Van Alen Event
When: Thursday, 25 April, 630pm
Where: Van Alen Institute, 30 West 22nd Street Ground Floor (enter through Van Alen Books), New York, NY 10010

Harvard GSD Event
When: Friday, 26 April, 1pm.
Where: Stubbins (Room 112), Gund Hall, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA

From “hermit kingdom” to economic powerhouse, the small nation of South Korea has experienced vast cultural, societal, and urban shifts in the last century. Although this state of flux is symptomatic of many nations that have undergone rapid industrialization, the story of Korea is somehow more condensed, more marked by upheaval, and through its radical transformation, more able to emerge as a nexus of design culture. Authors Jinhee Park and John Hong examine Korea’s diverse work of the last decade through the lens of five conceptual streams: density, history, topography, materiality, and infrastructure. Please join them in conversation with Mark Rakatansky, Adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia GSAPP, as they discuss new, compelling work that has yet to be introduced to major media in the United States. » click here for link to Van Alen event. » click here to purchase book on Amazon

In a ceremony earlier this year, 'Songpa Micro-Housing' in Seoul, Korea was awarded a 2012 Unbuilt Architecture Award from the BSA/AIA. Recently approved by the city for construction, the new building leverages zoning constraints to create 'tapioca space' around the units: Like the ambiguous gel around a tapioca pearl, a soft intersection between public/private and interior/exterior expands the perceived size and useable area of the units. Designed specifically for the underserved artist community in Seoul, the building will couple much needed living space with 2nd floor and subterranean galleries and artist work spaces. As a new concept for housing, the global problem of urban density as it equates to housing costs is addressed: The project demonstrates that dense, small-scale urbanism does not have to compromise quality of life.

John Hong's article, 'Simulating Interdependent Complexity: Beyond Prescriptive Zoning,' was published in Ecological Urban Architecture. The article outlines applications for Hong's parametric urban design tool developed at the Harvard GSD under a Harvard Real Estate Academic Initiative Grant. By using computation to leverage performance based zoning standards intead of prescriptive ones, the tool demonstrates that there does not need to be in inverse relationship between density and quality of space. Daylighting, cores, proximity to parks, programming, and other factors are simultaneously evaluated for an optimized solution. Stay tuned for a full animated demo of the tool in the upcoming months. A special thanks to the book's author Thomas Schroepfer, and publisher Birkhäuser.

SsD teamed with MWBa and was shortlisted for the Cade Museum in Gainesville Florida. As the needs of museums are changing, the design for the Cade shifts the visitors' role from the passive to the active tense. The interlocking galleries give individuals the freedom to create their own itineraries and experiences. While providing dynamic and light-filled spaces for the collection, the design mission is to inspire educational and interactive participation.

Congratulations on the winner and the 6 shortlisted teams.
More about our entry here »

Before clearing our 10th birthday (June this year), one of our wishes has come true: We are one of ten firms selected internationally for Architectural Record's Design Vanguard.

"Architectural Record’s annual Design Vanguard issue brings together the architects who are already doing some of the most innovative work in the field and will lead the profession in the future. They are the firms at the forefront of design and the ones to watch. Design Vanguard began in Architectural Record in 2000 with the intention of spotlighting the future stars of the profession. Vanguard architects are selected by a panel of professionals including deans of architecture schools and critics from around the country…" Thanks to Clifford Pearson and Asad Syrkett for the writeup.

A special thanks to all of our collaborators. We look forward to the next 10 years of teamwork!
Link to article here>>

…excuse us as we catch up with our news… Last July, Jinhee Park along with Martina Decker and Gordin Gill juried Architect Magazine's 2012 R+D Awards. The 6th annual competition celebrates innovative research that can potentially produce game-changing results. With the construction industry still at a crawl, the jury was interested in solutions for real-world problems. They asked the questions: "Is it scaleable, is it reproducible?" They were especially drawn to the PV-Pod by Metalab and wholeheartedly supported it for a winning prize. “By using simple weight, it’s a very simple solution,” commented Jinhee Park on the water-filled weight and ballast for PV panels. The product elevantly solves the difficulty and risk of mechanically mounting solar panels to roofs making their proliferation in everyday situations much more feasible and cost-effective.

Last year we put on a 'mini' version of the Covergent Flux: Korea exhibit at the Korea Society in New York and we finally got around to putting the images on our website (yes, we are very behind on updates which thankfully means we're busy with projects!). The contents were originally was shown at the Harvard GSD two years ago where it was the first cross-disciplinary exhibit on Korea architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design mounted in the United States. The challenge of the Korea Society version was that in a space 10 times smaller than the GSD's Gund Hall gallery we had to condense the complex information into something legible without oversimplifying the issues. The other major challenge was to honor all the designers that participated in the original exhibit by not editing out any of the projects. Our solution was to use motion sensors triggering LED's so that when one walks around the room, the changing illumination patterns relate the project to the 5 organizing themes as well as to each other. Shifting to an even smaller scale, we are preparing for the launch of the book version of Convergent Flux: Architecture and Urbanism in Korea, in the upcoming new year. Please stay tuned…

The Chicago Athenaeum, together with The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies, has announced the winners of its 2012 American Architecture Awards. These are among the field’s most prestigious awards, honoring the best of new design in American architecture. We are privileged to announce the White Block Gallery was awarded this year and will be exhibited at a special exhibition of all awarded American projects at ‘The City and the World’ symposium presented by the European Centre for Architecture Art, Design, and Urban Studies and the Chicago Athenaeum in Istanbul, Turkey in conjunction with the Istanbul Biennial. The exhibition will travel throughout Europe following its opening in Turkey.

[photo courtesy Chang Kyun Kim Photography]

Jinhee Park and John Hong will be lecturing at Tulane School of Architecture. The event is co-sponsored by the AIA New Orleans. A special thanks to Dean Kenneth Schwartz and Tulane for the invitation and hospitality. The event is free and open to the public.

Monday 22 October at 6pm
Thomson Hall, Room 201
Tulane University School of Architecture
 

The lecture is free and open to the public: Tuesday, Oct 16th at 6:45pm,  University of Waterloo School of Architecture, Main Lecture Theater, 7 Melville Street South, Cambridge, Ontario N1S 2H47.

As part of DesignPhiladelphia, Simon Kim and Mariana Ibañez of IKstudio will be in conversation with Jinhee Park and John Hong for the event 'Movie Matter,' moderated by Alicia Imperiale. Though the moving image is not a native medium to architecture, the participants will demonstrate how it is being used to fuel the design process instead of just documenting it.

SsD will discuss how the primitive medium of the 'flip book' is used to bridge the gap between drawing and actual space. Instead of relying on the immersive qualities of film, this 'low-tech' medium brings the viewer in as an active participant so that space is understood as both a literal construct and a conceptual one.

The event is free and open to the public – Registration is recommended.
Thursday, October 11th at 6:30pm at the School of Design, University of Pennsylvania – Meyerson Lower Gallery, 210 South 34th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104

Jinhee Park and John Hong will lecture at Cornell University on their recent work. The presentation will include award winning completed projects such as White Block Gallery and Cloud as well as upcoming work slated for construction.

The venue is free and open to the public: Wednesday, September 26th at 5:15pm at  Milstein Hall, 943 University Ave, Ithaca, NY 14850.

In the June issue of of Residential Architect, SsD was listed as one of the 15 Young Firms to Watch in their 15th anniversay issue. Jinhee Park spoke about how SsD's projects always have some research component embedded within them that translates (and migrates) to other scales and project types. Special thanks to Nigel Maynard for covering the story and a warm congrats to our colleagues Howeler + Yoon and Merge Architects who made the list.

Please join us for a public lecture at the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture, The City College of New York at 630pm, September 6th. The lecture will be held at the Sciame Auditorium at the School of Architecture, 141 Convent Avenue (at 135th Street), New York, NY 10031.

Thanks to CNBC for featuring the Big Dig House in the online story: Salvaged Sanctuaries. Six years after its construction there is still renewed interest not only in the house itself but in the topic of recycling infrastructural waste. Admittedly, one of the limiting factors in this project was the sheer size and weight of the salvaged structure. Any fabrication including cutting of members and creating new connections was prohibitively expensive. Which leads us to the next obvious topic – Precycling… We are still asking the question: What if when we create the inevitable temporary roadways and bridges we already build with the second use in mind? As these infrastructures become 'obsolete' their materials can return to the public realm, precycled for schools, housing, libraries, etc. One thing we learned the hard way on this project is that this kind of comprehensive thinking cannot be implemented without extensive bureaucratic hurdles. Which leads us to the second question: To create significant and necessary change in our built environment, do architects (at least some of us) need to focus their efforts on policy rather than design? Instead of the 'hardware' of our built environments, is its 'software' of codes, politics, and processes in need of  a severe reboot?