In January of this year, the Boston Society of Architects held for the first time an 'Oscars style' gala event celebrating the 2011 award winners. We were honored to have a triple win this year: 8 Towers won an Unbuilt Architecture & Design Award, the White Block Gallery garnered an Honor Award for Design Excellence, and Island of Water received the highest Honor Award in the Unbuilt Architecture & Design category.

We were honored to be one of 15 architects selected by guest editor and curator, Richard Meier, in the December issue of l'Arca Magazine.

"For these special pages, I wanted to focus on young firms that are creating exceptional work in two regions of the world where Richard Meier & Parters is also working: Latin America and Asia. This is a very exciting moment in architecture for both continents…"

- Richard Meier, Dec 2011, l'Arca

The Braver House, a prototype house that proposes an alternative to oversized suburban rebuilds is featured in the February issue of Dwell Magazine.

Part of an larger network that rethinks how fresh food is produced, distributed, and consumed, Clover's first restaurant in Harvard's Square's iconic Holyoke Center is featured in the Dec/Jan issue of Dwell Magazine. Thanks to Aaron Britt who covered the story. To find out more about Clover: www.cloverfoodlab.com

At the final review at the Harvard GSD, we explored the question of 'Light Monumentality,' this time more in depth: How can we address monumentality in contemporary terms when societal, material, and urban forces are in flux? Can the monumental be separated from the monument? What is the intersection of the sublime, the ultra-natural, and the urban environment?

Our stellar GSD students presented: Mark Pomarico, Andreas Thuy, Bosuk Hur, Isabelle Nutzi, Victor Amado, Vera Baranova, Hernan Garcia, Fareez Giga, Kyung Ho Won, Arielle Assouline-Lichten, and Glen Santayana Jr. The engaged jury consisted of Shih-Fu Peng, Timothy Hyde, David Salomon, George Legendre, Wang Shu, Yael Erel, Robert Campbell, Lluis Ortega, Richard Peiser, and Ana Heringer, with a special visit from our sponsors from Seoul's Samoo office, Gigson Rhie and Donghoon Kim.

The White Block Gallery has won a Special Citation for Design Excellence from the regional AIA New England Chapter.

"The jury admires this project for the purity of the idea and the inventive use of glass. Glass is explored as a material that need not be transparent or invisible, adding mood and subtlety to the classic prismatic cube parti."

Jinhee Park has just won Marie Claire's prominent 'Women on Top' award and is featured in the November issue of Marie Claire.  As the only architect of the group, the issue features 16 women who are leaders in their profession.  Katie Holmes presented the awards at the top of the Hearst Tower.

"Starting out with just a game-changing idea, a bulletproof business plan, or an electrifying design, these women are reinventing their industries and demolishing boys' clubs from the ranks of the military to Silicon Valley. They're all under 40, but those aren't stars in their eyes: They're planning a revolution."  – Sophia Moura, Marie Claire

We are continuing to explore the theme of 'Light Monumentality' this semester with 12 talented students from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. The site of inquiry is the area surrounding Seoul Station where we have asked students to wrestle with contemporary terms of monumentality in the form of a design proposal for a new international rail station. With the inevitable opening of the border between North and South Korea, a trans-national railway will connect the Asian region with high-speed rail service and eventually future connections will even reach Europe.

Professor and masterplanner Ahn Changmo gave an enlightening tour of the history and future of Seoul Station which culminated at the roof of the historical building.  There we were able to get a panoramic view of the quickly transforming urban surrounds…

A massive model of the Ordos 100 project is on exhibit at the Kunsthaus Bregenz – Our '8 Towers' proposal is in the foreground.  Seeing the entire complex in a uniform and 'ready-made' material is sublime evidence of the innovative efforts of Ordos 100 curator Ai Wei Wei, who is the feature of the overall exhibit. Throughout the ongoing repression of the artist's efforts, we applaud his provocative influence that bridges art and architecture with the political and the social.  // a special thanks to Florian Idenburg of so-il for the photograph. //

"New England Home's 5 Under 40 awards spotlight the hottest emerging talent in New England… Selected by an all-star committee of regional design leaders, 5 Under 40 winners are the people to watch…" Each winner designed a custom rug produced and auctioned by sponsor Landry & Arcari – proceeds were donated to Barakat, a charity promoting educational opportunities for women and children in central and south Asia. Jinhee's 'pond' rug (photo right) is a space-saving design meant to fit in a corner – it is part of the 'sustainable minimal living' series of projects being designed by SsD.

Please join us for the celebration on September 15, 2011 at The Galleria at 333 Stuart Street / Boston / 6:30-9:30pm.

The White Block Gallery was featured in Space Magazine's June issue and we (sort of) made the cover.  Our parametrically developed frit pattern for the curtain wall became the backdrop cover graphic.  We are honored to have been featured: Space is one of the most highly regarded periodicals in the Asian region and its roots date back to its founder, master Korean architect Kim Swoo Geun.  It is not an exaggeration to say that Space has been the major force cataloging, disseminating, and leading architectural culture in Korea.

SNU students presented their final images for the 5-day ‘Light Monumentality’ workshop. Rather than the students initially explaining their intentions, in a pedagogical reversal we asked the critics to respond first by only reading into a single large scale image produced by each of the students. SNU Professors Kim Seung Hoy, Kim Jin Kyoon, Peter Ferretto, along with Prof. Choe Sangki from University of Seoul, and Park Yoonjin from Parkkim, quickly adjusted to the new situation, insightfully critiquing (and sometimes productively misreading) the student’s intentions. Only afterwards were the students allowed to present additional drawings and verbally respond.

The reversed exercise was not only a lot of fun for all participants, it also reflected one of the key concepts of the workshop: That in monumental architecture, the image many times precedes the specifics of the architectural resolution: The concepts of the image, whether fabricated or real, inevitably become merged and conflated with the actualities of the architectural form to the point that the reality of the space is only fully understood through its image.

The structure for SsD's 'Cloud' has been installed at the Heyri Art Valley.  'Cloud' is an interactive light/sound sculpture that will react to people's movement as well as dynamic weather patterns.  Like an actual cloud, it reveals atmospheric qualities that are usually invisible to the eye.  Although the skeletal structure seems relatively straigtforward, all the electronics must fit inside its narrow members: design tolerances were taken on with a high level of precision matched with much pre-planning.  Lighting and sound arrays will be installed next…

SsD was invited by Seoul National University's Department of Architecture to teach a 5-day workshop for their Frontline series.  We posed the term  'Light Monumentality' to the students, a topic we have been exploring in our recent work.  On the first day, students presented their interpretation of the term.

The workshop brief asks to the students to grapple with concept of monumentality in contemporary architectural terms:  Who or to what power structure does a monument belong?  How does the programmatic function align with its symbolic intent?  Can the social content of the monument shift or does it remain aligned to a single power structure?  We have intentionally juxtaposed the concept of lightness and monumentality to put the terms into question.  We all understand that the monumental assumes a certain gravity, a staid materiality, a relationship to particular ideologies.  However lightness conveys a different conceptual stream: the phenomenological qualities of natural light, lightness of ecological and energy footprints, lightness of contemporary tectonics that can no longer rely upon unlimited human labor, and lightness in terms of the speed of construction required by modern urbanization.

The Korean context is especially a significant backdrop to address these current issues.  With the creation of new urban zones, each of these territories must compete for identity while attempting to generate a sense of publicity within a constantly evolving social and cultural climate.  Architecture then plays a central role as it communicates the larger agendas of these new urban entities.  It is instrumental in communicating the aspirations and the ideas of a larger public sphere.  At the same time it must also be flexible in the context of a quickly transforming society.

Please join us for the lecture 'Light Monumentality' at Seoul National University, 7pm, School of Architecture, 5th Floor.  The lecture is part of SNU's annual Frontline workshops.  This year SsD is teaching a design workshop at SNU examining contemporary issues of monumentality.

SsD's video 'Bicycle Ride' is an animated survey of our recent work and is on exhibit at the Modern Atlanta Museum.  A special thanks to Manifesto Architecture who curated and designed the exhibit.  Also thanks to the 'inep+ 93nii' at xarrier for creating the original music – more collaborations with them in the near future…

The idea that architecture is beyond what can be represented in still images has haunted our recent work.  We have recently explored animation as a means to describe the passage of time: the changes brought on by people inhabiting the spaces, the impact of natural elements, the idea of process. But the question remains -  how does one communicate  transformation, experience, and phenomenon, in a globalizing economy where the exchange value of pure imagery remains a driving force?  In fact, even with the promise of the internet and 'multi-media,' the iconic still-frame still drives (and limits) how architecture is represented – perhaps even more so today.  Our own work however is moving from three dimensions to incorporating the fourth dimension of time:  How can the sequence of moving through the spaces be part of the everyday existense of the building? How can the architecture itself be abstract enough, not for abstraction's sake, but in the service of allowing multiple readings and uses? Instead of a series of still images, perhaps our portfolio should become a flip-book.