How to Mourn a Place: ‘The Autobiography of Hilton Seoul’

This exhibition explores the idea of how architecture can ‘disappear well’, while paradoxically existing as a means of preservation in the face of demolition. To this end, the architecture curatorial collective CAC, which also co-organised this exhibition, organised six preliminary forums to open up the discourse on the preservation and regeneration of modern architecture and to raise critical questions about architectural disappearance. Rather than simply transplanting space or archiving its records, CAC reconstructs Hilton Seoul as an ‘alternative place’ — one that is physically absent yet still existentially present — through the recollection of place and the reassembly of memories. The collective invited not only artists who had previously engaged with Hilton Seoul but also new contributors working in film, installation, and photography.

Of the works focusing on the process of demolition are those by Jung Jihyun, Suh Ziu, and TechCapsule. The photographer Jung Jihyun captured the moments of the collapse of the building’s façade. The scattering of the once-grand and magnificent structure is now forever captured in a frame. Flashes of the demolition are now frozen in the photo, taking on a strange beauty. Suh Ziu’s Polished and Flickering.1, Polished and Flickering.2, and the Breathing Façade, reassemble the ‘timeless’ architectural materials salvaged from the demolition, such as green marble, travertine, bronze, and oak, into sculptural compositions. Though these materials have been transformed from building components into artistic forms, they continue to prompt the architectural imagination. Meanwhile, TechCapsule showcases Ground Truth in Loss, which documents the demolition site in detail, and Latent Vital, a work which digitally reconstructs the building through 3D scanning. Their works focus on dismantling and reconstructing architecture, and mediate between the real and the virtual, suggesting new possibilities for the next chapter in an architectural life cycle.

While these artists focused on the demolition of Hilton Seoul, the photographers Lim Chung-Eui and Choi Yongjoon centred on the memory and documentation of the building. Lim’s photos of the hotel’s construction and completion in the 1980s are exhibited alongside Choi’s detailed documentation of the building just before its closure in 2022. The juxtaposition of these two timelines compresses the beginning and end of Hilton Seoul into a single narrative moment. In addition, the exhibition also features an extensive archive display of the architect’s personal recollections, recorded conversations from the constructional phase, architectural drawings, sketches, and documents. Through collected artefacts taken from the building such as clocks, faucets, silverware, signages, and so on, visitors can experience the effects of an era in multiple ways.

Video works using the archival materials further enrich the exhibition. Attempts to peek into the building from the outside helps in our understanding of the building as a three-dimensional form. Noh Songhee’s Noitilomed imagines the absence of the building through drawings, documents, and photographs, while Beak Yunsuk’s City Portrait traces the socio-cultural context and transformation surrounding the building rather than the building itself. There are also works that capture the emotions and personal experiences of hotels through graphics and paintings. Graphicabulary (Kwak Mingoo, Yi Seula) spent three months living in Room 1430 before demolition, capturing scenes of everyday life — the lobby, sauna, and guest rooms — on canvas, blending the hotel’s atmosphere with personal experience.