The global gaze has been trained on the two Koreas in recent months with reports of strained political relationships, escalating tensions and American interventions. This is the latest instalment in a dramatic history stretching back hundreds of years, characterised by dynastic rule, Japanese colonisation, civil war, dictatorship and division. This month’s issue hopes to look beyond the headlines, uncovering the two countries’ architectural narratives and how they have evolved and responded to continuously shifting political and economic conditions.
In his keynote, Hyungmin Pai focuses on South Korea’s tumultuous history and how its architecture has been impacted by a state of perpetual crisis, introducing the Korean architects who have helped shape the country’s architectural landscape. Of these, the ‘father of Korean architecture’, Kim Swoo Geun, is featured in this month’s Reputations, and the recent renovation of his extraordinary Sewoon Sangga project re-establishes the megastructure as a vibrant ‘city within a city’.
Two stars of the next two generations of Korean architects, Iroje and Mass Studies, are both showcased at the campus of Daejeon University in central South Korea; while Paju Book City, just north of the capital, has become a surreal ‘book shelf’ of the work of contemporary Korean architects alongside Álvaro Siza and Florian Beigel. A long-time collaborator with both Siza and Beigel, Kim Jong Kyu’s tranquil Hansen Memorial Museum remembers a former leper refuge in an assemblage of contemplative courtyards and galleries.