The project is the brainchild of Seoul design studio Intg, known for their modern, clean lines, sharp angles and dynamic shapes, and, most importantly, designs that, despite their seemingly futuristic bent, focus on the integration of form and function. Though initially imposing, their spaces are meant to fit comfortably into everyday life. The firm’s under-construction Haesol School in Seoul is a great example of how they express their forward-thinking design ethos through usually banal buildings like schools (and of course, banks).

Hana Bank, a prestigious banking institution in the business district of Seoul’s Yeouido Island, aims to create a space where its customers can experience the best in digital service. In a world where more and more people are relying on mobile and internet transactions for their banking, Hana recognizes the need for private spaces where customers feel at ease and comfortable, all while experiencing the best service possible.

And Intg was the right firm for the job, immediately grasping the institution’s desire to blend privacy with comfort, efficiency with serenity. Dubbed Gold Club Yeouido, the lounge, according to a recent article by Wallpaper, “[blends] the digital with the analogue and the physical” with a space that’s technologically tricked-out but still focused on the customers’ needs and comfort in a “gentle, tactile interior full of textures and serene color tones.”

The club is also meant to evoke a feeling of exclusivity, with added perks and more sophisticated spaces for the various membership levels. Spread out over two floors, the over 1,100-square-meter space includes spots that are VIP-access only, including a “floating” meeting room “inspired by [both] classical and Oriental elements,” according to the Intg design team.

The surrounding areas are distinct yet flexible. Providing spaces for customers to complete their designated banking chores, the rooms are designed to serve different needs through both adaptable and sophisticated means. Meant to “loosely [reflect] traditional Korean residential architecture,” according to the designers, the arrangement echoes Korean houses in their layout and rooms existing as distinct, interspersed islands, each with their own function. Surrounded by soothing, natural hues and a pleasing dichotomy between soft and hard textures. the area is somehow still welcoming despite its seemingly sparse decor.

After being approached with their latest project for state-of-the-art private lounges in the prestigious Seoul institution Hana Bank, design studio Intg discovered that even “in a highly digital environment, customers still visit bank branches to handle complicated tasks, which come with an emotional burden.” Their goal in creating the bank’s digital dens was to create spaces that perfectly blended customer comfort with the efficiency of tech-savvy experiences: a true VIP experience meant to soothe and serve customers in an increasingly digital world.

The post Luxury Gets Tech-Savvy at Hana Bank’s Private Lounges in Seoul first appeared on Dornob.

A new twist on the “battle royale” genre (named for the Japanese film of the same name), Squid Game uses a collection of candy-colored sets to illustrate an essential contrast between childhood innocence and disillusioned depravity. Architecture plays a key role in setting an oppressive, dread-inducing mood, and each set introduces a new emotion or psychological trigger for the contestants to grapple with in the midst of all the chaotic violence.

Six classic kids’ games, including tug-of-war and a version of “red light, green light” featuring a terrifying oversized animatronic doll, take place in eerie combat arenas seemingly symbolizing stages of human life. The first looks like the sort of outdoor setting you might play in as a child, with a cheerful blue sky overhead. The second is a cartoonish playground, and the third features giant yellow platforms suspended high up in the air with a dark backdrop. The fourth features a set modeled on a traditional Korean village with alleys and houses, and the fifth places each contestant in a circus-like environment with a glass bridge and flashing lights. Step on the wrong section, and the glass will break, plummeting the contestants into an abyss.

In a Netflix interview, director Hwang explained that he tried to simulate the atmosphere of real playgrounds for some of those sets, sand and all, featuring oversized equipment that reduces the adult competitors back to their childhood size. “Death games commonly take place in terrifying, horrible places,” Hwang says, so instead, he and art director Chae Kyoung-Sun tried to make the sets “look cute and sweet, as a place to trigger nostalgia.”

Most dramatic of all are the disorienting labyrinthine staircases the contestants must climb to access each game arena. Hwang notes that he took inspiration from Dutch artist M.C. Escher’s lithograph print called “Relativity,” but if you’re an architecture buff, you’ll likely note an even more striking similarity. The bright colors, staircases, and stepped walls look almost exactly like a real-world building by Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill called La Muralla Roja. Located in Calpe, Spain, the housing estate completed in 1973 is painted red outside with internal areas in bold shapes of blue and violet, all set against views of the ocean. Bofill’s creation, which features swimming pools and solariums as well as 50 apartments (some of which you can rent on Airbnb), is a far cry from the Brutalist architecture that usually inspires dystopian films and series.

The contestants sleep in a giant gymnasium where bunk beds are stacked against the wall in terraced configurations, calling to mind the design of a Roman Colosseum, especially when viewed from the contestants’ perspective, making them both viewers and participants in the spectacle. But the stacked beds also reference goods in a warehouse, depersonalizing the contestants, and the figurative ladder-climbing we all must do to succeed in modern society. Another set, a stark white waiting lounge, evokes the curving, utterly colorless and spaceship-like works of Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid, like the Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Viewers have all sorts of personal interpretations of exactly what Squid Game is critiquing: capitalism, communism, the stereotypical competitiveness of contemporary Asian society, and the fact that most of us struggle through the challenges of everyday life and get left behind while a handful of winners “level up.” Whatever your takeaway, this is one series you won’t forget anytime soon.

The post The Architecture of Squid Game Symbolizes the Loss of Childhood Innocence first appeared on Dornob.

“If we think outside the box, feces has precious value to make energy and manure,” Cho told Reuters. “I have put this value into ecological circulation.”

The BeeVi toilet (a portmanteau of the words “bee” and “vision”) uses a vacuum pump to send feces to an underground storage tank without the use of water. In the tank, microorganisms break the waste down into methane, which in turn supplies energy for the building and powers a gas stove, a hot water boiler, and a solid oxide fuel cell. The average person produces 500 grams of feces per day, which can be converted to 50 liters of methane gas, generating 0.5kWh of electricity. That’s roughly the amount you need to drive an electric car about 1.2 kilometers (0.75 miles). Essentially, this means we’re all flushing valuable material down the toilet every day. Why not make money off it instead?

So far, the project is paying off. Students who might have been hesitant to use the toilet without an incentive are now lining up to get their Ggool. The toilet provides a QR code after each use, which can then be redeemed at the “feces market” for stuff like fruit and instant cup noodles. Maybe the term “feces market” is a tad unnecessary, but hey, it’s getting the project global attention, and that’s what counts. Unsurprisingly, this story has resulted in headlines like “This Toilet Turns Your Sh*t into Sh*tcoins” and “Crap to Crypto.”

“I had only ever thought that feces are dirty, but now it is a treasure of great value to me,” postgraduate student Heo Hui-jin told Reuters at the Ggool market. “I even talk about feces during mealtimes to think about buying any book I want.”

It might be funny and a little gross, but the BeeVi toilet could make a big impact, especially in Korea, where water is scarce. North Korea in particular has suffered a lack of rural water supply exacerbated by recent heat waves, putting future crop harvests in peril. Even highly efficient toilets use 1.28 gallons of water or more per flush, and most people flush their toilets at least five times per day. Toilets like the BeeVi would not only eliminate all that water usage, but produce renewable energy at the same time.

Professor Cho Jae-weon directs the Convergence Research Center, named “Science Walden,” which focuses on the overlap of science and the arts, and has designed small water purification units that operate without electricity for distribution to villages in various countries. He’s also one of the founding members of North Korea Water Society under the Ministry of Unification to research potential ways to collaborate on water issues in both Koreas.

The post This Waterless Toilet Makes Cryptocurrency Out of Human Waste first appeared on Dornob.

A TV documentary show I Met You recently used VR to digitally recreate the late wife of Kim Jung-soo, a 51-year-old father of five, four years after her passing.

Declaring that his biggest desire was to see “even just a shadow” of his wife one more time, Kim had to first overcome opposition from some of his children. His oldest daughter Jong-bin felt that a reunion would only delay her father’s grieving period. Eventually, she relented.

“It is my last wish” he says, with his daughter adding that “that’s why we decided to allow him to meet Mom again.”

Kim’s other daughter Jong-yun was swayed because of his deep love for her mother. “He would kiss her from time to time when working, when eating, or when watching TV. Even when my mother was sick and lost her hair, my father would say that she was pretty and carried her around,” she recalls.

Kim was also eager to show his youngest children a “live” version of their mother, as she passed away when they were still too little to have any concrete memories of her. Kim’s wife Ji-hye died after years of battling a serious illness.

I Met You, produced by Korean broadcast company MBC, took six months to prepare all the VR tech, using video footage to recreate Ji-hye’s movements and photos to match a digital face and body to her likeness. An actress was brought into meld her own voice with Ji-hye’s reconstructed one to make it sound more lifelike.

The digital reunion began as Kim geared up in his VR headset and entered the green screen room. In his VR view, the setting transformed into the home of memories where they began their family. During the tearful meeting, Kim first asks his virtual wife, “Are you not in pain anymore?” He weeps as he holds her hands and they dance. They walk through a garden together as he gets a final chance for closure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWsSOxcIhCA%20

“Even though I can’t hear you and I don’t see you, I know you’ve always been next to me and the kids,” he tells her, adding that “the kids are doing so well now, so you can relax…don’t worry too much about us” and “I will tell you how the kids are living one by one when the time comes and I go up [to join you].”

Kim’s children, who were able to watch the interaction between their parents from a different room, also got emotional.

The ability to virtually restore a deceased love one on the show has been met with both praise and criticism. Some claim the reunion can be healing for those who have experienced loss, while others believe it allows people to stay stuck in their grief, never properly moving on.

This is not the first time I Met You has used VR to reconnect family members separated by death. In the first season, mother Jang Ji-sung was reunited with her seven-year-old daughter Naveon, who had passed away three years earlier from the rare disease hemochromatosis.

The post VR Allows Man One Last Dance with His Late Wife first appeared on Dornob.

For his recent collection Art from Factory (AFF), Kang worked with a Korean business to fashion furniture from some custom metal molds and the company’s own assembly equipment. Hot plastic in vibrant hues oozes out of nozzles, layering back and forth on itself as it fills out into the rough shape of a chair or stool. The effect is a stunning, multi-colored seat that looks like it could have been squeezed out a tube of toothpaste.

The project began when the company, which generates plastic-coated steel piping, including grip stands for all the buses in South Korea’s capital city, emailed a plea for help in managing their waste. Their plastic by-product was accumulating at the same rate as their finished output, according to Kang. The solution was art. “After observing its system closely, I decided to create a design out of the remaining materials to pursue the virtue of my art: seeking wit from everyday life,” he says.

On his Instagram account, Kang explains his thought process with AFF: “Since the development of industrialization, art and design have been divided into black and white, and the boundaries between industrial and artistic products have become clear. However, this clear line only separates everything from what is considered as practical and what is not. To me, factories were the opposite concept of art, operating mass production systems. Through this project, I wanted to find a way to produce something using plastic waste in these hard, uniformed gray spaces in order to achieve a variety of results. I think this is the process of trying to find values that can reflect the present in the boundaries of today’s art and design.”

With the transformation of machine-made dross into pulled-taffy-like fixtures, Kang was able to achieve a synergistic union between industrial functionality and artistic form. He allowed his passion for fashion to run wild with this initial compilation, using red, white, and black as the basis for his “Nike Air Jordan” chair. Kang also crafted one in the traditional colors of Reebok merchandise, a nod to his previous collaboration with the company.

A green stool with one red leg Kang labeled “red-eyed tree frog.” He also experimented with a traffic cone shape called ‘NO PARKING’ that has already been sold to a fellow Korean designer Joonghyung Cho.

Kang has been on the art scene since 2006, when he graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a Masters in Studio Design. Before that, he studied at the Seoul National University. Other recent creative ventures have included his Collection 1.3, stools made of metal pipes and rope, and the “Oddly Bookshelf,” a metal see-saw that holds books in place with a wooden orb.

His AFF furniture compilation is currently under development for post-COVID 19 exhibitions and collaborations. Items for individual purchase will be available soon.

The post Korean Factory Waste Resurrected as Eye-Popping Furniture first appeared on Dornob.

The facade of the SMTown Coex Artium in Seoul’s Coex K-Pop Square just became a giant projection screen for the world’s largest anamorphic illusion. Entitled “Public Media Art #1_WAVE,” the outdoor installation features enormous, strikingly realistic crashing waves that appear to be trapped within a glass container.

That “glass” is actually a curved digital billboard measuring 265 feet (80.8 meters) wide by 66 feet (20.1 meters) high. That’s about four times the size of a basketball court in Seoul, according to The Korea Herald. Incredibly crisp and sharp, the imagery is paired with sound for a greater impact. Little details like wet spots on the “ceiling” of the illusive space help give it a sense of realism.

“WAVE” is the work of d’strict, a company that specializes in “designing, making, and delivering breathtaking visual content on Digital Out of Home.” They say works like these “offer the world a new experience” in the form of high-definition outdoor advertising that can be shaped to any size screen.

The SMTown Coex Artium is part of the Coex Convention and Exhibition Center in the upscale neighborhood of Gangnam, also known as home to SM Entertainment (the music label representing many big K-pop stars). The goal is to make the square into a tourist attraction for K-pop fans, ultimately using the screen to blast music videos at a scale never seen before. 10 more of these digital billboards are being installed at the Coex Millennium Plaza throughout June.

“We aim to develop it (the K-pop Square) into a Korean version of Times Square, incorporating advertisement media, culture, and arts,” says an official with the Korean International Trade Association (KITA).

This technology will be used in other ways too, of course. D’strict explains that “in addition to the K-pop content produced/distributed through the subsidiary NIK, [we] will continue to create new digital theme parks by expanding the content (IP) with various materials such as EIDtainment content for kids, Digital Heritage content such as cultural heritage/tourist sites, etc. In addition, we plan to develop a variety of user interactions through active R&D on new digital media technologies in line with the rapidly changing digital environment, and through this, we will expand the space-based digital experience design reference targeting the world’s leading brands.”

So, yes, the kind of loud, looming digital advertising you can’t escape is almost certainly coming to the original Times Square, as well as building facades near you. Does this give you the thrilling feeling that we’re living in the future, or make you long for the days when we weren’t bombarded by advertisements everywhere we went? If only it were always ocean waves.

The post Giant Digital Waves Crash Against the Facade of a Museum in Seoul first appeared on Dornob.

It’s that parasitic quality of contrasting new additions that can make them either fascinating or repulsive, depending on your personal perspective. A new structure by OMA manages to capture that feeling, but you wouldn’t know until you get close to it that the base structure isn’t old and historic at all.

“Galleria in Gwanggyo” is an upscale department store set within the brand new town for which it’s named, just south of Seoul, South Korea. From afar, it looks like an old brick or stone industrial building that’s been sitting on the corner for many decades, perhaps vacant and abandoned for a while. The mottling of its facade suggests age and weathering. But against this neutral, textural surface billow strange new glass volumes. There’s a sense that they’re emerging from inside, too, expanding through openings like over-proofed bread dough.

Amazingly enough, the building isn’t old at all. It’s brand new construction, like the rest of Gwanggyo. A new development in a newly built town has no past or cultural heritage to draw from, and in a way, that gives it a sort of soullessness that’s entirely its own. OMA envisions the Galleria as a “natural point of gravity” for public life in the area, with a little bit of faux history bringing a touch of depth.

The firm adds that the building “evokes [the] nature of the neighboring park. Appearing as a sculpted stone emerging from the ground, the store is a visual anchor in the city. A public route is excavated from the stone volume and connects the public sidewalk to a rooftop garden — including both retail and cultural activities. It introduces an innovative element to the traditional typology of a department store.”

“The public route has a multifaceted glass facade that contrasts with the opacity of the stone. Through the glass, retail and cultural activities inside are revealed to the city’s passers-by, while visitors in the interior acquire new vantage points to experience Gwanggyo. Formed with a sequence of cascading terraces, the public loop offers spaces for exhibitions and performances.”

The triangular shapes within those futuristic glass elements are echoed in the textured mosaic stone facade, giving the whole project a sense of cohesiveness that doesn’t quite come together until you’re standing right in front of it. It’s an interesting reflection on the trend of pairing historic and ultramodern architectural elements, and the question of whether inventing a sense of history for new developments can ever really be effective. Do you think the architects achieved their goal?

The post Futuristic Faceted Glass Glitters on an Old-Looking Building by OMA first appeared on Dornob.

Steam bending is an ancient woodworking technique that uses heat and moisture from steam to change the cellular structure of wood and make it more pliable, enabling beautiful curves that add visual interest to all sorts of projects. The process involves soaking, steaming, bending, and clamping pieces of wood so that its lignin hardens into a new shape when cooled. The results are striking, sometimes looking so natural that you imagine the wood must have come from an unusually curly tree.

While steam bending is most commonly used for decorative effect in handcrafted homes and sculptural pavilions, artist Bae Se Hwa takes advantage of its malleability for comfort, too. In his newest “Steam Bent” series of furniture, the Seoul, South Korea-born artist demonstrates how this way of achieving curvature can transform even hard, solid walnut into invitingly ergonomic objects with unexpected silhouettes.

Elegant and streamlined, the Steam Bent Series features benches, lounges, tables, chairs, and desks that almost seem like they’ve warped in response to human touch. The pieces transition seamlessly from conventional angularity to body-hugging curvature, making what might have been uncomfortable surfaces into ones that are decidedly more supportive.

Se Hwa starts with a geometric diagram, warming slices of walnut in a steam box before bending them over a structured frame to produce the final shape. In the behind-the-scenes video above, we get to see just what this painstaking, time-consuming process looks like, giving us a hint at why the artist only produces three to five pieces each year.

Seven of Se Hwa’s most “iconic” designs from this collection were chosen by R & Company for a solo exhibit this year, a first for the artist. Many of the works included in the exhibition had never before been shown publicly, despite being sold out in all editions. The New York gallery says Se Hwa’s disciplined approach and continual exploration of wood allows him to “push the limits of this material forward.”

Contemporary art and design gallery Seomi International’s artist statement for Se Hwa reads: “Bae Se Hwa made his international debut in 2010 at the Design Miami Fair in Basel. Since then, he has become a fresh sensation as a young Korean designer. Bae is best known for his dynamic collection of works called the ‘Steam Series.’ This collection embodies emotional function [and displays] a sense of calmness and serenity. In Bae’s ‘Steam Series,’ he utilizes a steam-bending technique in which he distorts and deconstructs very linear wood elements and then recombines them into new pieces that are bent and curvilinear in form. This process has allowed Bae to create beautifully organic flowing pieces that are very much alive with rhythm and demonstrate the flexibility of wood despite its solidity.”

“Bae’s philosophy is to reach balance and harmony through the use of form and function. His pieces follow this philosophy, each of them depicting curvaceous yet minimalistic designs: a perfect balance of natural elements and geometric construction that captivates and entrances the senses.”

The post Get Wrapped Up in Bae Se Hwa’s Steam-Bent Furniture first appeared on Dornob.

The post Blooming House Unfolds Like Origami first appeared on Dornob.

In this digital age we live in, it’s almost impossible to fight the urge to constantly capture everyday life and the world around us. This is particularly true when it comes to social media platforms like Instagram, which has single-handedly driven hotels, restaurants, and cafés everywhere to strive for more aesthetically-pleasing designs, all in hopes that customers will be wowed enough to photograph them, upload them to their stories and profiles, and geotag them so that all of their followers know exactly where to find them.

This craze has sparked the imagination of many designers who are into all things weird and wonderful — things that are celebrated in all their glory on social media. One of the latest creations to come from that world is a wacky café in South Korea whose interior has been designed to look like a cartoon.

Café Yeonnam-dong opened in Seoul last year and has been making waves across the internet ever since. The quirky establishment boasts an entirely monochromatic interior, with black and white markings all over the walls, floors, ceiling, and even on the furniture so as to give everything the flattened, two-dimensional look of a drawing. The overall effect is both disconcerting and playful, allowing visitors to pretend that they have stepped into the pages of a children’s book while they sip their coffee and eat pastries. More specifically, they might feel like they stepped into the animated Korean TV series W.

Visitors are drawn in by the distorted reality of it all: real people eating real food, drinking real drinks, and sitting on real furniture while surrounded by things that have been made to look fake and cartoonish. This effect is achieved by tracing black lines along the contours of the interiors, which themselves are painted white. Flat curtains have been drawn onto the windows, details of the leather furniture have been drawn onto the flat backgrounds against which customers sit, and an exaggerated herringbone pattern and woodgrain finish have been sketched over the surface of the floor.

All of this drawing takes the perspective and depth out of the space, as the shadows typically cast in corners, or along the grooves in a coffee cup, are absent, lending a strange sense of flatness to the space and the elements within it. Picture frames are drawn onto the walls, and windows are drawn into the cupboards. It’s a very light-hearted environment, and one that has been shared again and again on platforms like Instagram.

There are a couple splashes of color in some of the pretty table flowers and the garnishes on the sides of the cakes, but apart from that, it’s the customers that really fill this black and white wonderland with vibrancy. 

The post Black and White Café in South Korea Looks Like a Real-Live Cartoon first appeared on Dornob.

Recently, visionary Dutch architecture and design firm MVRDV unveiled a new urban walkway covered with lights and greenery in Seoul, South Korea. The project is called Seoullo 7017 Skygarden and takes its name from both the year of its original construction, 1970, and the year of its reopening, 2017. The word “Seoullo” translates to “Seoul Road,” or “Road to Seoul.” The new path is situated on an old elevated highway and spans nearly a kilometer in length. Located next to the city’s main railway station, Seoullo 7017 transforms a former piece of industrial infrastructure into almost 10,000 square meters of public space that connects to various shops, hotels, and parklands throughout the city center.

In creating the Skygarden, MVRDV hoped to improve the public perception of the South Korean capital and to make it — often thought of as inhospitable city due to its dense, urban nature and population of 10 million — more navigable for everyone. The linear park assumes the form of a collection of miniature gardens, each of which is passed through as the visitors continue along the walkway. Different kinds of plants have been grouped together in different areas to create isolated oases whose compositions, layouts, and identities are distinct from those of their neighbors. Nonetheless, all of the plants featured in Seoullo 7017 are native to South Korea. The spectacular array of perfumes and colors featured in each mini garden will undoubtedly change with the seasons, and the inhabitants of this bustling metropolis will be able to enjoy a living slice of nature without having to venture out of Seoul. Many of the Skygarden’s flowers, plants, shrubs, and trees vary in maturity, meaning they will blossom and die at different times. Consequently, growth and change will always play important parts in the urban park.

In total, over 24,000 plants are featured in this new vision for downtown Seoul. The park’s greenery, which consists of 228 unique species and sub-species, is arranged according to the Korean alphabet, making Seoullo 7017 a life-sized encyclopedia of Korea’s plant-life. When the sun sets in the evening, the entire Skygarden is lit up by a series of vibrant blue lights. Blue has not only been proven to be beneficial for plant growth but is also bright enough to make a good indicator for the walkway’s new stair and elevator access points. These lights give the park a unique nighttime character and help it seamlessly integrate itself into the ultramodern city.

Since winning the competition for the project in 2015, MVRDV has worked closely with local NGOs, the city council, landscape architects, and municipal advisors. All of this collaboration seems to have paid off, as the result of everyone’s efforts is nothing less than a nuanced, visually-stimulating, and fitting recreation of the old intercity highway.

The post MVRDV Designs Korea’s Answer to The High Line first appeared on Dornob.

Is college dorm-style living for adults a viable proposal for affordable housing in overcrowded cities? A micro apartment complex in Seoul offers bedroom-sized private units that connect to communal areas, and can be combined into two or more units for couples and families. Songpa Micro Housing by SsD Architecture encourages residents to socialize with each other, fostering a sense of community.

Many micro apartment complexes tend to be provisional, essentially just offering a place for singles or new transplants to crash at night without ever really feeling like home. One-room apartments packed in together can be cold and impersonal, with residents just passing each other in the hallways. This kind of approach could hinder micro apartments from being seen as a comfortable, long-term housing solution, especially as residents’ life circumstances change over time.

At Songpa, residents can gather in the ground-floor gallery space that functions as one big living room, as well as basement-level and second-floor communal areas. A micro-theater in the stairway to a cafe offers places to sit and relax. Many of these spaces are connected visually thanks to courtyards, skylights and lots of glass.

Couples can connect two neighboring units via semi-public open bridges and balconies, and the functions of each apartment shift at the flick of a wrist thanks to operable walls concealing the flip-down beds, tables, kitchens and bathroom facilities.

More from the architects

“Units can be used for differing programs such as galleries or work spaces. This flexibility allows occupants to live in the building longer and thus more sustainably as they will not have to move out with changing situations. Finally, the micro‐auditorium / cafe on the ground floor and basement are spatially linked to the units as a shared living room.

“While the zoning regulations require the building be lifted for parking, the resulting open ground plane can be constantly reprogrammed for differing events such as performances, art openings, or gatherings. Pedestrian traffic is pulled from the street down through the micro‐auditorium steps, connecting city, building, and residents to the exhibition spaces below.”

The post Micro Apartment Complex Offers the Best of Dorm-Style Living first appeared on Dornob.

For years sculptor Lee JaeHyo lived with his wife, fellow sculptor Cha Jong Rae in solitude and relative poverty, in Yanpyeong, Korea. “We started off in a cow shed,” she says in the video ‘Return to Nature‘ in which Jaehyo shows us around his factory workshop on the original site.

Lee Jae Hyo forges his signature “Wooden Sphere” sculptures by intertwining fallen timber into globe shapes, then burning them to a black, charred state. By polishing off the outer edges he creates a strong contrast of blonde wood and black interior. Many are placed in high-end international hotel lobbies and he is gaining global recognition, with art exhibitions around the world.

“I believe you can get more of a ‘wow effect’ when you create a striking piece from everyday common materials,” he says.

“The globe is the simplest form that demonstrates the wood’s original energy”, explains Lee. “No corners no angles. I like to make the most out of the material’s inherent feeling.”

These globes make beautiful works of nature art in their whole, spherical forms, but they can be manipulated for other uses too. For functionality, Lee might cut one of his globe creations in half and turn it into modern log furniture like this striking coffee table design.

Function follows form in strikingly beautiful and tactile pieces that recycle and recreate, and cry out to be touched, hugged or  lounged upon. The creative process is hard, tough – using fire, brute force and manpower. The end result is  almost ethereal in its perfection. “Every tree has unique growth rings and colors,” says Lee.

Lee JaeHyo’s other trademark sculptures are his pieces made from stainless steel nails and bolts, hammered and bent into wood. To determine the placement of the nails he scatters stones on the surface, then marks where they land to form a template for hammering. “This is more natural and accidental than deliberate human placement”. The whole is then torched until it is blackened, and the nails are highly polished to form a contrast.

“I have a lot of work to do. More changes are expected,” the sculptor says of his artworks made from found objects – wood, metal  and suspended stones.

According to Cha jong Rae: “He firmly believes that he is a sculptor.  He never gave up, even amidst economic hardships.” Her husband expresses it this way: “Here I am still hammering away in this digital age.”

Lee JaeHyo, this digital age salutes you.

All quotes from the ‘Return to Nature’ video.

The post Art as Furniture, Furniture as Art first appeared on Dornob.

Angled at 40 degrees in relation to the shoreline, five individual volumes come together to take optimal advantage of a narrow site on South Korea’s Geoje Island. Atelier Chang’s Knot House gives each space its own prime views of the water and the hilly landscape on the horizon while also maintaining privacy for the owners and their guests.

At the top of the hill is the owner’s residence, which also serves as the clubhouse for the whole complex, a two-story building that’s the only one to stand out from the rest.

Folded geometric shapes reminiscent of origami, the roofs seeming to form a continuous ribbon from afar, lead to the final residence at the end of the site.

Each identical volume is entirely closed-off and windowless from the entry walkway, but features plate-glass walls on the water side to take in the view without sacrificing a sense of solitude.

All of the structures are made of concrete and feature beachy white-and-wood interiors, the clubhouse offering an infinity-edge pool.

“How can architecture achieve seamless spatial connection between outdoor landscape and indoor living space without boundary? To answer that question, we have to stop separating the building versus the ground. Rather, imagine a surface that originates from the landscape, which eventually forms a knot to create an enclosure. The wild landscape floods into the terrace, generates patterns of the herb garden, and gradually reaches the interior in a seamless manner.”

“The project brings multiple advantages from the real-estate point of view. At first, multiple units can be built for ownership as well as for hospitality to generate constant income. Many years after, they can be easily converted and sold as residential units. The design itself takes account of adaptability throughout the life span of the building.  The Knot House introduces a new ecological lifestyle by combining farming and culture of tea. In the terrace garden, one can pick up fresh herbs to bring in to the house and make fresh tea for relaxation. It brings a small pleasure of production for the city dwellers who are only used to consume. Where the garden ends is a bathtub that submerges into the same landscape. The water used for bathing feeds back into the by watering the herb garden throughout the whole year.”

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Fusing modern function and aesthetics with traditional Korean style, this stunning residence in Gangnam features a vast interior courtyard partially covered by a cantilevered roof. The secret garden feel satisfies the needs of an owner who wanted fresh air and an open feel while maintaining privacy, making use of land reclaimed from a demolished structure. Meandering through the home is like getting lost on a wooded path, with interior spaces leading to the outside and back again.

Ga on Jai Jouse by Iroje KHM Architects was built about twenty years ago for a housing expo in the city, and incorporates four traditional Korean architectural elements: the use of ‘ru’ pillars, the ‘madang’ inner court, the ‘cheoma’ cantilevered roof and the ‘doldam’ stone masonry wall.

The pillars raise part of that cantilevered black roof to provide scenic views of the mountains without sacrificing the sense of disconnectedness from the outside world. Both the interior and exterior spaces of the home are arranged on various levels, including half-levels, creating rooftop gardens and tucked-away spaces.

Each of the interior rooms has direct access to the outside, whether through terraces or glass walls that open to the air. Connection to the garden and all of its greenery is always maintained and emphasized. White stucco, exposed concrete and black steel provide a neutral palette against which the rich greens, pinks and purples of the garden can bloom.

About the architects: 

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It’s hard to argue with Moon Hoon’s assertion that architecture is alive when his own structures, one equipped with bull’s horns and another seeming to bear googly eyes, look ready to charge down the hillside. ‘Rock It Suda’ is a series of pension houses created as a fun, no-holds-barred country getaway for a member of an amateur rock band and his friends. Each little vacation home has its own creative theme.

The client, a bass guitarist in the band Rock It Suda, wanted a pension that would double as a playground. In Korea, a pension is a place in the suburbs where city dwellers can get away to relax, cook out and enjoy the scenery. While many other pensions are built to resemble European cottages and chalets, Moon Hoon’s series is cartoonishly colorful, and wholly unexpected.

The themes of the houses include Spain, Barbie, Stealth+Ferrari, and caves. Located on the edge of a dry river bed with views of a mountain range, the pensions have a fun and playful feel that’s bound to be a considerable variation from the occupants’ full-time residences back in the city. Nets and hammocks offer childlike places to hang out.

Some of the structures have tail-like appendages made of netting that move and sway in the wind, enhancing the sense that they’re living creatures. Hoon’s injection of fantasy and surreality into architecture encourages us to look at buildings in a different light, connecting with them emotionally and letting go of arbitrary rules about how adults should act – at least, temporarily.

“‘To create a different scene for each unit, I worked from the inside out. The exterior was done last. The average Koreanized pension for two occupies 33㎡. By extending and compressing this standard floor area, I produced various spatial configurations.’ Moon gave each volume a clearly discernible identity – car, plane, bull, Barbie doll – accompanied by a vibrant colour that gives the unit its name: Ferrari Red, Stealth Black, Spanish Blue, Flamenco White, Barbie Pink and Oriental Gold.”

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