The curved glass entry has been installed at the White Block Gallery. A shallow curve that includes glass pivot doors is difficult to achieve. Some doubted it could be done at all, but we pushed for it and the fabricator ended up even surprising themselves. Signalling entry within an otherwise taut building skin, the geometry is a precursor to the sequence of choreographed spaces: the compressed entry hall, the tall super-core, and the landscape and pond in the distance…
The glazing at White Block Gallery is nearing completion. We are very excited about our custom fritted glass pattern which encloses all of the transparent parts of the building. Seemingly simple, the gradation works in multiple different ways: It shades the space during the warmer summer months while allowing in the low winter sun for passive heating. It also filters views to the outside giving the larger galleries a sense of interior intimacy while allowing controlled views to the natural surrounds. From the exterior it lends the building many complex readings: sometimes reflecting and augmenting the landscape and sometimes allowing views to the interior logic of the structural system.
The first of the Clover Restaurants is open at Harvard Square at 7 Holyoke. Not only was it a privilege collaborating with Clover on a new concept for fast food, it was also a privilege working in the Holyoke Center, the Harvard owned building designed by Josep Lluís Sert. Our approach was to combine the minimum-footprint-aesthetic of the Clover brand with the abstract spatial concepts of Sert’s space: Like a minimalist art installation, fluorescent ‘cloud canopies’ are suspended below the original waffle ceiling. A void cut into the existing mezzanine brings natural light from a skylight above while a wire trellis will allow climbing ivy to eventually reach this light source. The idea of transparency is both literal and figural: The boundary between ‘kitchen’ and ‘customer’ is dissolved to reveal the workings of the food-making while the use of glass railings also allows visual communication between spaces while reflecting and multiplying the light.
Clover is part of a larger concept for tasty, vegetarian fast food. Their (and our) mission is to revolutionize the way food is produced, distributed, and ultimately consumed - because if we can do so, it will have an enormously positive impact on the environment. This is not just ‘greenwash,’ in fact if you look at modern food systems you will notice enormous dysfunction on many interrelated levels. Because of the sheer scale of our current state of affairs, a slight shift will make revolutionary change. The clover food trucks which rolled out earlier last year are part of this larger network. Also check out Clover on the web.
Gwangju Biennale, Korea | 2009
[curators' selection for full scale construction]
One of 20 'rest box' designs selected by the curators of the Gwangju Design Biennale in Korea for full scale construction, the Infinite Box is a response to both the literal site of the nearby Soswaewon Gardens as well as the garden's metaphysical site embodied in the work of poet-scholar Kim Inhu who immortalized the Soswaewon's qualities in a 48 verse poem. Our project treads this fine boundary between the actual and the metaphysical through inextricably collapsing the boundary between the preconceptions of this dichotomy. From the exterior, the box reads as a singular form with carved out voids. Upon discovering the interior however, an inversion occurs where the voids now become perceivable as figural objects through their reflection against the 6 mirrored interior planes. Thus, the destabilization of void-solid, finite-infinite as one passes from outside the box to its interior and vice versa inspires new understandings of interior-exterior, mind-body, object-field, architecture-landscape.
From the exterior, the infinite box appears as a finite form with figural voids subtracted out of a platonic and comprehensible solid mass.
Siteplan: From within, one realizes that the bounded box is actually sitting in a conceptually infinite field.
Upon entering the box, the idea of interiority is reversed so that instead of an enclosed and compact room, the mirrored surfaces create an expansive landscape that recalls the Soswaewon forest.
One of the openings was designed for the scale of the child. The view through the pavilion questions the dichotomy between interior and exterior.
PROJECT CREDITS:
architect
Jinhee Park AIA + John Hong AIA/LEED (principals in charge), Eunkyoung Kim, Marcela Delgado, Mijung Kim, Virginie Bonnet, Frederick Peter Ortner
exhibit curator and coordinator
Byoungsoo Cho, BCHO architects associates
fabricator Han Design Group Co., Ltd.
photography
Wooseop Hwang (exteriors)
RELATED PROJECTS:
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| acc | czech library | hbny | white stadium | convergent flux |
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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.
Brooklyn, NY | 2007
Rather than consider ‘Urban’ and ‘Soft’ as contradictory concepts, this project rethinks the terms as counterparts to one another. Instead of a series of windows that polarize notions of inside and outside, two transformable layers are utilized: The outer skin becomes a system of operable clear windows while the inner skin utilizes sliding panels with printed ‘windows’ that transition between clear and opaque. The space that is captured between these layers is a kind of ‘soft’ zone – neither outside nor inside, but a gradation between the two. From the interior, the additional perceptual depth allows users to innovate previous conceptions of the domestic.
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Typological Transformations: 1. The old-law 'railroad' tenement had little access to light and air. 2. The new-law 'dumbell' tenement enforced small unnocupiable lightwells. 3. Along with the rear-yard setback, soft lofts proposes a 'soft' perimeter of occupiable light and air spaces. 
Existing Zoning: Low 1 or 2 story warehouses are the defining characteristic that have attracted new residents(left). The new zoning implies complete erasure with 5 or 6 story new construction.
Suggested Zoning: By not lowering the proposed FAR, new construction could still be spliced into the existing fabric (left). The sidewall could become a new layer of history among the existing warehouse streetfronts.
The sidewall (or party wall) can become a new surface for bringing in light as well as an elevation that participates tangentially with the surrounding urban scene. As only 15% of this wall can be glazed per code, the wall can be more effective as an overall distributed pattern rather than as a few isolated openings.
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A skip-stop elevator allows duplex units. The double-height soft zone between the interior and exterior is defined by sliding panels that can be configured by the user to naturally vary the environmental performance and transparency of the space.
PROJECT CREDITS:
architect
Jinhee Park AIA, John Hong AIA/LEED (principals in charge), Frederick Peter Ortner, Erik Carlson, Anne Levallois, Sadmir Ovcina, Youngju Baik, Chris Minor, Hyeyoung Kim
RELATED PROJECTS:
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| hbny | mass art | czech library |
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'Work' for us is equal parts research and production. Without research, production becomes a repetition of previous solutions without sensitivity to the dynamic conditions of site and culture. Without production, research exists as an untested set of theories, compelling in their potential but unable to develop beyond generalities. Interweaving research and production allows one to inform the other in a continual learning process. Each work demands its individual solution that balances the aesthetic, social, functional, and ecological with an economy of means.
