SPACE November 2025 (No. 696)
Exhibition view of ‘Tuning in to the Seasonal Imagination’, a section featuring the use of textiles in Poland ©Bang Yukyung
Originally conceived as the Polish Pavilion at the 2021 London Design Biennale, this exhibition has arrived in Korea as a joint project between the SeMoCA and the Adam Mickiewicz Institute.
While contemporary architecture continues to evolve and create environments completely sealed off from their external climates, this exhibition proposes the idea of chronobiological architecture—a way of building that allows light, weather, seasons, and our own biological rhythms to resonate and act as one. Gestures such as hanging a feather quilt beneath the ceiling in winter to retain warmth, or replacing it with light summer blinds as the season changes, may seem inconvenient, yet they represent small rituals that awaken our awareness of nature’s shifts.
‘The Clothed Home’ thus reveals how dressing and undressing a house can become a kind of ceremony that both celebrates the changing seasons and reawakens the senses. Drawing on the differing seasonal perceptions embodied in Poland’s ‘12 seasons’ and Korea’s ‘24 jeolgi (24 solar terms)’, the exhibition compares how textiles are used architecturally across the two cultures.
Upon entering the Entrance Exhibition Building of SeMoCA, visitors are immersed in the cyclical flow of Poland’s 12 seasons, moving among architectural fabrics designed for the Central European climate. Exiting the hall, they encounter Piljeong—a three-bay hanok designed and built by Jang Youngchul (co-principal, WISE ARCHITECTURE). In this structure, the windows and roof feature Ko Somi’s works in hanji and hemp, while the interior is adorned with Kim Young’s drapery inspired by hanbok undergarments and Onnoobi’s quilted bedding and muryeomja mat. Together, they illustrate the organic relationship between hanok and textiles as they respond to the delicate seasonal transitions expressed through the 12 jeolgi.
