SPACE September 2025 (No. 694)
I AM AN ARCHITECT
‘I am an Architect’ was planned to meet young architects who seek their own architecture in a variety of materials and methods. What do they like, explore, and worry about? SPACE is going to discover individual characteristics of them rather than group them into a single category. The relay interview continues when the architect who participated in the conversation calls another architect in the next turn.
interview Kim Wonill principal, Becban Architecture × Kim Hyerin
A Humble, Everyday, Becban Architecture
Kim Hyerin: Since you work with what is available and sometimes even build projects yourself, Becban Architecture really suits its name—like home-style Korean meal! Please introduce the studio.
Kim Wonill: If funds were unlimited, you might order a full-course meal, but that’s not what happens in everyday life! My aim is to make spaces that are attainable, well considered and fairly priced. That’s why I go beyond the design stage.
Kim Hyerin: I understand that you first opened your office near Yeonnam-dong, as a two-person office named ‘Architectural workshop miyongsil’. What led you to start your own firm?
Kim Wonill: At first, I was planning to leave my first firm, Moohoi Architecture Studio (hereinafter Moohoi), and move to another office. But one day I lost the laptop that had my portfolio I had built up since my student days. I wasn’t the most scrupulous person, so I hadn’t backed it up. Without the portfolio, I had no way of showing the kinds of work I had done. I could have rebuilt it from memory, but it felt like a sign! (laugh) Around that time I received a small interior commission and I took it as motivation to start my own studio.
Kim Hyerin: You initially ran a two-person office. What led you to establish Becban Architecture as an independent practice?
Kim Wonill: I had known Park Younggook, with whom I co-ran Architectural workshop miyongsil, since university. We worked together for about six or seven years. I felt that it was time to go independent again and I thought an independent studio mi... *You can see more information on the SPACE No. September (2025).
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Kim Wonill
Kim Wonill creates recipes for how to create sincere, well-crafted spaces at ordinary cost—much like preparing a becban (home-style Korean meal) from ingredients bought at the local market. He believes that the more constraints a project has, the more it requires approaching design as construction and construction as design, which is why he works across both fields. His focus is on achieving what he calls a ‘reasonable aesthetics’, a space that is practical in use yet substantial in architectural content.
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