SPACE November 2026 (No. 708)
1st Public Design Docking Station, ‘Reading the Objects of Caring Design’. Image courtesy of Korea Craft & Design Foundation
Installation view of Part 2 ‘Tending Architecture’. ©Kim Jeyeon
The exhibition ‘Caring by Design’ opened at Culture Station Seoul 284 on Sep. 17. Curated by CAC (Co-Directors, Chung Dahyoung, Kim Heejung, Jung Sungkyu), it brings together 20 artists, designers, architects, and teams from Korea and abroad, presenting 33 works spanning photography, illustrations, videos, and models. The exhibition considers public design not only as an act of ‘making’, but also a practice of ‘maintaining and caring’, and unfolds across four parts. While the first three themes, ‘Sweeping, Wiping, Erasing’, ‘Tending Architecture’, and ‘Caring for the City’ progressively expand its spatial scope, the fourth theme, ‘Invisible Labour’, highlights the value of the labour embedded within these spaces and the people who perform it. Interspersed throughout are four separate sections titled ‘Public Design Docking Station’, which explore how caring by design connects to policies, initiatives, and civic practices. The traffic cones, bollards, and ladders at the exhibition entrance are familiar objects encountered in everyday urban life, as well as part of the first docking station, ‘Reading the Objects of Caring Design’. The section also presents projects recognised by the 2026 Korea Public Design Awards, alongside initiatives by citizens who have independently engaged with and examined public spaces.
The exhibition begins with Mierle Laderman Ukeles’s Manifesto for Maintenance Art 1969! (1969). Across four typewritten pages, Ukeles argues that ‘if art races toward novelty and progress, maintenance preserves and sustains that progress’, extending acts of maintenance into the social and artistic realms. The value of maintenance is also emphasised in The Pavilion–Architecture of Stewardship (2025) by Vokal. Designed by Alvar Aalto in 1956, the Finnish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale is a timber structure that has continually required small and big repairs and renovations. Focusing on the acts that have sustained the building, the video work regards those involved in its care as co-creators alongside the architect. Where the first part addresses care in everyday life, the second explores ‘architecture after architecture’. It features two works examining the Barcelona Pavilion. Nenúfars. Water lilies in the Barcelona Pavilion (2022) by Centrala + Aleksandra Kędziorek, tracing the relationship between aquatic plants and modern architecture through the water lilies that were present in the original building but not reinstated during its reconstruction in the 1980s. PHANTOM. Mies as Rendered Society (2012‒2017) by Andrés Jaque investigates an underground space built during the reconstruction to accommodate building maintenance but subsequently closed off to external access in order to preserve the illusion of the original design, revealing a hidden side to architecture. Also featured are works by architects that explore acts of care through built projects. Gosan Jip (2017) by a root architecture, Painter N’s House (2024, covered in SPACE No. 683) by a.co.lab architects, and Destructive Creation (2023) by SoA each investigate different approaches to sustaining and transforming existing architecture. They explore the removal of additions from an old house, the coexistence of past and present within a shared space, and the possibilities of dismantling architecture to return it to nature, respectively. The third part expands the focus to the city. Seonyudo Park (2002) by Jung Youngsun exemplifies an approach to caring for the city that allows nature to regenerate and life to take root. Architecture of Disappearance (2024), a research project by Mid-Size City Forum examines architecture in regional cities, where additions to aging buildings prolong their lives, and seeks new possibilities within these practices. The fourth and final part looks behind the scenes of public places, examining the labour of countless people and the effort it entails. Kim Taedong’s People on Site (2018‒2025) is a photographic series documenting the people who have protected and maintained spaces, including museum caretakers and building inspection workers, through his architectural documentation work. The sense of place embodied by the old Seoul Station, with its many layers of history, also becomes part of the exhibition, prompting visitors to imagine the care accumulated here over time. By revealing diverse sites of maintenance and repair, the exhibition brings the value of care out of the shadows and into the light. The exhibition runs until Nov. 1.
