues of environmental protection, economic justice, and urban regeneration and thus help improving the qualities of urban life today?
Presenters in order:
Trude Renwick, Urban Affects, Ghostly Affects: Global Architecture of Bangkok's Commercial Past
Carmela Cucuzzella and Jean-Pierre Chupin, Urban Affects, Competitions as Means for an Alternative Development in the City
Gary Sampson, Urban Affects, Urban Disposition and Affect in the Emergence of Kop van Zuid
Danielle Choi, Urban Affects, Interior Landscapes in the Age of Gaia
Katarzyna Balug, Urban Affects, Immersed on Earth: Inflatable Forms and the Post-Lunar Imaginary
With the proposed theme entitled ‘Reassembling Gangneung,’ this second design workshop cohosted by two entities—School of Architecture at Catholic Kwandong University and École nationale supérieure d'architecture de Grenoble—aims to explore how the built environments in the coastal city Gangneung can be thought, unthought, and reassembled through ideas brought forth through an establishment of a short-lived community that is creative, engaging, and provocative in dealing with urban issues that they encounter.
Considering the limited time period of the workshop that will be run only for five days, it proposes a specific task that students will concentrate on: making a building known as Seobusijang a lively and sustainable place (its address is as followed: 강원도 강릉시 임영로 155번길 6 [용강동]; Limyoung-ro 155beongil 6 [Yonggang-dong], Gangneung, Gangwon Province). Literally translated as ‘Seobu Market (‘서부시장’ in Korean and ‘西部市場’ in kanji character)’, it is a four-story building with one-story underground located at the center of the city’s historic districts. The lower two levels (1-2) with the underground are used for a marketplace where individual shopkeepers sell various things such as food, clothes, marine products and miscellaneous goods, whereas the upper two (level 3 and 4) are for residents some of whom are also shopkeepers working within the building. Seobusijang is a result of the renewal of the old structure that was first constructed in 1977, which was removed and replaced with the current version that was built in 1982. Its site area (대지면적) is 3,707 m², gross floor area (대지면적) 6,446 m², and shop area 5,462 m² where about 150 shops are displaced.
Seobusijang is the oldest one among seven traditional markets available in the city area, and constant care and investment has been given to it. This ferro-concrete building has a triangular-shaped plan in resonance to the given site, and represents a typical complex in which both commercial and residential units coexist. Its commercial community has continuously attempted to activate the place, which includes a renovation project that had been executed between 2002 and 2006 with an investment of 2.9 billion in Korean currency (equivalent to approximately 2.4 million US dollars), the construction of a parking lot with 54 slots in front of the building in 2009, the replacement of the existing billboards with new ones and also the installation of CCTVs in 2012, and enhancing its fire-protection condition in 2019. Meanwhile, the ministry has also been organizing night markets during the period between June and November that are accompanied with events such as performances and night walks, which helped activating the building as a lively place to visit. All these instances are the result of collective endeavors that aspire to rehabilitate the old city districts of Gangneung on an institutional level, which is realistically operated under state-funded projects known as ‘New Deal’, which is activated in relationship with the 2013 legislation of a law called ‘Special Act on Promotion of and Support for Urban Regeneratation (도시재생 활성화 및 지원에 관한 특별법)’ (you can search the term in both Korean/English languages at: http://www.law.go.kr; the law is often abbreviated as ‘Urban Regeneration Act’ and under constant updates).
While acknowledging the benefits that such institution-driven projects could offer, which we, as architects, also strive to search for other ways of engaging with the issue of urban regeneration that is not only program-driven but also spatially and architecturally speculative. It is true that urban stagnation is an issue difficult to be resolved entirely through architectural parameters; What we are rather interested in are ways of interacting with given site conditions, thus making sustainable environments both economically and culturally.
Reassembling Gangneung, and Seobusijang in particular for this workshop, does not mean so much to put things together in a material sense and make it just functionally work, but rather to implement a field where individuals and the surroundings are coordinated each other on both conscious and unconscious levels. No predicated directions of regeneration are assumed despite the popular ways that a number of New Deal projects are administered in Korea; By the same token, despite the historic value of Seobusijang, tearing it down and constructing a completely new one is also encouraged if necessary. The term ‘context (맥락)’ is here opened up to its extreme, which encourages us to attempt various architectural and urban typologies. We can also conceive the city’s ‘identity (정체성)’ without limiting its implications merely to some clichéd ways of understanding ‘nature (자연).’ It is argued that natural elements such as sea and pine trees represent Gangneung more than its constituents under the rubric of modern and contemporary ‘culture (문화)’, under which a conceptual bifurcation between nature and culture strongly exists. However, we are also attentive to ways in which both cultural and natural strata coxist in complex ways; this line of thinking is reminiscent of how feminist scholar Donna Haraway does away from a strict binary and rather brings forth a new term called ‘natureculture (자연문화)’ without hyphening. The City’s ‘history (역사)’ is fully respected, but its meanings are perpetually rethought in the present tense so that one is able to generate (not ‘regenerate’) materially and psychically thus to deal with the perennially accumulated activities, memories, and the material traces of given situations.
This seemingly radical way of thinking about Seobusijang is not to disregard its historic significance and values but instead to open up ways in which a building could unfold its unthought dimensions that are latent, and could be materialized through the entanglement with the strata of the everyday, if we understand the term ‘everyday (일상)’ in a broader spectrum. By throwing ourselves into the given site, we aspire to mediate a building and the surrounding milieu that is fundamentally local and global, historic and present, institution-bound and individual, spectacular and ordinary, repetitive but emerging and co-imbricated with haecceities.
o Date: February 10-14, 2020 (Monday to Friday)
o Number of Participating students: 17 (13 forthcoming 5th-year Korean students + 4 French students) (Korean students’ representative: Janghee Jung; French students’ representative: Yasmina Maalouf)
o Number of Workshop supporters: 6 (forthcoming 4th-year students)
o Coordinator: Dr. Seunghan Paek (백승한, Assistant Professor at the School of Architecture, Catholic Kwandong University)
o Tutors: Sinwook Keun (architects x5), Joomin Kim (RE:TMUS ARCHITECTS), Magali Deschamps (ATKM Consulting services Urban planning, Sustainable & Eco-tourism)
o Translator: Joomin Kim
o Guiding Professor of the Grenoble Team: Magali Deschamps
o Place of Tutoring and Exhibition: Room #401 and adjacent Hallway, Daegeon Hall
o Languages used during the workshop: Korean, French, and English
o Invited Lecturers: Sim Oseob (심오섭, Gangneung Cultural Center: https://www.gncc.or.kr), Jaewon Suh (서재원, aoa architects: https://www.aoaarchitects.com), Kim Kwang-soo (김광수, K_works: http://studiokworks.com), Taehyun Terry Lee (이태현, THE A LAB: http://the-a-lab.com/)
o Organized by: School of Architecture at Catholic Kwandong University (가톨릭관동대학교 건축학부 건축학전공) (Homepage: http://cms6.cku.ac.kr/user/indexMain.do?siteId=arch)
o Cohosted by: School of Architecture at Catholic Kwandong University, École nationale supérieure d'architecture de Grenoble (그르노블 국립건축학교), Leaders in INdustry-university Cooperation (LINC+ 링크사업단), Innovation Center for Engineering Education (공학교육혁신원)
o Sponsored by: KIRA Gangwon (강릉지역건축사회)
o Supported by: OKCHEON Urban Regeneration Support Centre (옥천동 도시재생현장지원센터), JOONGANG Urban Regeneration Support Centre (중앙동 도시재생현장지원센터)
“Art in the Age of New Materialisms,” The Spring Meeting of the Korean Association for Aesthetics and Science of Art, March 23, 2019, Hongik University, Seoul, Korea (conference coordinator).
This is a special exhibition held at the convention center located at Samseong-dong, Seoul, often known as COEX, from September 4 to 7, 2017. It was a booth exhibition in one of the exhibition halls in that space, and I coordinated the entire process of exhibiting JUNGLIM Architecture in the venue. Below is an introductory remark addressing the identity of the architectural office, which celebrates its fiftieth anniversary in the year 2017. The exhibition consisted of a three-channel video and four screens, both of which show some of the impressive instances and the fifty works of the firm, which were chosen through an internal vote, from 1967 to the present.
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Since its inception in 1967 to the present, JUNGLIM Architecture has focused on shaping the textures of the everyday world in stable yet diverse ways, with more than a thousand projects completed so far. Different from the architectural fashions that are marked by their spectacular and experimental nature, JUNGLIM has produced an array of culturally sustainable strata of modern and contemporary Korea, as if reminiscing of the hanok typology that has barely changed during several centuries. Intricately related to the multiple sensorial dimensions and habits of ordinary life that are unforeseen and dispersed, the fifty projects introduced in this exhibition would be an interesting opportunity that one is able to think about their public values and the ontologies in the world where we live.
An upcoming presentation at the Fall conference of Korea Association for History of Modern Art, 10 September 2022 (zoom)
April 6, 2022, 13:00-15:00 via Zoom
Access: 878 7753 9494
pw: 0
Re-Thinking Agency: Non-Anthropocentric Approaches
3–5 February 2022
University of Warsaw and via Zoom worldwide
Keynote lecture: Karen Barad (University of California, Santa Cruz)
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Abstract
This paper claims that architectural image is a vibrant agency, which mediates the line between the disciplinary understanding of architecture as a material entity and its flattening process in which its materiality is entangled with shifting senses of visuality, mobility and authorship. What if the profession saturated by the image culture brings forth what Scott Lash calls “technological forms of life” in which the architect as a strong agent resonates with forces and technologies generated from the world that is material and immaterial, as well as human and nonhuman? Architectural image is not just a visual means for material construction but also a ‘vibrant matter’ according to Jane Bennett, a nonhuman agency which is symmetrically displaced with a given work. It anticipates to provoke new expressivity and communicative platforms although arbitrary and dispersed. Seeing architecture as a flat, fluid, virtual and vibrant phenomenon challenges its traditional definitions made since the Renaissance, and considers the architect as someone other than a goal-directed actor. This object-oriented approach to architecture, or what Levi Bryant calls as “Machine-Oriented Architecture,” proposes to reconfigure the profession as an open system by rethinking its anthropocentric traditions. With mapping the theories of agency put in conversation with the subfields of new materialisms, I will focus on analyzing how the works of architectural firm, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, mediate the lines between architecture and image, some of which include The Rotary Notary and His Hot Plate (1987), Para-site (1989), Overexposed (1995), Slow House (1991), Institute of Contemporary Art (2006), and The Shed (2019). Particular attention is made to how they treat their projects as opportunities with which to challenge the set of acknowledged values of architecture and bring forth the discursive and affective dimensions that are entangled with bodies, technologies, media and spectacles.
10 December 2021 (KST), 14:00-16:00pm
22nd of November, 2021, 19:00-21:00 KST
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10/11(월) 10:30~12:30. Neil Leach (Department of Architecture, Florida International University), “Learning from AlphaGo: what AI can tell us about the future of architecture” https://korea-ac-kr.zoom.us/j/83265389582?pwd=czU3SkJqMllpMGZ6UXJRUFkrS294dz09
11/08(월) 19:00~21:00. 박유정 (대구가톨릭대학교 프란치스코칼리지), “크리스티안 노르베르그-슐츠의 ‘장소의 현상’” https://korea-ac-kr.zoom.us/j/85963926969?pwd=clBjd05iMjNpajcrR24vYjRqVDVwdz09
11/22(월) 19:00~21:00. 백승한 (가톨릭관동대학교 건축학부), “한국 콘텍스트에서 <라스베이거스의 교훈> 다시 보기” https://korea-ac-kr.zoom.us/j/84055600677?pwd=RVl0S3RlSFpFbEU2SFp2c1V6ODNEQT09
12/06(월) 10:30~12:30. 조현정 (KAIST 인문사회과학부), “일본 건축에서 전후(戰後)란 무엇인가?” https://korea-ac-kr.zoom.us/j/84536869760?pwd=MVZ0TStDL2UyZWtaR2Q2SmhralBjQT09
http://www.mobilityhumanities.org/main.html?lang=EN
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Abstract
This paper aims to rethink the idea of ‘urban experience’ in today’s urban world that operates in relationship with the forces of mediatization and mobility. In doing so, it will focus on reading sociologist Scott Lash’s work, in particular reviewing the way that he theorizes the term ‘experience.’ Addressing three types of experience—epistemological, ontological and informational—Lash claims that the first two types are collapsed into the third. According to him, one’s experience of the city is knowledge-based and sense- driven but both faculties are collapsed and reformulated in “today’s global information culture” in which an excess of images has become a form of life. Lash’s claim is based on his critique of information and also in line with Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory in that he considers information, as broadly defined, to be a realm where both human and nonhuman agents coexist and unfold events. But his theory remains insufficient as to address the “agential cuts,” to borrow the term from Karen Barad, as well as coming an unresolved conclusion that one’s sensory experience predominantly becomes nonhuman data and thus loses its tactility. By reading Lash against the grain, this paper argues that urban experience operates as a mode that is reshaped through the contacts with the systems but still bodily oriented in a loose sense.
https://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/abce/ahra2021-region/
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This article explores the vibrant relationship between architecture and its milieu through which to rethink what region means in what urban historian Peter Rowe called the “neon environments,” which refers to the busting commercial landscapes in Asian cities. In doing so, it conducts an in-depth analysis of an architectural work: Sun Tower that an LA-based group Morphosis designed in 1997. Their key design was to propose a “second skin” which separates the highly articulated surface made of deconstructivist skeletal frames from its box-like building which consists of rentable commercial spaces. While separating the surface from the building gave them a freedom to experiment what they aim to establish, they did not also miss the point that, in a city like Seoul where commercialism takes command over architectural autonomy, a designed work is open to unexpected interventions which are represented by advertisements attached upon the work. In this respect, they did not grasp enough is the degree of intensity that advertisements such as billboards and banners are attached and detached upon the surface and thus perpetually disrupts the work’s autonomy. A conventional gestalt dichotomy of figure and ground is therefore suspended, and what unfolds is a figure-like ground or vice versa, which instead makes the work vibrant and puts in resonance to the changing commercial moods and atmospheres. Whether intended or not, Sun Tower immerses itself into the surrounding milieu so that an entangled entity which is at once autonomous and heterogeneous is brought forth. In the sense that Jane Bennett considers advertising to be a vibrant matter actualized in commercial ways, I claim that a work of architecture put in close relationship with commercial forces challenges us with a renewed sense of region and place that is not so much an essentialist notion like ‘genius loci’ but rather an affectivity fueled by an evenly distributed attention.
10-13 February 2021 (mine on the 10th of February)
This paper aims to explore how disparate strata of the city bring forth an assemblage that cuts across a set of binaries of institution and individual, tradition and the modern, and nature and culture in differing ways. In doing so, I will take the post-Olympic city Gangneung as a case, which is located alongside the east coast of South Korea. The city ministry co-hosted the 2018 winter Olympic Game with another nearby city Pyeongchang. Hosting such a mega-event made the city vibrant, and helped them to deal with the sustaining economic stagnation. Newly constructed infrastructures such as railway, flat housings and urban parks made the city comparable to other renowned global metropolises, but those urban strata quickly became empty as soon as the event was over. It is because implementing those strata were mostly driven by exhibition administration which does not reflect enough what makes the city operate in daily life. Clichéd images illustrating the city’s natural resources, especially pine tree and the ocean both of which are prevalent throughout the city area, were highlighted over other considerations. However, those sleek images are in drastic contrast to the city’s reality, exemplified by the ongoing construction of thermal power station which is neither response-able nor ecological to environment, the overpopulation of automobiles and the related facilities such as car washes and parking lots, and tourist investments resulting in the excess of lodges and hotels. The disparity between the city’s ideal image and its crude reality is derived from the narrow definition of ‘the urban’, as well as a naïve assumption that nature and culture are clearly distinct from each other. By challenging such assumptions, I claim that one needs to understand the city as an assemblage through which to rethink the perennially dividual identity of the city from the ground.
본 강좌는 최근 국내외에서 활발하게 논의되고 있는 객체-지향 존재론을 통해 건축을 탐구한다. ‘트리플 오(OOO, Object-Oriented Ontology)’로 불리는 이 이론은 철학자 그레이엄 하먼이 처음 고안한 것으로, 하이데거의 형이상학과 객체성에 대한 그의 1999년 박사학위 논문에서 시작하였다. 물리적 실체에 한정하지 않고 상황이나 사건 등을 또한 포괄하는 객체는 실재하지만 가상적이고, 또한 자연적이면서 인공적이다. 펜과 같은 사물을 일상생활에서 늘 사용하지만 그것이 나에게 어떤 의미로 다가오는지는 숙고하지 않고 지나칠 수 있는 것처럼, 객체 개념은 건축이라는 세계, 또는 유보되었거나 잠재된 건축적 상황을 나를 둘러싼 느슨한 관계성의 사태로 이해하고 실천할 수 있는 접점이다. 건축과 트리플 오가 연결되는 지점과 의의를 확인하고(1강), 예술 및 건축에 대한 하먼의 입장(2강), 트리플 오에 긍정적인 두 건축가의 작업(3,4강)과 디지털 건축의 방향성을 주도하려는 진영 간의 대립(5강)을 살펴보는 구도이다.
1강 (1월 7일) : 건축과 트리플 오
백승한 (가톨릭관동대 건축학부 조교수)
2강 (1월 14일) : 직서적인 것의 미학화
정만영 (서울과기대 건축학부 교수)
Graham Harman, “Aestheticizing the Literal - Art and Architecture,” Michael Benedikt and Kory Bieg (eds), CENTER 21: The Secret Life of Buildings, 2018, 60-69쪽.
3강 (1월 21일) : 건축에서의 객체-지향 철학
서현식 (행림건축 부팀장)
Mark Foster Gage, “Killing Simplicity : Object-Oriented Philosophy In Architecture,” Log 33, Winter 2015, 95-106쪽.
4강 (1월 28일) :
객체-지향 존재론 기반의 건축
이용주 (서울과기대 건축학부 조교수)
Tom Wiscombe, “Discreteness, or Towards a Flat Ontology of Architecture,” Project 3, 2014, 34-43쪽.
“A Specific Theory of Models : The Posthuman Beauty of Weird Scales, Snowglobes and Supercomponents,”
Architectural Design 89-5, 2019, 80–89쪽.
5강 (2월 4일) : 파라메트릭 진영의 비판
백승한 (가톨릭관동대 건축학부 조교수) Patrik Schumacher, “A Critique of Object-Oriented Architecture,” Michael Benedikt and Kory Bieg (eds),
CENTER 21: The Secret Life of Buildings, 2018, 70-89쪽.
강연자 소개
백승한 : 가톨릭관동대학교 건축학부에서 건축설계와 역사·이론·비평 과목을 담당하고 있다. 주요 연구 분야는 건축이론 및 도시론이며, 일상생활의 철학적 탐구, 정동, 분위기, 매개성, 경험, 어셈블리지, 신유물론, 인류세, 플라스틱 존재론, 비판적 유산과 관련한 다수의 연구 프로젝트를 진행 중이다. 와이드AR 및 한국미학예술학회의 편집위원으로 활동 중이다.
서현식 : 서울과학기술대학교 학부와 대학원에서 건축을 공부했으며, 졸업 후 창조건축을 거쳐 현재는 행림건축에서 실무 중이다. 디지털 건축과 이론에 흥미를 갖고 연구 중이며, 최근 객체지향철학이 디지털 건축에 미치는 영향에 관해 관심을 집중하고 있다. 현재 갈무리 출판사에서 운영하는 다중지성의 정원에서 '객체지향 철학과 건축미학 세미나'를 진행하고 있다.
이용주 : 연세대학교와 컬럼비아 대학교에서 건축을 공부하고 현재 서울을 중심으로 활동하는 건축가이다. 정보가 가진 패턴의 복잡성을 바탕으로 한 건축의 기하학적 표현에 관심을 두고 있다. 여러 스케일과 다방면의 매체를 통한 디자인 실험을 해오고 있다. 대한민국 공공건축상, IF 디자인 어워드를 포함한 다수의 국내외 디자인상을 수상했다.
정만영 : 서울시립대에서 「건축형태의 자의적 생성에 관한 연구」로 박사학위를 받았다. 건축설계와 이론이 매개되는 지점에 서기를 원하며, 현대건축 이론에 관심을 집중하고자 한다. 2003년부터 10년간 철학아카데미의 여름/겨울 건축강좌를 진행했으며, 한국건축가협회 평론분과위원장, 한국건축역사학회 부회장을 역임했다.
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In this paper, I will overview the growing stream of post-internet art and its making relationship with urban space in contemporary Korea. In particular, I will pay attention to addressing how game has become a means to explore the blurred line between the virtual and the real, or the “groundless grounds,” to borrow the term that encourages us to explore a set of scholarly discourses, which include the phenomenological (Martin Heidegger), the linguistic (Ludwig Wittgenstein), the affective (Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari), and the semiotic (Hito Steyerl). In doing so, I will focus on analyzing a set of experimental films of Korean artist Kang Jung-suck (1984~). Kang’s work is characterized by a virtual space that the artist creates in collaboration with graphic and game designers, in which he imbricates a myriad of urban infrastructures, memories, and instances of online chatting. Mostly accessible by YouTube amounting to over eighties in its number, Kang’s work is comprised of various junk (moving) images, such as cropped images of friends’ waiving hands, self-created videos of K-pop idols circulated online (most often known as jikkam), an ordinary world transformed according to a first-person shooter online game named Sudden Attack, all of which bring forth a simultaneously familiar and alienating world of everyday life. Despite the variety of his work in digitized forms, what constantly appears is the conflict between a drive toward the moments of authenticity in his life, and the frustration unable to fully grasp them. In the context of contemporary Korean art, Kang’s work reflects how ‘young’ artists deal with forces of the digital (media), in ways to create their own refugees (partly related to the phenomenon called Sinsaenggonggan in Korean term) that are not disrupted by the institutionalized societal and cultural systems. Put differently, in his work Kang strives to drift away from an excess of disciplines, traditions, hierarchies, commodity fetishism, memories, and nationalism, which is always in half success and thus constantly entails states of depression and lethargy.
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본 논문은 일본의 실험적 그룹 팀랩 (teamlab, 2001~)의 인터랙티브 공간 설치 작업의 분석을 통해, 디지털 환경에서의 생태실천과 윤리성을 탐구한다. 작가, 프로그래머, 공학자, 수학자, 건축가 등 다양한 전문인들로 구성된 팀랩은 스스로를 “극단적 기술주의자 (ultratechnologists)”로 부르며, 기술발전 시대의 환상적이고 스펙터클한 체험 영역을 구현한다. 자연/인공, 혹은 자연/인간의 이분법에서 자유로운 방식으로 새로운 환경을 구축하는 팀랩은 “예술을 통해 인간과 자연의 새로운 관계성”을 탐구하는데 집중하며, 이를 수행함에 있어서 디지털 기술은 “예술을 물리적 조건으로부터 해방하고 경계를 초월”하게 해 주는 매개 장치이다. 이를 구현함에 있어서 인터랙티비티, 혹은 상호소통성은 중요한 요소이다. 꽃이나 물줄기 등의 자연 요소들은 전시공간을 이동하는 관객들의 동작에 반응하며, 새로운 관계의 양상을 만들어낸다. 이러한 인터랙티비티 기술은 동시대 미디어 아트에 있어서 종종 경험할 수 있는 요소인 한편, 그리고 이들의 작업은 종종 대중 지향적이고 때로는 상업적인 속성을 지니지만, 본고는 팀랩의 공간 환경에서 펼쳐지는 ‘따로 또 함께’의 순간이 나타나는 지점에 주목한다. 화려한 이미지들이 연속으로 나타나고 반응하는 팀랩의 공간 환경에서 관객은 때로는 열정적인 참여자이면서 동시에 무심한 군중이다. 그의 신체는 비일상적인 환경에 기민하게 반응하며 스스로의 영역을 확장시키려는 시도를 하지만, 동시에 일회적인 퍼포먼스에 귀속되지 않은 채 자신의 방식으로 인공 바위에 걸터앉거나 천천히 관람을 한 이후 사라지는 등 예측할 수 없는 경험양상을 펼쳐낸다. 어두운 조명 아래 관람을 하게 되는 관람객들은 실루엣으로 서로가 서로를 마주하게 되며, 이는 마치 대도시의 익명적 체험이 극대화되는 순간을 연상시킨다. 하지만 팀랩의 공간 환경을 경험함에 있어서 각 개인의 신체는 주어진 상황에 때로는 수동적으로 반응하면서 동시에 자율성을 지닌다. 제공되는 인터랙티비티 장치에 적극적으로 반응을 하든 그렇지 않든, 각 개인은 스펙터클에 매혹되며 또한 그로부터 자신의 일상적인 신체 리듬으로 되돌아가려는 경향을 촉발한다. 신체가 반응하는 방식이나 정도를 스스로 또한 알 수 없다고 말한 스피노자 (그리고 들뢰즈)의 신체 논의의 맥락에서, 팀랩의 설치 공간에 있어서 각 개인은 자율적이면서 또한 주어진 환경과 뒤얽히게 되는 유동적 주체이다. 팀랩 작업의 분석, 수행적 신체 담론의 계보에 대한 리뷰, 그리고 최근 미디어 아트에서 두드러지는 인터랙티비티와 공간성에 대한 비판적 독해를 통해, 본 논문은 디지털 환경에서의 생태 실천과 그 윤리적 차원에 대해 탐구한다.
http://kai2002.org/arch_society
IARC 475 Comprehensive Capstone Studio and PR25086 Architectural Design Studio IV is a joint-studio program in collaboration with the University of Tennessee Knoxville USA and Pusan National University, South Korea which aspires to explore these continuing urban problems.
A team of four students will have an opportunity to choose a site either in San Diego, USA, or Busan in South Korea.
The site will look at either asylum seekers and refugees specifically from the world, or the environments related to the lives of migrant (foreign) workers in the greater Busan metropolitan area. Part of the studio will require developing their program through extensive research of the geographical location, current economy, political, social, cultural, and climatic background.
There will also be a series of diagrammatic exercises for in-depth analysis. As a studio, we plan to develop a research book after the first three weeks of the IDEC competition.
Students in Knoxville will have an opportunity to visit Los Angeles and San Diego during the semester, while those in Busan will visit the sites related to the lives of (foreign) migrants. The studio will run both in-person meetings and Zoom meetings with the students from two schools.