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

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.
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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.

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.



SsD receives its Minority and Women Business certification in Massachusetts.

Ordos 100
The inevitable cultural negotiations
when building a city in the 21st Century

An exhibition on architecture, urbanization and globalization

with 100 architectural designs including SsD’s 8 Towers
with photographs by Maurice Weiss

During ART Basel

June 10th – 14th, 2009
Open daily 5PM-8PM

Opening June 10th, 5PM-8PM

www.ordos100basel.info

E-Halle Basel, Erlenstrasse 15
For directions: www.e-halle.ch

For more information: ordos@territorialagency.com

SsD was one of 50 architectural firms nominated worldwide for the Marcus Prize for Architecture

“Thinking Green, Going Global”
Rising star earns national acclaim

By Robert Campbell
[link to online version of article]

excerpt from the AIA press release:

Jinhee Park and the firm she co-founded—Single Speed Design—are widely published, including being awarded the first Metropolis Next Generation Prize. “Park is among those few uncommon young architects whose contributions and skills will shape our profession for decades to come,” writes Diane Georgopulos, FAIA, on behalf of the Boston Society of Architects nomination.  The firm’s Big Dig House (2006), in Massachusetts, drew particular acclaim from Susan S. Szenasy, Metropolis editor in chief. “Their project, recycling the remnants of Boston’s Big Dig into beautiful housing, so impressed the judges that the proposal, happily, came to represent the high standards we have since then put on our awards program,” Szenasy writes.

see also: Metropolis POV

Verdant Studios is featured in:
Space Craft 2:  More Fleeting Architecture and Hideouts
Klanten, Robert and Lukas Feireiss, ed., Berlin: Gestalten, 2009.

The IDSA Texas Chapter will be holding a conference on living green where Jinhee Park will be a featured speaker. We welcome you to attend:
‘Design Odysey: Living Green‘

Jinhee Park and John Hong conducted a sustainability workshop at the Universidad Internacional in Quito, Ecuador