SPACE December 2023 (No. 673)
Seoul Museum of Craft Art ©Kyungsub Shin
Lee Sojin to present the public buildings in Cheonwang Neighborhood Park / Screenshot from YouTube
On Nov. 7, the 2023 Public Architecture Awards of Korea and the ‘Public Architecture Forum’ was held at the Seoul Museum of Craft Art. The Public Architecture Awards, now in its 17th year, are overseen by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport with the aim of discovering and encouraging the efforts and achievements of architects, agencies, and construction companies who have contributed to the creation of outstanding public architecture. This year’s grand prize was awarded to those behind the Seoul Museum of Craft (covered in SPACE No. 650). The judges praised the project’s pre-selection process of the management team, including the nomination of the museum director, the role of the construction supervising director who oversaw development on the site, and the continuous line of held consultations between project participants to secure and optimise the original design aims.
Prior to the awards ceremony, the Architecture & Urban Research Institute (auri) held a forum under the theme of ‘again, public architecture’. As the first presentation, Baek Seongyeong (associate research fellow, auri) offered the paper, ‘creating public architecture from the user’s perspective’. The presenter pointed out that ‘although user considerations and user surveys are specified in the Act for the Promotion of the Building Services Industry and architectural planning performance guidelines, the methods of implementing this from the perspective of the project promoter is very ambiguous.’ Next, under the theme of ‘creating a public architecture for Seoul Museum of Craft Art,’ Cheon Janghwan (professor, Kyung Hee University) and Choi Jungik (director, MOOYOUNG CM) introduced the process behind the Seoul Museum of Craft over the course of five years. Following this paper, Kim Jeoungeun (SPACE, editor-in-chief) gave a presentation on ‘ten years of experience with design competitions under the public building system’, first introducing public buildings that were evaluated as successful of the works that had been entered to design competitions over the past 10 years, then outlining the points taken by each project, such as improving the standard of completion and maintaining the design aims, and faithful prior planning as factors that made this possible. The final presentation was by Lee Sojin (principal, Leeon Architects), on the power of small-scale projects to inspire local communities, under the theme of ‘citizen pride and parks’. In the ensuing general discussion, the debate focused on ways of reflecting the directions of architectural planning in a final result. The forum ended with participants agreeing that to ensure a better tommorow for public architecture, particularly at the present moment a decade into the implementation of the design competition systems, there is a need to review past achievements, diagnose areas for improvement, and prepare for the next ten years.
