¡®Wreath and Towel¡¯ is one such platform: an online and offline exhibition initiative that welcomes texts of many kinds, unfolding them into layered, spatial forms. Its contributors include analytic aestheticians, comics critics, designers, writers of independent publications, as well as researchers of spatial culture, and contributors who work in areas such as coding, or sign-language literature—anyone who conveys ideas through alternative textual methods. Within Wreath and Towel, each contributor is intended to be newly ¡®read¡¯ through their own idiosyncratic mode. What follows is an exploration of the platform that is rewriting the rules of contemporary exhibition culture.

A Mediator Embracing Reality: GUBO Architects + Hong Jihak

 

We usually manage to come to agreements well, so since the office opened, we have discussed every decision together. Designers tend to be independent by nature, but because I trusted Cho completely – enough to discard my own ideas if Cho rejected them – coordination was possible. When I joined the university, things gradually changed. Some office matters require immediate responses, so Cho mainly handles time-sensitive tasks, while I take on planning works that aren¡¯t constrained by timing.

 

We believe there is no possibility that a single work of architecture (Vers une architecture) could account for the diversity of cultures and landscapes around the planet. Each place has its own specificities and requires a unique design response. Our response is organic in the sense that we always ask: What does the land ask of us? Land is understood as a natural and cultural phenomenon related to a given project. The answer must be in harmony with the depth of the question. This is what we call an organic response.

A Mediator Embracing Reality: GUBO Architects + Hong Jihak

 

Cho Yoonhee has been working in architectural design since she co-founded GUBO Architects in 2015. After graduating from the Department of Architecture at Seoul National University and MIT, Cho built her career at IROJE architects & planners in Korea and Höweler + Yoon Architecture in Boston, U.S. Cho¡¯s interest lies in building urban cities from the pedestrian perspective of an average person. She has worked as a Public Architect for Seoul Metropolitan Government and won the Korean Young Architect Award organised by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism in 2021.

 

When people finally arrive at their destination, they often confront all those passing landscapes as a single, composite frame in their memory. In contrast, those who experience GAENGGO BANJIHA arrive not at the conclusion of a sequence of landscapes, but at the extension of the unconscious journey that led them there. In other words, this space is not remembered as one complete and sequential exterior landscape, but as an unconsciously perceived part among many. An unconscious sensation that precedes human awareness, thoughts on how a place will be remembered through these sensations: this is where our designs begin.