After opening my office, I did not work on a public architecture project until 2024; I worked 100% on private-sector projects. The decisive turning point was when I was commissioned to remodel the design studios at CNU, where I currently teach. It wasn¡¯t technically a public architecture project, but from my perspective, It felt like working for over 100 clients. When working on private projects, I feel happy if an individual client is satisfied. But in this case, I completed one project and more than a hundred people appreciated it. That made me want to create architecture for more people.

 

The Vieworks Hwaseong Site combines production, relaxation, and work spaces. Through a two-phase process of new construction and expansion, the project sought to support the company¡¯s growth and enhance employee resilience by attending to the surrounding suburban nature. The building¡¯s layout, scale, and form had all been determined from the beginning with expansion in mind. Phase 1 allocates lower levels for production and upper floors for office space. By separating the space for equipment and the space for its users, the factory wing was placed at the front facing the industrial complex, while the office wing was positioned at the rear with a better view.

 

Mangyeong-eup, Gimje, is a place where the typical Korean rural landscape unfolds. Situated on a low hill in a village, where time seems to have long stood still, this project is a memorial dedicated to Pastor Kim Jonghan and the 15 congregants of Mangyeong Church who were martyred during the Korean War. Beginning with a total absence of physical traces – such as belongings or records – the project faced the profound challenge of ¡®reconstructing memory¡¯. Because memory is formless and multivalent, the design opts to confront this troubling history through evocative sensory experience within its spaces rather than the reproduction of concrete forms. Composed simply of two external plazas (upper and lower), the building is designed so that the presence of the martyrs is revealed within the space through the play of light and shadow over the passage of time.​

Hapjeong Artplex is a commercial building consisting of five floors above ground and three basement levels. To naturally draw people from the street into the basement-level café and independent cinema, an external staircase and sunken plaza were created to connect directly to the underground level. In this space, users of the café and cinema intersect, generating an urban scene in which the flow from the street extends seamlessly into the basement. Each floor is planned as an autonomous shared space where movement and stasis, viewing and rest, are encouraged to overlap through the expansion of vertical circulation areas.

Architecture with an Open Ending: KimNam Architects

 

The site of the Hoam Cafe (2025), designed by Kim Jinhyu and Nam Hojin (Co-Principals, KimNam Architects, hereinafter KimNam), previously housed the Bourdelle Garden, which served as the outdoor gallery of the Hoam Museum of Art. It was a place where the dynamic and tectonic bronze sculptures of Antoine-Emile Bourdelle (1861 – 1929), personally collected by the late Lee Byung-chull, Chairman of the Samsung Corporation, beginning in 1971, were exhibited. Herakles the Archer, the centrepiece of the garden, is one of Bourdelle¡¯s representative works, a sculpture that maximises the taut tension of human musculature.