Architecture Exhibition by K-Arts at the Korean Cultural Centre UK, London

The exhibition Seoul Unfolded co-hosted by K-Arts and by the Korean Cultural Centre UK (KCCUK) opens from August 6th through September 26th at the KCCUK on the Northumberland Avenue, London. This exhibition was supposed to take place in June as part of London Festival of Architecture, however, the opening date had to be postponed in the aftermath of the COVID-19 outbreak. Also, the exhibition will additionally be open online, tackling the pandemic.

The exhibition aims at showcasing the latest five years of education performance by the K-Arts Department of Architecture, which in turn, will seek the answer to a question of how to design the city and architecture of Seoul. While the exhibition of students’ design projects about Seoul and its neighboring areas committed to the faculty’s main agenda is central to this exhibition, it also presents the drawings by hand and computer, handcrafted architectural models, research papers, and interview videos. Hence the visitors can have a glimpse of architecture education at the K-Arts overall.

The Department of Architecture of School of Visual Arts at K-Arts was founded in 1997. Ever since then, the faculty has cultivated a reputation for providing distinguished architecture education with an excellent curriculum with only twenty of selected students for each school year. Its five-year architecture education program had been given accreditation by the Korea Architectural Accrediting Board (KAAB), and the department has the only program in Korea to be accredited by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). Besides, it is expanding the horizon of architecture education through actively engaging in diverse international exchanges and cooperation.

Founded in 2008, the co-host KCCUK has been organizing various events in performances, exhibitions, festivals, and film screenings to promote Korean arts and culture. Located proximate to Trafalgar Square, it has been attracting public attention at the heart of London city, and is accessible to a large group of visitors.

Under the co-direction of K-Arts’ professor Taeyoung Kim, professor Byungchan Kim, and professor Kangmin Lee, the current and graduate students, full-time and affiliated professors, and other faculty members collaborated and devoted to this project for a long time. In the language of architecture, K-Arts Department of Architecture unfolds the work by Design Studio through this project. The Design Studio has formulated a world where people manage to live together without losing their uniqueness against the reality that forcefully attempts to standardize them in daily life through extreme political, cultural, and economic conditions. In this respect, this project reveals the founding philosophy of the faculty, excellence beyond compliance, which holds a belief in the traditional value of architecture as an initiative for changing society. It further lays the basis for the educational philosophy of the faculty as well.

The title Seoul Unfolded came from the exhibition concept that directs the visitors to take a tour of Design Studio’s works based on the project agendas as they look at a blueprint of Seoul spread in their hands. It will help the visitors pinpoint the actual locations in Seoul from the design studio’s works. The central exhibition space is composed of two walls and a floor. The 8m (width) by 3.2m (height) of the wall has a gigantic map of Seoul, the Studio’s works to be designated at relevant places. Another 10.4m (width) wall at a right angle to the first one is with three design themes: space, human, and nature. Each of these two walls forms the x-axis and y-axis, which again creates a 40cm grid. The anthology of project works is at the coordinate exactly indicated on the map. While freely looking around the exhibition, not only can the visitors appreciate the architectural ideas and significance of Seoul as a site suggested by the design studio but spot the precise locations in Seoul.

The exhibition will showcase other key project outcomes around the main hall. There will be creative works by the media studio adopting many different sorts of media and structure systems and designs used to expand the understanding of the structure model. The thesis papers from seminars on research related to design works will fill the wall along the corridor, and the videos of magnified images of sites of Seoul and student interviews will be showing on screen too. The panels and publications of creative research work by thirteen faculty members, both full-time and affiliated, will also be exhibited together with the annual anthology UA and the faculty publication Prospectus, various print materials of K-Arts, and souvenirs made by K-Arts Foundation. Unfortunately, all extracurricular events such as opening ceremony and academic forums are suspended due to COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, K-Arts is developing an online platform to provide access for people who are interested in finding out Korea’s higher education program in architecture. More information will be available on the official website of KCCUK (https://kccuk.org.uk/en/)