SsD

Sprawling surburban lawns consume 60% of our domestic water use.  Multiply this by 79 million detached single-family homes in the U.S. consuming an average of 107,000 gallons of water per year and we have a serious issue:  not only in the amount of fresh water being expended (and it is not as renewable as one might think), but also in terms of the energy and resources required to deliver and then treat the byproducts of this consumption.

We are proposing a prototypical alternative:  Simply build a small, brave, efficient house but build the suburban ‘fence’ out to its legal setback limit.  What this does is give you more sense of house (and less water and resource use) by expanding the perceived interior space to the limits of the fence.  It also allows the neighbors to think you have a beautiful green lawn just like theirs (which is most likely a non-local species) while allowing you to have a no-water xeriscape that is as strange as you always wanted it to be within the confines of your ‘fence.’

There are other mimimum footprint measures we have taken as well which we will post soon on our works page:  some of these include a solar hot-water radiant heating system coupled with a 100% passive cooling system based on a centralized stack within the house.

It was around this time last year that we were working on the competition for White Block Gallery.  Little did we know that not only would we win the competition, but that the work would proceed so quickly.  The excavation has just been completed and the foundations will be poured in about a week.

SsD focused on sustainable low-rise / high-density urbanism for this new waterfront city south of Seoul.  Although the design of the new urban parcels are strategically individualzed and limited in scale, as a whole they work in conjunction with each other in contributing to an overall energy and resource strategy:  By working as a single entity rather than a fragmented whole,  solar energy is harnessed, water runoff controlled, prevailing winds captured for passive cooling, and public space aggregated into a larger cohesive network that links surrounding topographies.

In keeping with this theme that the ’whole is greater than the sum of its parts,’ the 2nd place win against four of the largest firms in Korea is  ’partial confirmation’ that a collaborative of smaller firms can form a strong interdisciplinary team able to compete on an international level.

Jinhee Park and John Hong lectured at IE University in Segovia, Spain as the final event in the ‘Acting Local, Acting Global’ series organized by professor Laura Martínez.  A special thanks to Dean Javier Quintana, Associate Dean Jose María Churtichaga, and Martha Thorne for hosting SsD.

The concept of ‘minimalism’ in architecture has taken on more or less superficial applications based on a ‘formal’ reading of the term.  In fact this general and colloquial definition of something that merely appears stripped down has the potential to relegate the idea of the minimal to yet another version of a formalist mannerism.

While we are attempting to expand the idea of minimalism and link it to environmental agendas, a host of related concerns arise.  The word ‘minimum’ has recently made a positive re-debut attaching itself to other terms such as ‘footprint’, ‘material’, ‘energy’, ‘water’, etc.  Our larger question is:  What does all this minimiz-ation add up to? (or subtract down to as the case may be).

Our yet emerging response is that Architecture can contribute to a larger cultural shift  instead of just reacting in opposition to ideas of excess through technical means.  In fact a reactionary stance has the danger of merely solidifying and canonizing the very paradigms that are being contested.  Shifts in the logics of perception, in the understanding of the once autonomous object as now contingent, and in the role of strategic indeterminancy are all topics brought forward by minimalist art and music.  An extension of this cultural production through the medium of sustainability can provide new paradigms for the forward evolution of our patterns (and resultant spaces) of inhabitation.

Please join us for Jinhee Park’s lecture on Sustainable Minimalism at Korea University in Seoul, Korea at 1pm.   The lecture will be held at the School of Architecture main auditorium.

SsD was one of 5 teams selected for an national RFP to design an urban beacon for historical Union Square in Somerville, MA.

Please join us for Jinhee Park’s lecture on ‘Sustainable Minimalism’ at Ehwa University School of Architecture at 2pm.

This Friday, February 5^th at 530pm there will be an opening reception of the exhibit, New Trajectories: Convergent Flux, Korea at the Harvard GSD Gund Hall lobby.  We hope you can join us to celebrate the event.

Convergent Flux, Korea is the first cross-disciplinary exhibition on Korean Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Planning and Design mounted in the United States.  The contents of the exhibition draw from the continuously emerging and hybridized condition in contemporary Korean society that has offered such a fertile and dynamic territory for experimentation.  Twenty-eight recent projects that exemplify the rising distinction seen in Korean design work will be displayed in relationship to the complex contemporary issues that inform the work.

The exhibition is co-curated by John Hong and Jinhee Park with Hailim Suh as advisor.

Here is a summary of events associated with the exhibit:

Exhibition Opening:  New Trajectories: Convergent Flux, Korea
Feb. 5th / 5:30 pm / Gund Hall Lobby

Lecture: City Compound
Unsangdong (Jang Yoon Gyoo + Shin Chan Hoon, Reigh Youngbum)
Feb. 8th / 6:30 pm / Piper Auditorium

Lecture: Speed and Architecture
KYWC Architects (Kim Seung Hoy)
Feb. 16th / 6:30 pm / Piper Auditorium

Panel Discussion: Covergent Flux: Extended Topographies and the Korean Urban Condition
Pai Hyung Min, Park Yoon Jin, Seung H-Sang, Suh Hailim
Feb. 22nd / 6:00 pm / Piper Auditorium

Our collaborative is one of 5 teams selected from over 80 applicants to compete in the second stage of this major urban design competition.  Let the games begin!

White Block  Art House:
SsD wins competition for prestigious Korean art gallery

The new gallery for SangSang will be a 1500 m² exhibition and cultural space at the heart of the Heyri Art Valley in South Korea.  SsD’s winning scheme is a matrix of carefully proportioned gallery boxes and interstitial cultural and landscape spaces.  A silkscreen glass skin modulates views and light while subtely expressing the volumes within.

Jinhee Park, principal of SsD:
We carefully considered the spatial and environmental needs of today’s art.  Integration with the natural landscape of the lake-front site was also of crucial importance.  The result places the intense and controlled experience of art side-by-side with informal social and landscape interactions. The circulation through the building integrates a wide variety of exhibition spaces into a single experience.

John Hong, principal of SsD:
We’re excited to integrate a high level of sustainability into a program and site that is challenging, but in the end a great match. We parametrically studied natural lighting to optimize for viewing artwork as well for lowering energy consumption.  We’ve also proposed passive ventilation systems that will integrate with environmental control of the more archival spaces.
­
Experiencing Art:    Beginning at the entrance of the building, visitors are invited to spiral through a series of ‘boxes’ before emerging at the planted sculpture garden on the roof.  Spaces vary greatly in size, ranging from 11m to 3m tall to accommodate a wide variety of works.  Exposure to natural light is also closely controlled: While some spaces receive a maximum of diffuse northern sunlight, other more intimate spaces are lit by light-wells, and video-art galleries are provided with an absence of natural light all-together.  Extraneous circulation space is kept to a minimum by connecting galleries directly to each other, or through large active social spaces.

Unfolded section through varying gallery spaces.

 print post



SsD’s submission for the Gwangju Design Biennale in Korea was one of 20 boxes selected internationally to be built and exhibited  full scale.  The exhibit opens 18 Sept 2009 and continues through 4 November.