JEJU SOCAR TERMINAL is a place where the beginning and end of a journey overlap. In the brief process of renting and returning a car, people and vehicles meet and disperse. The project began by accounting for and giving shape to these circulations within a single continuous space. The site lies between Hallasan Mountain to the south, the sea to the north, and, across the main road, is the Jeju International Airport. It is a place where the landscape changes with movement.

Always a Little Closer to Utopia: BIG

 

BIG is one of the most innovative and influential architectural practices of our time. While accommodating building codes, regulations, budget constraints, and the demands of developers and clients, BIG turns the forces of these restrictions and demands to its advantage, like a judoka, transforming them into creative proposals. The idea encapsulated in ‘Yes Is More’ – that the avant-garde need not simply negate or resist the existing world, but can remain affirmative while generating new ideas – runs throughout BIG’s work. This idea also aligns with the logic of neoliberalism. In the ideological era of the Cold War, certain things were forbidden, and the negation of the other served as an affirmation of the self; in a world smoothed over by neoliberal capital, however, there is no longer any room for negation, and boundless affirmation has taken its place.

Always a Little Closer to Utopia: BIG

 

The original brief asked for a five-storey extension to the original workshop, which meant thst the client wanted a full-sized building next to the historical landmark. We quickly departed from this idea, since it would significantly block views and the workshop’s existing relationship with the surrounding landscape. Early on in the design process, we investigated low profile designs that were situated within the landscape behind the building. We were excited about the idea of ‘a gem to discover’, rather than a shiny new sibling that screams for attention—the same way an elegant watch complements a person without stealing their thunder.​

 

New York, where StoreFront began in 1982, was a city resistant to straightforward categorisation. The shock of the 1975 fiscal crisis still lingered, and traces remained of a city left neglected as industry and population moved away, while at the same time capital was beginning to flow back into the city, particularly through finance and real estate. This instability also affected the ways in which culture was produced. By the 1980s, alternative spaces in New York such as The Kitchen, Artists Space, and P.S.1 were already experimenting with exhibitions, performances, artistic practices, and encounters outside museums and commercial galleries, while similar alternative activities were also flourishing in the field of architecture, where opportunities for professional practice were limited.

Always a Little Closer to Utopia: BIG

 

The goal that crystalised after many conversations was to create a scalable, flexible, sustainable, healthy, and inspiring workplace that put equal emphasis on focused work and vibrant collaboration. We solved this with a vast, flat, two-storey building—a lower floor as a bustling medina and a second floor as a shrine with 160-foot (about 48-metre) ceilings and great daylight and acoustics. Collaboration below and focus above. As opposed to a tower, the flatness opened up a lot of opportunities for ease of movement and visibility. It also allowed us to cover the skin in ‘dragonscale’ photovoltaics and sink geothermal piles to power the whole building. As a testament to the flexibility of the structure, the spatial organisation was reworked many times over during Coronavirus Disease-19 pandemic and ‘return-to-work’ years.