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

"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.

SsD is one of 5 teams shortlisted for the BSA headquarters competition in Boston.   It was an intense period of mutliple deadlines and we are proud to have made it to the final round. After Jinhee and John gave an initial presentation to the jury, Peter Ortner presented the scheme to a larger audience at BuildBoston.   A special thanks to our dedicated team:  Peter Ortner, Juho Lee, Eunkyoung Cho, with additional help from Jeong Jun Song.  Also thanks to our dedicated consultants who provided key insight into the design: LAM partners. Simpson Gumpertz & Heger. Thompson Engineering Company, VAV International Inc., Acentech, 3SI, Green Engineer LLP, and Cafco Construction Management.

SsD has been selected as a finalist in an international competition in Incheon, Korea. We propose recovering Incheon’s lost maritime history by recreating an inland sea around its Ahamdo island - now threatened to be infilled by adjacent urban development – allowing it to be an island once again. This sea will incorporate artificial reefs to shelter a delicate wetland ecosystem with an urban wilderness park running through it. A floating pedestrian bridge, reminiscent of the historical path to Ahamdo, will be the new destination that connects Incheon to its new waterfront district.

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.

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.

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

By Robert Campbell
[link to online version of article]

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

SsD wins ‘Best of Boston’ in Contemporary Category