Korean Housing and Architectural Discourse: A Cross-Cultural Diagnosis and the Quest for Alternatives

 

SPACE Academia – an architectural theory research forum overseen by the monthly journal SPACE (listed on A&HCI) – opened its call for papers and proposals for special issues in February 2025. Now, SPACE Academia announces its second research theme: we invite all researchers to open up new horizons in the study of architecture and urbanism.

 

The exhibition ¡®Undoing Oneself¡¯, which shone a light five mid-career artists (or teams) – Kang Hong-goo, Nayoungim & Gregory Maass, Oksun Kim, Kim Jipyeong, and Ha Cha Youn – was on show at the ARKO Art Center until the 26th of October. ¡®Undoing Oneself¡¯ is part of the programme that highlights mid-career artists, a culmination of Arts Council Korea¡¯s Mid-Career Artist Support Project and Artist Research-Study-Critique Support Project. The exhibition explores the paths of these mid-career artists, tracing how they engage in acts of self-critique and self-reference as they articulate their artistic worldview. What does it mean for artists who have achieved their own unique visual language to revisit the past?

Reaction Field (2025), a large piece of public furniture installed in a rooftop garden in the city centre, is a curvilinear structure that diverges and expands from its core, offering an experimental exploration of new spatial patterns in public space. The central circular structure functions as a device that emphasises centrality, while the curves branching out from it extend and vary within a set of defined rules. This curvilinear pattern is based on the reaction–diffusion system proposed by the British mathematician Alan Turing.

Located in the dense urban core of Seoul, Hotel Myeongdong Station (2025) takes the internal programme itself, rather than the external context, as the starting point of its form-making. The spatial density and functional integration of the micro-accommodation units determine the overall configuration and formal principle of the building. This strategy establishes an autonomous architectural language, independent from the site or surrounding conditions.

There are many ways in which architecture can participate in urban regeneration. Here, the focus fell upon the idea of paths. The site sits adjacent to a riverside embankment path (a pedestrian walkway along the Baekmagang River) and faces a road (Subuk-ro) that runs opposite a circulation route through the heart of the village. If these two paths could be connected across the site, more people might naturally ascend to the embankment path and enjoy the riverside scenery.