This series will present various designers from South Korea, who are engaged in urban and rural regeneration projects, graphic art, video projects and other projects that are taking place in South Korea. The speakers will be joining us via Zoom, from South Korea, New York, and Australia. They will present why design is crucial in Architecture, Ecology and Communities in South Korea.
Many of the speakers in this series will be presenting their works in the Project “2086: Together How?” that will be presented in the Korean Pavilion at the Venice Architectural Biennale in Italy, opening on May 20th, 2023. Presenters include “2086: Together How?” co-curator Soik Jung (Urban Mediation Project), and exhibitors, architect Yerin Kang (Society of Architecture), graphic artist Chris Ro (founder of ADearFriend) and video artist Jaekyung Jung (founder of shhh).
Bringing together architects, community leaders and artists, this project is about how we might be working together to endure current and future environmental crises until 2086 – the year when the global population is supposed to peak. Through a participatory video game, and with photographs, drawings, models and video and architectural installations, the exhibition is designed to invite audiences to imagine an ecocultural revolution through a critical reassessment of our capitalist, globalist, and colonial history.
They will present various communities with active regeneration projects in South Korea, inside the global city of Incheon, the colonial historic center in the mid-size city of Gunsan and in the rural areas of foreign migrant workers in Gyeonggi Province. These locations constitute a cross section of urbanization, modernization, and westernization in South Korea. They will show their collaboration with the local community leaders, and their ideas and design for the future of these communities.
Each community is a case study which utilizes the community leader’s deep knowledge of the place and the architect’s spatial analysis to evaluate its current state, and propose site-specific future scenarios leading up to 2086. For instance, in the case of Gunsan, practitioners have explored how to work with abandoned homes and buildings to return the old city’s urban landscape to a more natural state.
Each project was motivated with central concerns of how to cope with decaying urban centers and rural villages because of centuries of uneven capitalist development thinking. As such, they will talk about how the past could be connected with the future, and how localism can reshape globalism.”
In addition, Yonjae Paik from the Australian National University will present movements of people from city to villages in South Korea, and how they are rediscovering rural life and organic agricultural practices. Jihoi Lee, will present Watch and Chill (watchandchill.kr/en), a subscription-based streaming platform for contemporary art developed by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, in Seoul, South Korea, where she is a curator. Jinhong Jeon and Yunhee Choi of BARE Architecture, will present their project “Moving Things in the City” that envisions the potential growth of today’s cities and architecture through the eyes of various apparatus: personal utility vehicles (PUVs) that can be docked into hilly landscapes, urban robots that collect by-products from the manufacturing industry, and solar robots that self-assemble to become shelters.
The series will be hosted live by Professor Kyong Park from the UC San Diego Department of Visual Arts.
April 12 | Biennale Architettura 2023, Korean Pavilion 2086: Together How?
In this lecture, we will discuss the Korean Pavilion exhibition 2086: Together How? for the Biennale Architettura 2023 in terms of what it is composed of and how it works.
Soik Jung (she/her), after 10 years’ practice as an architect and urban designer, established the Urban Mediation Project in 2008 and has since focused on research, publications, exhibitions, and education programs.
April 19 | Streaming Platforms as Sites for Multilateral Collaboration Between Museums
Watch and Chill (watchandchill.kr/en) is a subscription-based streaming platform for contemporary art developed by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea.
Jihoi Lee (she/her) is Curator of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), Korea (2017–present).
April 26 | Do it Together for Zero
In 2086, the world population is estimated to peak, but Korea faces a population cliff. Beyond population inequality between regions, provinces are gradually undergoing the process of extinction, and administrative territories are becoming incapacitated.
Yerin Kang (she/her) is an architect based in Seoul. She founded the design firm SoA with Chihoon Lee in 2011 and has served as an associate professor in practice at the Seoul National University since 2019.
May 10 | The Lights Are On, But Nobody’s Home
This talk will discuss the familiar and unending battle between intuition and logic. As a graphic designer trained to always do the right thing, Chris will discuss his recent struggles with doing the right thing and how not doing the right thing has been the right thing.
Chris Ro (he/him) is a designer and graphic artist.
May 17 | Organic Space: Communities in South Korea’s Organic Farming Movement
Can a community become a political space transcending the boundaries of everyday life? South Korea is an example of a highly centralized society where state-led industrialization concentrated power and resources in urban areas.
Yonjae Paik (he/him) is a JSPS (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) postdoc fellow at Ritsumeikan University (Osaka) and an honorary lecturer at the Australian National University.
May 24 | City of Pagans
In 1320, Dante Alighieri published the epic poem The Divine Comedy (La Commedia di Dante Alighieri), wherein the character of Dante visits the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, guided by the Roman poet Virgil and eventually his beloved Beatrice.
Jaekyung Jung (he/him) is interested in tracing ambivalence, which stands between what is ethically right and wrong, in the everyday life of the city.
May 31 | Moving Things in the City
How can we define/expand architecture beyond buildings? Can cities sustain themselves without constantly constructing new buildings? How can we connect diverse communities in the context of constantly changing urban environments?
BARE―Bureau of Architecture, Research, & Environment is an architectural studio established in 2014 by Jinhong Jeon (he/him) and Yunhee Choi (she/her).
