Urban Designs from South Korea: Yerin Kang

*This talk is hybrid (in-person & remote). Capacity is limited. Please register ahead of time.

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. Local regeneration aimed at “revitalization” is impossible. It might be necessary to adjust to “livable density” by destroying many abandoned buildings that are left behind, empty, and unable to be filled. The influence of the moving population (관계인구) is greater than that of the resident population based on territory and boundaries. Thus, communities belonging to lands and territories are gradually being weakened. Coexpression in the form of dependence, weak purpose, and strong relationships are conditions for creating community instead. Future Community Gunsan aims to create local well-dying through D.I.T. (do it together) The scope of “together” in D.I.T. goes beyond people and encompasses nature. D.I.T. opens a path for the natural power of weathering to design for transition under the new climate system.

About the Speaker

Yerin Kang (she/her) is an architect based in Seoul. She founded the design firm SoA (https://www.societyofarchitecture.com/) with Chihoon Lee in 2011 and has served as an associate professor in practice at the Seoul National University since 2019. Yerin Kang and Chihoon Lee designed the 2015 Young Architect Program (YAP) winning project Roof Sentiment; Yunseul, for Seoullo 7017; and Brickwell Brickwell, which won the Seoul Metropolitan Government Architecture Award. SoA has won the Young Architecture Award, hosted by the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism (2015); Kim Soo-geun’s Preview Award (2016); the Emerging Architecture Award (2016); and the Korea Design Award (2021). SoA has participated in several exhibitions, such as the Gwangju Design Biennale (2011), Italy MAXXI Exhibition (2012), and Young Architect Award Exhibition (2015), and was in charge of curating the Producing City of the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism.

About Urban Designs from South Korea: Architecture, Ecology and Communities from South Korea

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. Presenters will discuss 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.