SsD

Island of Water | Incheon, Korea | 2010
[ international competition shortlist, AIA/BSA Unbuilt Architecture Honor Award ]

Incheon’s lost maritime history is recovered by recreating an inland sea around the historical Ahamdo island: 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. Recreation areas, visitor's center, and a floating pontoon pedestrian bridge reminiscent of the historical path to Ahamdo are integrated in ways that allow damaged ecosystem to regenerate while simultaneously drawing visitors to witness the gradual change. The landscapes are specifically designed to stabilize and regenerate the marsh while filtering polluting runoff from the adjacent urbanized areas.  Thousands of abandoned boating vessels are re-used to create artificial reefs that control tidal flow allowing the re-creation of the tidal marsh to support local plants and wildlife.  The new pedestrian bridge also doubles as an oyster habitat to filter and replenish the pollutants in the water.

Historic views of Ahamdo Island, circa 1930 (left) – One of Incheon's most significant cultural locations, it was tenuously connected to the land by a footbridge exposed only during low tide. Current conditions of Ahamdo Island show it closed in by infrastructure and infill (right).

The new varied topography allows for a diversity of plant and wildlife habitats.

Amidst the habitats, a visitor's center lightly touches the ground but allows for extended views.

The floating pontoon bridge made of recycled buoys raises and lowers with the tide without touching the ground. Oyster farms that filter the water are suspended from the understructure.
 

The new pontoon bridge becomes a connective infrastructure between city and waterfront and becomes central viewing area for yearly festivals.

PROJECT CREDITS:

architect
Jinhee Park  AIA + John Hong  AIA, LEED AP (principals in charge), Jiseok Park, Frederick Peter Ortner, Juho Lee

RELATED WORKS:

emerald km	boston city hall	acc	mass art	white stadium

 print post

Newton, MA | 2011
[ Dwell Magazine Feature Feb 2012 ]

In many older suburbs, the typical pattern of construction is to replace an existing house with a much larger one built out to the legal setbacks. The Braver House is a prototypical alternative: To instead build a small, efficient residence that simultaneously minimizes its actual footprint, while maximizing its perceived sense of interior space. This is achieved through two methods: By expanding a diaphanous screen to the setback line expanding the territory of the interior to the exterior, and by shifting the plan and section to capture elongated views from inside to outside. By claiming the under utilized lawn of the typical suburban yard and replacing it with permeable hardscape, potable water use is drastically reduced. In terms of minimizing energy use, the diminutive size of the house is coupled with a completely passive cooling system, a solar powered radiant heated floor and super insulated walls and roof.

Minimum Footprint / Maximum Permeability In older suburbs where landcost has multiplied, new rebuilds are typically built out to the legal setback line. The Braver House proposes a new minimum footprint solution where the sense of space is expanded by instead building a screen out to the setback line. If deployed as a prototype, a series of Braver Houses could increase the permeability of a catchment area decreasing the burden on municipal systems. Meanwhile energy use would be drastically reduced due to the smaller size.

Interior spaces are overlapped with the exterior: the wooden screen becomes a middle ground that defines expanded boundaries. In the living area (top), a high efficiency, low-emission wood burning stove supplements the solar powered radiant floor heating system. Its proximity to the passive stack directly opposite from it allows heat to be drawn into the upper floors of the house.  A renewable cork floor is used throughout the house. Its color is matched with the exterior screen to create visual and spatial continuity.

1st Floor Plan: Each interior space has a reciprocal exterior space – for instance the living and dining areas have their counterpart directly opposite a set of floor to ceiling windows so that the landscape screen becomes the the 'outside' rather than the envelope of the house.

View of sideyard: The openness of the ground floor is screened from neighbors while cantilevered 2nd floor areas provide shading for the ground floor. The strategically asymmetrical pitch of the roof conceals an array of solar panels while maximizing their solar exposure.
 

Beginning with the existing site slope, the house is shifted in both plan and section: Although the rooms are small, oblique views expand the sense of space.

Instead of foreshortened frontal views, the shift in plan extends views obliquely through the sideyard.
 

The shift in plan and section extends views through the public areas of the house and to the yard beyond.

Second Floor Plan (left): The spaces are organized around a vertical ventilation and plumbing core.  The gently sloping stair (right) creates a vertical continuity between the elements of the house.

The stair wraps around the infrastructural core and becomes a protagonist as it moves through the house organizing adjacent spaces and views to the outside (top and left). From the master bedroom (right) the interior of the stair becomes an ‘exterior.’

PROJECT CREDITS:

architect
John Hong  AIA, LEED + Jinhee Park  AIA  (principals in charge), Matthew Allen, Frederick Peter Ortner, Christoph Schäfer, Aleta Budd, Brian Vester, Nathalie Zegarra

construction manager
Osprey Design/Build LLC

structural engineer
Evan Hankin

RELATED WORKS:

8 towers	hidden house	coulter house	hbny	verdant studios

 print post

Panama City, Panama | 2008 

As Panama City expands at an unprecedented rate, environmental sustainability is becoming central to future developments. However, because of the high amount of rainfall and humidity, the effect of natural ventilation strategies for office and residential towers is limited. Instead we looked at ways to both generate electricity and harvest rainwater through a series of architectural ‘waterfalls’: Rainwater falling on the tower roofs is brought down to the lower roof of the tower base where gentle sloping surfaces generated from parking and pedestrian circulation is used to create a series of ‘waterfalls’ that turn a series electricity generating turbines. The water is then filtered and stored to water the sloping green roofs during dry, hot months.
 

Through the variation of the skin many differentiations are created in unit types and sizes without changing the essential layout of the building infrastructure.  Views orientations are multiplied and where the skin is flat, 2-story duplex units are formed.

Aerial view of Type 2 towers: Several hundred meters east of the Type 1 towers, the base of these mixed-use buildings is similar to the Type 1 tower so that they are understood as part of the same green infrastructural network.  The mixed commercial and residential program is split by a community center and indoor pool that spans both towers.

PROJECT CREDITS:

architect
John Hong AIA/LEED, Jinhee Park AIA  (principals in charge), Catarina Marques

RELATED PROJECTS:

acc	8 towers	white stadium	soft lofts

Thu Thiem, Vietnam | 2008

The proposed plaza, park, and bridge hosts ceremonial and everyday events in a new mixed-use district for Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. Our project creates a kilometer long plaza, green in its physical presence, green in its construction and dynamically scalable to the events of the city. Floating above the entire plaza and bridge is a monumental pergola, a filigree of steel cables covered in flowering vines, the patterns of the openings creating an ever changing play of shadow and light. This unifying roof turns the plaza into a single super-scaled outdoor living room. At the same time, a panoply of differently scaled openings create a series of perceptual spaces of different sizes, intimate at the lake end and becoming progressively more grand as they approach the Saigon River.

Comparison of Plaza Sizes:A network of paths and spaces defined by the landscape canopy extends over the river and creates the perception of a lengthened plaza that connects the two sections of the city.

As well as providing shade for the plaza, the urban scale canopy defines a multitude of programmatic activities and scales to animate the space around the clock.

The canopy and paving work in conjunction as a new infrastructure:  Both overhead photo-voltaics in the canopy and under-foot Piezo-electric flooring generates energy which then powers the lighting and public wi-fi installed in the canopy.  Runoff water collected from the permeable paving is filtered and re-used for public restrooms and to drip irrigate the canopy vines.

PROJECT CREDITS:

architect
Jinhee Park AIA + John Hong AIA, LEED (principals in charge), Jonathan Louie, Matthew Allen, Frederick Peter Ortner, Brett Albert, Daniel Cashen

landscape architect
Ground, Inc.

RELATED PROJECTS:

boston city hall	mass art

Seoul, Korea | 2008
[finalist, invited competition]

Water, digital technology, and sustainability are merged in this new reinterpretation of the iconic but now underutilized Seoul Olympic Stadium.  A temporary structure to house the international Seoul Design Olympiad (SDO) events, an inflatable arch is held away from the structure of the historic stadium.  Through a simple process of condensing water on the surface of this inflatable structure through solar evaporation, rain runoff is purified and ‘misted’ to create a white volume that catches digital light and defines new energized events.  The mist also nourishes a nursery of culturally significant trees within the center of the stadium.  At the end of the event, these trees are placed throughout the city of Seoul according to the city’s masterplan, extending the positive memory of the white stadium.

Inspired by the simple and elegant pottery of the Baek-Ja era, the stadium becomes a new urban figure.  By using an inflatable structure combined with a simple process of condensing water in sunlight within the inflatable,  the mist at times hides the stadium and then allows it to reappear giving the existing building a new sense of life.

As the stadium fronts the Hangang River, contaminated water from the river is purified through the condensation process and used to water a grove of trees.

The simple process of purifying water through condensation is demonstrated.

The nursery of trees is then relocated to different parts of Seoul according to the city's masterplan.  The alliance of the two major municipal projects creates an overall savings for the city.

The  purified water is used for irrigation as well as well as for creating atmospheric mists for events.

View from the Han River: Changing patterns of white mist illuminated by LED's define the underutilized existing stadium as a new event space.  The purification of the water into mist allows the public to understand the importance of the river.

PROJECT CREDITS:

architect
Jinhee Park  AIA + John Hong  AIA, LEED (principals in charge), Frederick Peter Ortner, Chris Ryan, Leehong Kim, Jaeyoon Kim, Chang Zhang

structural engineer
Paul Kassabian, SGH

RELATED PROJECTS:

acc	czech library	boston harbor	cade museum

< back to:   works < cultural

 print post